PR needs PR

Because it’s not Permanent Residence or Personal Record. And it’s not just publicity.

There's a question I get asked constantly — at industry events, in client meetings, at sundowners. Sometimes it's asked directly but usually it's implied "What exactly do you do?"

I teach Public Relations at university and I advise businesses on it every day. There is a pretty big gap between what people think PR is and what it really is, even among smart, ambitious people building serious companies.

I'd love more people to understand what PR is, because the businesses that invest in it become the ones people think of first, trust most, and recommend without being asked.

PR is the deliberate, strategic work of shaping how your business is perceived and builds relationships with customers, investors, employees, partners and the public.

It's a relationship discipline. Media coverage, thought leadership, reputation management, crisis response, are just activities. The organisations that build genuine credibility are the ones that take time to nurture the right relationships.

They know the investors in their space before they’re raising. They’re known by journalists before they have a story to pitch. They’ve built connections with partners who can extend their reach.

Many business owners think of PR as broadcasting, sending a message out, being visible. The most valuable PR work happens in rooms, at tables, in conversations. It happens in the relationships that exist long before any coverage is written or any announcement is made.

The businesses that grow with momentum aren't just good at what they do. They're known by the people who matter.

It sits across all areas of business, part of why it's so misunderstood. And why so many growing businesses don't invest in it until a missed opportunity makes the cost visible.

What a missed opportunity looks like

A pitch that didn't connect because the other party couldn't find much about you. A partnership that went to a competitor who showed up more credibly. A prospective employee who chose a business that felt more established.

You were probably the better option. Perception shaped the outcome before you got the chance to prove it.

A framework for thinking about PR

For a growing business, PR works across three interconnected areas. Together, they create the kind of reputation that compounds over time, but not overnight.

Unlike a paid ad, there's no clear line between activity and outcome. What builds instead is harder to see and harder to ignore. The way people understand and talk about you.

PR can be measured. But the metric that matters most is trust and trust shows up in your pipeline and your reputation, more clearly than it shows up in a spreadsheet.

Be known.

Media relations put you in the publications and channels your customers, investors and partners actually consume. Strategic coverage does more for your pipeline than most businesses expect. More than 90% of consumers trust earned media — editorial coverage, expert features, word of mouth — over paid advertising. That's why PR and advertising aren't interchangeable.

Content PR means creating something that positions your business strategically. Research your business could be sharing. A perspective that reframes an industry conversation. Original data that gives journalists a story. If your business holds unique insight, packaging it well gives media a reason to cover you and gives your stakeholders something valuable to engage with.

Owned channels and LinkedIn give you direct access to the people you're trying to reach. For B2B businesses, LinkedIn is one of the most underused PR channels available. How your leadership shows up, shapes perception in ways that are largely free and entirely in your control.

Be trusted.

Thought leadership positions you, or your leadership team, as an expert, through opinion pieces, media commentary, speaking at industry events and showing up on podcasts your audience listens to. The goal is to make your name synonymous with clear thinking in your space. More than 70% of journalists prefer pitches backed by data or research. Thought leadership and media relations work together to open opportunity.

Industry recognition sends a signal before you say a word. Award-winning or recognised by changes how someone reads your proposal before they've finished the first paragraph. For a growing business competing with more established players, that signal shifts the conversation.

Crisis and issues management is the one nobody wants to think about until they need it. Businesses that responded to a reputational crisis slowly or poorly lose an average of 30% in market value in the year that followed. Highly responsive companies, by contrast, gained an average of 20%. That's a 50-point difference and it comes down to communications and preparation. Reputation built carefully over years can unravel quickly without a plan.

Be connected.

This is the activity least associated with PR and the one I'd believe matters most. Strategic stakeholder engagement means mapping who the right people are and building genuine relationships with them deliberately, over time.

This isn't networking in the transactional sense. It's understanding the ecosystem your business operates in and positioning yourself within it with intention. Who will support you when you're expanding? Who will introduce you to the right room? Who will speak about you credibly when you're not there?

The difference between PR and marketing

Marketing earns attention. PR earns trust. Both matter and they work best together, but they do different jobs.

Attention you can buy. Trust takes longer and has more value. When audiences are more informed, more sceptical and more connected than ever, trust is what drives the decisions that matter.

Global surveys suggest executives believe corporate reputation accounts for more than half of company value. If that perception held in Australia, it would imply hundreds of billions in ASX 200 market capitalisation is tied, at least in part, to reputation.

And this is a balance sheet issue. Most organisations investing in PR haven't yet connected it to their strategic goals. They're capturing some of the benefit without building the strategic value, where communications, relationships and reputation work together toward a business outcome.

Why PR matters more now than it used to

The public sphere has changed. The space where society debates, decides and forms opinion has evolved, from a literal town square to the newspaper letters page, to broadcast media, to social feeds and comment sections and group chats that move faster than any organisation can fully control.

PR has always been the discipline that helps organisations in that space. What's changed is the speed, the platforms and the reduced attention span.

Something else has changed too, and I think it matters more than most people have realised yet. Traditional media, editorially independent, rigorous and accountable, still carries credibility in the minds of audiences.

But it now carries it in another important place as well: AI.

The large language models increasingly shaping how people find and evaluate information, are trained to preference authoritative, well-sourced content. Earned coverage in credible publications signals legitimacy to the systems people are starting to rely on.

That's one of the reasons I think traditional media is quietly due for a comeback and why organisations investing in earned media now are ahead of a shift most haven't anticipated.

People do business with organisations they trust. Trust is built through consistent, credible communication and meaningful relationships over time.

Invest in your story

The businesses building genuine credibility right now are investing in their story, their visibility and their relationships with deliberate consistency.

Do the people who matter to your growth know who you are, what you stand for, and why it matters?