BEAUTY | No More PR for 2026??!!

No more PR 😱 for 2026. Can I resist the call? I have had this post sitting in drafts since the end of June 2025, but it has been on my mind for a few years now. Here is why and I'm sure not everyone will agree with me.

The CLUTTER. All of these photos are PR I have NOT reviewed from the last 5 years and we have literally reorganized our lives to accommodate these items. Yes, I can give things away, but I've been doing that for years and THAT take works to organize too!

The NOSTALGIA. When I first started sharing my beauty journey, there was no PR so you HAD to go and buy all 10 shades of Revlon lip balm if you wanted to showcase all the swatches! We were all just spending our own money which I know was super wasteful! By going back to buying things on my own, I feel like I will hopefully recapture some of the magic of the mid-2010s. I think brands sending to Content Creators who look like you and me is important (so that we don't have to buy 10 shades of anything), but I no longer sit in that category anymore.

The BIAS. The only way you can review a product in an unbiased way is if you TRULY do not care if the brand sends you product again or not. I now actively seek out reviews where people have paid for the product especially if I am looking at Sephora reviews, but even those can be kind of iffy!

The EVENTS. Being usually the oldest person at many of these events, I think I have just outgrown the crowd and though everyone is always super welcoming (generally), they don't have the same flavour they used to when I had 30 year old energy!

The JOB. Content Creators who do this as their main job have a very different perspective of PR and events. I get it. You need to mingle with your colleagues aka other influencers to make connections. Back in the day, Influencing as a job did not exist so everyone had a day job, but the landscape has changed now and the group of "Blogger" is now broken down into two: those who do it as a job and those who do not. The mindset of these two subcategories is different so I view those who do this as a job as people who are given tools like PR and events (really, networking events) to advertise and market the brands. These are tools to help you as a Content Creator with your job. These tools are not the same for someone like myself because I don't view them as a means to make money.

The MONEY. Obviously, I would save a lot of money having things sent to me to try out first, but I am in a place now where I would like to support the actual brands with my own money and I have also been way more selective about what I buy because of that.

You might think "Oh, Jayne you are only saying this because brands don't see you as cool anymore and don't send you as much PR so you are just trying to save face!" Since the pandemic, I have turned down events and press packages because I didn't feel like seeing people and I didn't want the pressure of having to feature a product. I didn't want that feeling anymore! I also used to be really aggressive with reaching out to brands and following up which is how I got a lot of PR, but for the last few years that drive has disappeared and I have refocused that energy into my day job which has been beneficial as I have steadily been making more money that I have been trying to save for my TFSA, RRSP and now the FHSA!

The only events you will see me attending are most likely going to be events based on client-spend at Holts or Dior as I am an active client and I love that they reward VIP clients with events and do not offer them to influencers. Personally, having seen both sides of the coin due to my day job, I like knowing that my purchases are valued by a brand.

For the rest of the year, I will be trying to purge my collection so there might be a rash of reviews all with press samples, but by the end of 2026 I am hoping that I will be weaned off PR AND have a TON more space in my apartment! I was so so fortunate to have been part of the era where beauty blogging was at its peak and receiving PR was just CRAZY when you think about it. I made so many connections in this space, but the landscape has changed and I don't feel like spending MORE time on social media than I have to in order to keep up. I'll keep plugging along the old fashioned way as I find it soothing and whenever I check my Google Analytics, over 10K of you are reading so that's awesome!

Here's to less clutter, more focus and continued content I love producing (even if no one is reading)!