How to Get Press Coverage This Christmas: Eight Essential Tips

Christmas is fast approaching, and the PR race is well and truly on for brands seeking top-tier media coverage for the festive season.

Here at WPR, we’ve collated eight essential tips as a handy guide if you want the best chance of hitting the headlines this Christmas.

Without further ado, let’s take it away…

1. Create a Unique STory

It’s fair to say that Christmas is the most competitive time of year for consumer brands – and for their PR agencies or in-house teams – seeking press coverage. Although a key requirement of any successful PR story is uniqueness, this applies more than ever over the festive season.

To cut through, Christmas PR stories simply must work harder, which means getting a little more creative. Is there a Christmas-themed stunt you can pull off, or a fabulous piece of festive content that journalists won’t be able to refuse?

Whatever ideas you come up with, run a quick search online to check whether they’ve been done before. If they have, go back to the drawing board!  

Need some inspiration? When Hungry Horse approached us to boost Christmas dinner bookings, we knew we had to do something spectacular to secure coverage in such a saturated market. We launched the UK’s first glitter gravy for the brand, and generated more than half a million campaign engagements, over 20 national news hits, and 45 million organic video views.

2. PLan Ahead (when You Can)

In many instances, successful Christmas PR means not leaving things too last minute.

‘Christmas in July’ sounds bizarre, but it’s a real phenomenon in the PR and media world. Who’s really thinking about their festive stories in the balmy summer months? Well, long-lead journalists are.

Glossy lifestyle magazines, for example, start planning Christmas content way ahead of schedule, which is where this well-known phenomenon in the PR and media world comes from. With this in mind, we’ve been reaching out to target journalists at these publications for months now, but we’re also ensuring we have content polished and ready to go in November/December where shorter lead media is the goal.  

So, even if you’ve missed the boat for certain festive features and articles this year, all is definitely not lost. There are still plenty of opportunities out there for shorter-lead national press, online outlets, broadcast and other publications. After all, the best time to start may have been yesterday, but the next best time is now!

3. Leverage Festive Trends…

Christmas is a perfect newsjacking opportunity, so we highly encourage piggybacking on festive trends (or the general news agenda) to get your brand out there.

For example, there’s the sustainable Christmas trends of DIY gifts and decorations, charity donations or community involvement in the spirit of giving. Or taking something fairly typical and making it more festive – think Brussel sprout scented candles or Christmas dinner flavoured lickable envelopes.   

Take the themes of the festive season, such as giving, joy, traditions and nostalgia, and weave them into your Christmas campaigns.

4. …Or Ignore Christmas Altogether!

On the flipside, some journalists get so sick of Christmas come the start of December, that they never want to see another festive press release or PR pitch ever again.

You can stand out from the busy PR crowd by creating a story or campaign that steers completely clear of the C-word. Get your mind out of the gutter… we mean Christmas!

Avoiding any mentions of the festivities at Christmastime can sometimes work heavily in your favour, so consider stories that are still relevant and topical for the time of year, but don’t feed into the festive fatigue.

5. Go For Gift Guides

If your brand has products suitable for a gift guide, there are certainly plenty of them to pitch for, from the glossy mags and national/regional news titles, to broadcast slots like This Morning’s live gift showcase and even niche gifts guides in trade press.

Competition for a spot on one of these coveted compilations is fierce, which is where knowing how to pitch and what to include pays dividends. We make sure to present information as clearly as possible for the journalist, giving them what they need in a ready-to-go format to boost the chances of our clients’ content being chosen.  

It’s also worth noting that some of the gift guides that have already been published will be treated as ‘live’ articles, with journalists regularly updating them with new ideas and suggestions, creating further opportunities as we approach Christmas. And there will be plenty of last minute gift guides being produced well into December. These are particularly good low-hanging fruit if you have gifts to pitch in the form of vouchers or experiences which don’t require a delivery time.

You should also remember that many journalists now have commercial goals and need to include affiliate links in product-focused articles to generate commission as an additional revenue stream for their publication. If you’re an ecommerce brand that is yet to launch onto an affiliate network, it’s in your best interests to do so, because journalists are far more likely to include your product over one without an affiliate link available. The same is true not just of gift guides, but also if you’re seeking product reviews and inclusion in general ‘10 best’ style roundups.

6. Offer an Exclusive

Journalists are far more likely to run a story or campaign if it hasn’t been offered to every other journalist and their dog at the same time. So, offering an exclusive during the congested festive period can give your story more of a chance of landing a top-tier title.

Consider pitching to newswires and agencies, such as PA Media, Caters, SWNS or Jam Press on an exclusive basis, as newswire coverage can be far wider reaching, in multiple titles.

And your coverage doesn’t have to stop there; once your exclusive has been featured, in many cases you’ll be free to pitch it out to other titles too.

7. Personalise Your Pitches

This tip, as they say, is not just for Christmas. It goes without saying that journalists always want pitches that are carefully considered, well written, and relevant to their patch. If you take a ‘spray and pray’ approach to your Christmas pitching, your pleas for coverage could fall on deaf ears.

Instead, take time to look into what the journalist has written about recently (or last Christmas) and clearly outline why you think your pitch will therefore be of interest to them; they are far more likely to take notice of a genuinely personalised, relevant approach.

8. Offer Expert Input

Your experts could be in high demand during the festive season, when journalists are seeking all kinds of tips and advice for Christmas-related articles.

Have a short bio on hand that sums up their areas of expertise, along with a headshot, and look out for media opportunities that could be their time to shine. Examples include:

• An interior designer who could give tips on festive décor
• A personal finance or retail expert who could offer savings/shopping advice for Christmas
• A chef, sommelier or mixologist who can offer festive recipes, cocktails or wine pairings

There you have it – with the right ideas, approach and contacts, you can maximise your chances of securing high-quality Christmas PR coverage.  If you want to chat about your seasonal PR campaigns, get in touch to find out how we can help.

The author: Shannon Peerless is a senior consumer PR director with a passion for crafting stories that elevate a brand’s messages and resonate with target audiences to drive engagement. Her expertise spans all areas of public relations, from creative ideation and strategy development to executing award-winning campaigns and leading a team to deliver on KPIs.

For further advice and insight around festive marketing, learn how to supercharge your paid media activity this Christmas, check out some of our favourite Christmas PR stunts for inspiration, or download our Christmas Unwrapped report to find out what consumers want this Christmas.