Top Trunks

Who does PR for luggage brands, I wondered to myself during a journey home last week? (My thoughts aren’t always this exciting, don’t worry.) I don’t know any travel PR agencies who represent an Antler or a Tumi, so is it fashion PRs? If so, I never hear from them either.

I suspect luggage may fall into one of those weird sectional dead zones; it’s not quite travel but it’s not quite fashion, either. Well, I say that, but it basically would come under travel.

Would and, increasingly, does. While you get the occasional run-through of the best holdalls on the Times or Telegraph websites, Condé Nast Traveller (and its US equivalent) is really going big on this sort of thing — with frequent pieces about not just trunks but weekender bags, neck pillows, loungewear sets and more. There’s a headline along the lines of “This Editor-Approved Backpack Will Replace Your Carry-On Luggage” in one of its newsletters each week

I daresay lifestyle magazines intermittently cover such stuff too. CNT UK has a sub-section for it. Alas in newspapers, the more or less total absence of a pinboard-style travel news page — once a mainstay, now mostly jettisoned — precludes much opportunity. But while print is a desert, digital represents an oasis, as evidenced by this recent article on the Mirror’s pages about a toilet-shaped pillow.

As such — and forgive me, Laura Craik, for possibly stepping on your RoxStar toes here — I’d suggest any travel-focused PR agency should consider expanding its gaze towards luggage makers, neck pillow producers, day bag designers or flip flop artisans. It would be something different for your client list, and the potential for coverage is palpably there.