← The Record
01
Note · March 2026
The gifting problem
Somewhere in the last few years, gifting stopped being generous and started being landfill. A note on why the send-out has stopped working — and what we do for our clients instead.
Three hundred parcels
The maths used to be simple: send enough product to enough people and some of it becomes content. That maths has broken. The average beauty creator now receives more product in a month than they could honestly review in a year, and audiences can tell the difference between something loved and something unboxed. A parcel is no longer a story. Mostly, it is not even a post.
The uncomfortable part is that gifting still feels like work. Three hundred parcels leave the studio and everyone is busy, everyone is doing something. But activity is not the same as attention, and attention is the only thing the parcel was ever supposed to buy.
What the brands we rate are doing
Fewer, slower, personal. The strongest programmes we see treat product as an introduction rather than a broadcast: a first note that reads like it was written by a person, a send tailored to what the recipient actually covers, and no expectation attached. When something does land, it lands because the fit was right — and that shows on camera.
The second shift is contractual honesty. Where a brand wants certainty, the strong ones pay for it, brief it properly and label it. Audiences forgive a clear partnership far faster than a pretend surprise.
Where this leaves the send-out
Not dead — demoted. We still gift, for launches where the product genuinely says something new. But it sits inside a programme now: a dozen relationships that compound, rather than three hundred parcels that evaporate. If your gifting list is longer than your press list, it is probably doing less than either.
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