5 Integrated Media Strategies to Make Digital PR Work Harder This Peak Season

The holiday season has always been the most competitive moment in retail, but the pressures shaping holiday 2025 demand a more disciplined approach to earned media. Consumer attention is more fragmented than ever, media cycles move at unprecedented speed, and new discovery behaviors—from AI-powered gift searches to social commerce—are reshaping how people find and choose brands. Against that backdrop, digital PR, a content marketing practice for engaging publishers and platforms to strengthen brand presence and online visibility, can help brands swiftly navigate these shifting trends and industry changes, engaging in the online spaces that matter most to customers. When executed effectively, digital PR fosters cultural relevance and enhances brand trust, thereby amplifying the impact of paid and organic media investment strategies. 

At PMG, we see five priorities for brands preparing digital PR programs for the holiday season now.

The best outcomes in digital PR come from striking a balance between anticipating long-lead opportunities while leaving room to respond to the unexpected. Editorial calendars should still anchor around tentpoles like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as these tentpole moments provide the scaffolding for long-lead storytelling. Recent work with lifestyle brands has shown that pitching in July and August is advantageous; however, our teams regularly secure high-value placements in September and October, well before the holiday rush. 

At the same time, PR teams should build in operational agility. The ability to respond to a sudden journalist request, a breaking cultural moment, or the release of the “must-have toy of the year” is what transforms PR from static messaging into a live conversation. Timeliness matters; some stories are early (gift guides, holiday planning hacks in July–October), while others peak in December (last-minute gift hacks, delivery deadlines, holiday stress). This still requires a degree of anticipating the media agenda and having ready-to-go commentary, expert voices, creative assets, and streamlined approvals so teams can react at speed.

Another consideration is journalist availability. Many editors and writers begin taking time off in mid-December or covering topics outside their specialism, meaning inboxes are quieter and fewer hands are available to review late pitches. To avoid missing opportunities, outreach should be front-loaded, with core stories and data pitched well before the holiday slowdown. In addition, media lists should be expanded and carefully tailored to campaign concepts. This ensures your campaigns reach newsrooms while they are still staffed and actively planning coverage.

The earned media ecosystem now encompasses online publishers, niche blogs and newsletters, influencer and creator partnerships, LLMs, and social amplification. This year’s holiday shoppers will seek gift inspiration and consume content across multiple platforms, making it essential for your digital PR efforts to engage audiences wherever they are online. By layering traditional placements with digital-first strategies, such as interactive content, shoppable editorial partnerships, or influencer and creator collaborations, brands can drive both awareness and conversion through digital PR strategies.

PMG has seen this play out in practice, using integrated influencer and editorial partnerships to help brands not only secure lifestyle press coverage but also turn that content into social-first activations that drive measurable shopping behaviours. This omnichannel approach ensures that PR tells brand stories while also driving tangible business growth. 

However, maximizing reach and coverage shouldn’t come at the cost of relevance. Press angles still need to be authentic to your brand and audience. By sticking to topics your brand can authoritatively talk about, you have a better chance of securing meaningful coverage that resonates, rather than fleeting mentions that get lost in the noise. When planning for Q4, consider the entire holiday buyer journey and tailor assets for multiple formats to ensure stories can be shared across online news, social media, video platforms, and ecommerce ecosystems.

During the peak season, every brand pitches holiday stories, from gift guides to festive surveys, making the competition for media space especially fierce. To cut through the noise, brands need to strike a balance between tapping into seasonal themes authentically and offering something distinctive enough to stand out. Strategically, this means planning multiple micro-campaigns so you’re not reliant on a single idea. If competitors launch a similar angle, you have fresh alternatives ready to pitch.

To stand out, brands need stories that feel both authentic and newsworthy. We’ve seen two approaches consistently resonate:

Data with authority. Original surveys, proprietary insights, or analysis that add to the conversation rather than repeat what’s already known.

Creative activations. Campaigns or stunts that are unexpected but aligned to brand identity and seasonal relevance.

We recommend developing a comprehensive cut-through plan that extends beyond a single festive season idea. Prepare multiple micro-campaigns, mixing seasonal-themed activations with fresh non-seasonal hooks, and back them with credible data or creative stunts. This ensures your brand can stand out in a crowded holiday news cycle and stay relevant even when journalists reach seasonal fatigue.

The impact of digital PR doesn’t end when the article goes live. Innovative brands extend their earned coverage by retargeting audiences who have engaged with that content, amplifying it across owned and paid channels, and using it as social proof during the critical holiday shopping window. From digital gift guides to expert commentary features, PR placements provide assets that can be re-shared, reshaped, and re-leveraged across the marketing mix. 

Research indicates that consumers exposed to a brand’s website are up to three times more likely to convert than those who are exposed to paid media alone, according to The Medill Spiegel Research Center. Amplification strategies improve performance—and extend reach. At PMG, we’ve seen brands repurpose high-authority earned placements as creative for paid retargeting, lifting engagement and driving measurable conversion gains during the peak shopping window. This ensures that the brand story stays top of mind throughout the season.

This year, don’t forget to build an amplification strategy that integrates earned media with paid, owned, and influencer activations to maximize visibility and conversion potential.

Holiday shopping behaviour is evolving, and inspiration is no longer confined to search engines or social feeds. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot are increasingly shaping how consumers discover products, often surfacing gift recommendations in response to natural language queries such as “best gifts” or “holiday shopping ideas.” 

What fuels these results is the strength of a brand’s digital footprint. A strong digital PR strategy, through earned media in trusted publications, authoritative backlinks, and consistent brand mentions, directly supports visibility in this new discovery layer. Brands can conduct a conversational search analysis to map out where their brand and competitors appear in AI-driven results, and prioritise PR activity that builds the authority signals needed to increase their inclusion in holiday gift recommendations.