PR needs to focus on relevance and authority, not just volume

There is something slightly uncomfortable about seeing PR described as having a renaissance. Not because I disagree with it. I hope it is true. The work has rarely felt more important. Crisis moves faster. Disinformation is harder to manage. AI is changing how brands are discovered and understood. Reputation, leadership visibility, internal confidence and commercial trust are now completely connected.

But I am wary of the industry congratulating itself on finally being seen as strategic when too much of the market still buys communications as though very little has changed.

Two stories brought this into focus for me recently. The first was the Sunday Times piece on PR’s so-called new ‘dark arts’, looking at how advisers are helping businesses spot and manage reputational issues before they break. The phrase is deliberately provocative, and I am not sure it does the industry many favours. Most serious issues work is not dark, glamorous or mysterious. It is careful, disciplined and often invisible. 

The second was PR Daily’s piece asking who communications should report to. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the argument centred on CEO access. Not for status, but because it is difficult to advise on a decision you are not close enough to understand.

Different stories, but they sparked the same question for me: if PR is now being talked about as serious advisory work, why is it still so often briefed, bought and measured like delivery? That gap is where the problem sits.

I see it most clearly in new business. Recently, two very different RFPs crossed our desks, and they said a lot about where the market is. One was familiar: a traditional brief built around coverage volume, competitor visibility, share of voice and media targets. How much coverage can you deliver? How does that compare with our competitors? What titles can you secure? How quickly can you move the numbers? 

None of those are bad questions. Coverage matters. Competitive visibility matters. A strong press office matters. I will defend good press office work all day long. When it is done properly, it is strategic, relentless and commercially valuable. 

But that kind of brief still starts by asking PR to prove itself through what can be counted first. The other brief was completely different. It was culture-led. It asked how a destination earns relevance. How it moves beyond the travel pages. How it enters the conversations people are already having. How it builds authority, desire and credibility with the audiences that shape perception long before anyone makes a booking decision. 

That brief created more value before a single piece of coverage was discussed. Not because it ignored output, but because it did not mistake output for strategy.

The shift the industry needs to make

PR has spent years being asked to prove its value through volume: more coverage, more reach, more impressions, more share of voice, more reports. Then we wonder why it is still sometimes treated as a delivery function. We have allowed ‘measurable’ to become shorthand for ‘countable.’ They are not the same thing. 

Counting coverage is easy. Measuring value is harder. It means asking what the work was meant to change in the first place. Did it strengthen the right narrative? Did it reach the audiences that actually matter? Did it make the organisation more credible on the issue it wants to own? Did it reduce risk? Did it support search, AI visibility or stakeholder confidence? Did it give the board something useful, or just a number?

PR needs to be brought in earlier

This is where the client relationship needs to change. Too many PR briefs still arrive after the interesting part has already happened. The decision has been made. The commercial pressure is understood internally but not shared. The risk has been discussed elsewhere. The audience has been assumed. The desired headline has already been imagined. 

Then communications is asked to make it land. That is not counsel. It is packaging, and it creates frustration on both sides. Clients feel they are paying for advice but not always getting enough challenge. Agencies feel they are being asked for strategic thinking while only being given tactical access. Both can be true.

If PR is only brought in when the business wants activity, it will inevitably be judged by activity. Outputs matter. A strategy that never leaves the room is not good PR. Boards, procurement teams and marketing leaders are right to ask what has been delivered, but outputs should be evidence of the work, not the entire argument for its value. 

The most important communications advice is not always the most visible. Sometimes it is the moment someone says the story is not ready. Sometimes it is changing the spokesperson because the CEO is not always the right person to carry the message. Sometimes it is delaying an announcement, narrowing the audience, strengthening the evidence, or deciding that silence is more strategic than another statement. 

Judgement needs context

If clients want PR to operate as lead counsel on reputation, risk, audience, timing and trust, they must brief it earlier and buy it properly. Not as the poor cousin of marketing. Not as the first thing that gets cut. Not as the team that tidies things up at the end. And not as a monthly volume exercise dressed up as strategy.

So yes, perhaps PR is having a moment. But it will only become a real market shift when the way clients brief, value, and measure communications changes with it. 

Otherwise, we are not talking about a renaissance; we are talking about the same old model with better language around it.

 Natalia Dowling-Kennedy, senior vice president of PR & strategic clients, MMGY.

Further reading

Should you rely on instinct or data in crisis comms?

Six lessons from turning a regulatory change into a national media story

How to use segmentation, targeting and positioning for media relations