Public relations has a PR problem.
Popular mythology still conjures images of publicists managing red carpets and exclusive guest lists. The less glamorous stereotype isn’t much better: a relentless barrage of pitches, formulaic press releases and monthly clip reports boasting millions of phantom impressions.
Both portrayals belong to a media era in which access was scarce and securing coverage sat at the center of the job. Clients now entrust PR with a far wider range of public-facing decisions, yet the industry continues to describe and evaluate the function largely through the conventions of media relations. The result is a persistent gap between PR’s public image and the expectations of the role today.
The Migration Of Power
Through the 1990s and into the early 2000s, mainstream attention was funneled through a remarkably small number of gatekeepers. A profile in the right magazine or a booking on a major morning show could fundamentally alter a company’s trajectory overnight. Publicists with direct access to influential editors and producers had meaningful influence over which stories reached a mass audience. The business value of that influence was clear, and senior publicists were given greater proximity to executive decision-making.
Digital publishing dismantled that media scarcity. Once companies could publish directly to their audiences, PR’s traditional role as an intermediary began to look increasingly expendable.
Then came performance marketing, which introduced a new kind of skepticism. Clicks and direct conversions produce comparatively clean, immediate attribution that a CFO can track monthly. Communications operates on a different timeline. Its effects accumulate and are filtered through context and third-party interpretation, making its contribution harder to isolate. That apples-to-oranges comparison continues to shape how communications budgets are evaluated.
The Illusion Of Message Control
Digital distribution made it easier to reach a broader audience while making interpretation more volatile. An organization still determines what it communicates and when, but has limited control over the public response it generates. Audience boundaries have largely disappeared; messages now reach far beyond their intended recipients, often without the context that shaped them.
Media placements still matter, but no single article can contain or steer a modern corporate narrative. PR must now account for the wider reception of a message as carefully as it pursues coverage.
The Mandate Kept Expanding
As the media environment fragmented, clients began asking PR to do more than earn coverage. The same team might now broker a brand collaboration, shape an event and cultivate relationships with creators, while remaining accountable for the public narrative surrounding all three.
The broader remit follows the market: Public attention is no longer concentrated in a handful of editorial outlets. Clients increasingly expect PR to operate across this wider landscape, but the work is still too often judged by the coverage it produces.
The Cost Of Vanity Metrics
PR practitioners have historically defended their value with the largest, least meaningful numbers available. Multi-million impression totals give a wrap-report artificial heft, but they fail to answer the single question a chief executive cares about: What actually changed?
The most useful measurement conversations I have with clients happen before the work begins. We establish what the assignment is intended to change before deciding how success will be reported.
A brand launching in a crowded category can secure extensive coverage and still fail to establish a clear point of differentiation. A collaboration intended to introduce a brand to a new audience has limited value if interest fades after the announcement. Placement reach alone reveals little about whether either objective was achieved.
Communications can change how a brand is understood without claiming sole responsibility for every commercial result that follows. Credible reporting makes that distinction clear.
Defining Strategic Value
PR has evolved faster than the language used to describe it and the standards used to assess its value.
The case PR makes for itself must now encompass the full range of responsibilities clients already entrust to it. Its reporting should connect each assignment to the outcome it was intended to advance. Placements and impressions remain relevant, but they cannot capture that contribution in full.
A broader mandate does not guarantee a fuller understanding of the role. We have spent decades warning organizations that reputations left unattended are shaped by others. The industry would do well to take its own advice.