Developing complimentary relationships between your PR agency and your affiliate agency

Making PR and Affiliate Work Together—Not Against Each Other

I got a question on one of my recent Linkedin posts, and because this comes up all the time when we start working with a brand, I figured—let’s turn it into a newsletter. The question? How do you build a strong, complementary relationship between PR and affiliate agencies?

The short answer? It depends on the brand.

The real answer? It all starts with understanding the landscape, strategy, transparency, and a commitment to collaboration.

Understanding the Landscape

First, you need both an Affiliate expert and a PR expert on your team—working together—to land quality press long-term in 2025. Full. Stop.

My biggest recommendation to brands is: don’t stress about nitpicking who landed what coverage all the time. Because at the end of the day, Affiliate and PR working together build long-term momentum—way bigger than landing a one-off piece in Vogue. And the impact? You track it and see it grow over time.

Also, PR and Affiliate teams don’t work in silos—there’s a lot of coverage that happens because both teams worked hand in hand. It’s not one or the other.

A question to noodle on: If you had a breakdown of exactly which agency landed which feature but saw $0 in revenue growth, would you be happy? Or would you rather not know every single detail about who landed what, but see a 20% YoY growth in affiliate revenue from press? Just something to think about.

Second, not all publications operate the same way when it comes to coverage. Some, like Byrdie,