Gift Guide Backlash

Remember when some big-name luxury advent calendars got trolled for being over-priced and under-filled? It’s now the luxury gift guide’s turn to be torn apart when appearing unrelatable.

‘Do people gift these things?’ ex-editor Amy Odell asked in her Back Row Substack newsletter touring high-priced goods found in SEO-focussed gift guides. Meanwhile, Goop’s ecommerce-centred ‘The ridiculous but awesome gift guide’ left The Guardian questioning whether Gwyneth Paltrow’s life is in fact a work of performance art. Well, ‘how else do you explain the $15,000 vibrator?’ which leads the larger-than-life ideas for one’s ultimate wish list (not mine).

As with most things Gwynnie delivers nowadays, it courted clicks for Goop as much as chatter at the water cooler. Clever, maybe, but worth the controversy? While outlandish to some translates as obscene to others (and – yes – what of the cost-of-living crisis, Goop?), given that it was created with diamond company De Beers, I’m sure she’d argue that it had every right to be absurd. The headline owned that angle, after all.

But backlash or not, I think gift guide appropriacy should simply boil down to serving your audience – both for journalists and PRs involved in them. In the luxury editorial world in which I write, it pays to be relatable – which needn’t be at odds with factors like ‘expensive’ and ‘aspirational’. Ergo, I wouldn’t feature anything exorbitant in our gift guide as much as anything dirt cheap. And I welcome the PR pitches that reflect this.

We can’t please everyone on the internet. But if we please a title’s target readers, by guiding their purchasing choices with integrity and expertise, then we’re doing our jobs.

For more of my thoughts on pitching for Christmas gift guides, catch up on my recent newsletter here.