By Rebecca Broomfield, Director of Consumer
If you spent this bank holiday weekend dodging showers, sheltering from thunderstorms and abandoning outdoor plans, you’re not alone. The UK’s weather has become genuinely unpredictable — and it’s getting worse. Scientists call this climate whiplash, rapid swings between weather extremes that have become up to two-thirds more frequent in recent decades.² Last year was the warmest and sunniest on record.¹ Then winter 2025 arrived and parts of Devon and Cornwall saw rain for 50 consecutive days.² The neat seasonal calendar that has governed campaign planning for decades (spring/summer, autumn/winter) is quietly becoming fiction.
This is a problem for any brand running planned campaigns months in advance. But it’s an enormous opportunity for PR, because PR, at its best, is a reactive medium. It’s built to move fast, to ride the news cycle, to turn what’s happening right now into brand relevance. In a world where the weather can shift overnight, that agility isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a competitive advantage.
It’s not just about what people buy — it’s about how they feel.
Most marketers understand that people buy more ice cream in sunshine and more soup in the cold. However, the influence that weather has is bigger than that, it shapes consumer psychology — not just purchasing, but receptivity to brand messaging itself.
Research has shown that sunlight exposure triggers serotonin production — the neurotransmitter responsible for mood regulation and motivation — which in turn correlates with increased spending on discretionary items.³ Consumers exposed to sunlight have been shown to willingly pay significantly more for the same products compared to those in dreary conditions.⁴
Professor Trevor Harley, author of The Psychology of Weather and Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Dundee, illustrates just how deep this runs. Research has shown that cloud cover on a university visit day increased the likelihood of a student enrolling by almost 10%, not because they consciously connected the weather to their decision, but because overcast skies unconsciously primed them towards indoor, academic thinking. If the weather can shape where someone chooses to spend three years of their life without them even realising it, imagine what it’s doing to how your audience receives a brand message on any given morning.
The implications for consumer brands are significant. A consumer scrolling through Instagram on a grey Tuesday morning is not in the same psychological state as one doing so on a bright Saturday afternoon — and yet most brands serve them identical content, identical messaging, identical creative. The weather outside the window is shaping their receptivity before your campaign even reaches them.
Weather doesn’t just change demand, it changes how your audience thinks and feels. And if the weather is now unpredictable, that means your audience’s mindset is unpredictable too — which makes the case for reactive, in-the-moment communications even stronger.
Weather-minded approach to PR
The paid media industry has sophisticated tools for weather-activated advertising. Without a doubt PR has been slower to grab onto the potential a weather-minded approach can have. This is a missed opportunity, because weather gives you something that every PR campaign needs — a news hook and the potential for hyper-local relevance. within hours.
And the media appetite is already there. BBC Director-General Tim Davie has described weather as “the UK’s favourite conversation,” and in 2026 the BBC launched an entire dedicated weather channel on iPlayer. Met Office research found that 60% of UK consumers say weather is their go-to conversation topic — ahead of news and current affairs, family, or holidays.5 For news desks, weather stories are guaranteed engagement. Brands offering smart, weather-led stories are pushing at an open door.
We proved this with our campaign for Brabantia. Tasked with driving awareness of their laundry product portfolio, we tapped into two quintessentially British obsessions: the weather and doing the washing. Working with a meteorologist, we busted the common myth that drying clothes outside requires sunshine, establishing that the ideal conditions are actually 12°C with a wind speed of 15mph. We then built a digital Drying Index that gave consumers a postcode-level drying success score, turning an everyday chore into a shareable, data-driven moment.
The campaign combined traditional PR with digital assets and influencer collaborations. On launch day, it secured blanket national coverage including a full page in The Sun and broad broadcast pickup. It worked because the insight was rooted in something people genuinely care about — can I dry my washing outside today? — and weather gave us both the credibility and the cultural relevance to earn attention.
Our work with Olbas took this further — into genuinely reactive, weather-triggered PR. During hayfever season, we partnered with a GP and combined expert commentary with real-time pollen data to position Olbas at the centre of the seasonal health conversation. The approach was simple, when pollen levels spike, so should brand visibility. By aligning media outreach with those spikes, we were able to news-hijack the moment with practical, timely advice — including the little-known fact that clothes dried outdoors act as pollen traps, bringing allergens straight into the home, and that households should limit outdoor drying to four hours in spring. The story landed on the Newsquest newswire and triggered 114 pieces of regional coverage with a combined reach of over 62 million. We then used the same pollen-spike moment to pivot into trade media, timing the launch of a new Olbas product when retailer interest was naturally at its highest.
What connects these two campaigns is that weather wasn’t a backdrop — it was the engine. In the Brabantia work, weather data gave us a planning tool. In the Olbas work, weather data gave us a reactive trigger. Both turned meteorological conditions into earned media.
That’s the difference between weather as a media-buying signal and weather as a storytelling device. In paid media, weather triggers the ad. In earned media, weather is at the heart of the story.
You can’t plan for the weather — so be ready to react
This is the central point. You can plan a campaign six months out, but you can’t plan the weather six months out. The Met Office can give you a seasonal outlook, but nobody can tell you whether your carefully scheduled June product launch will land in a heatwave or a washout.
Reactivity is key and this is something we’ve invested in heavily at Speed. Our proprietary tool, PulseAI, combines real-time monitoring across 150,000 news and social sources with AI-driven insight and client-specific intelligence. It enables our teams to spot reactive opportunities early and act on them with strategic intent, not just speed. It’s a learning system, constantly refining its output based on team feedback, getting sharper and more attuned to each client’s priorities over time.
Weather is a perfect use case for this kind of capability. A sudden heatwave in April, an unexpected cold snap in June, 50 days of rain — these aren’t disruptions if you have the infrastructure to respond. They’re opportunities.
What brands should do next
The shift doesn’t require a complete overhaul of how campaigns are planned. But it does require three things:
First, build weather awareness into the planning process. This doesn’t mean abandoning seasonal collections or editorial calendars. It means stress-testing them against the reality that the weather may not cooperate, and having responsive creative ready for when it doesn’t. If your summer campaign depends on it actually being sunny , you have a single point of failure.
Second, think about weather as a content trigger. For PR and earned media, the opportunity is in using weather data to generate stories, create tools, and produce content. The Brabantia Drying Index worked because it answered a real question. Every lifestyle brand has an equivalent (what to wear, what to cook, what to do, what to drink), that weather makes newly relevant every day.
Third, invest in understanding the psychology, not just the meteorology. The real competitive advantage isn’t knowing what the weather will be. It’s understanding how that weather will make your audience feel and crafting communications that meet them in that emotional state. That’s the difference between a brand that reacts to weather and one that truly understands its consumers.
For more on our approach to consumer brand communications, whatever the weather, get in touch. We’ll be happy to chat.
Footnotes
¹ Met Office, ‘UK Climate: Annual Assessment 2025’. The UK recorded a mean temperature of 10.09°C, making 2025 the warmest and sunniest year on record.
² Met Office / BBC News, ‘UK Weather Outlook 2026’. Winter 2026 brought rain for 50 consecutive days in parts of Devon and Cornwall. Climate whiplash — rapid swings between weather extremes — has become roughly one-third to two-thirds more frequent globally in recent decades.
³ Lambert, G.W. et al., ‘Effect of sunlight and season on serotonin turnover in the brain’, The Lancet, 2002. Sunlight directly affects serotonin production, which regulates mood and motivation.
⁴ Murray, K.B. et al., ‘The effect of weather on consumer spending’, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2010. The study found consumers in sunlight conditions were willing to pay significantly more for the same products compared to those in overcast conditions.
5 Met Office, ‘Smart Talk’ research, August 2025. 60% of UK consumers say weather is their go-to small talk topic, ahead of news and current affairs (34%), family (26%) and holidays (24%). 79% check the weather forecast daily.