Ask some people what PR is and you might get a few people with the answer: media coverage.
That definition, while important to brand building and profile, seems these days to be very limiting, especially for growth-focused businesses.
Today, PR operates across positioning, content, and digital influence – areas that traditionally lived within marketing teams.
PR hasn’t shrunk – if anything, it’s expanded.
PR is about positioning, not press
Media is a channel. Positioning is the job.
Modern PR defines the narratives that shape how a business is understood:
- The problems it owns
- The category it plays in and how it differentiates
- The language buyers use to describe it
- The employer brand it has created
Messaging frameworks, founder POVs, category narratives, and campaign themes all sit squarely in PR’s remit – long before a journalist is even involved, with coverage being just one outcome.
PR creates belief – the hardest part of the sales funnel
Marketing creates awareness but PR builds credibility. Recently we were told by a client that the work we were doing hugely accelerated and eased the sales process. Now that’s brand awareness equalling buyer trust right there. When PR is working properly, buyers don’t arrive asking “who are you?”
Through thought leadership, expert commentary and insight-led content, PR influences how markets think – not just what they notice. This happens well before a prospect clicks an ad or downloads a whitepaper.
PR creates content that marketing depends on
In an ideal world, much of what PR produces looks like marketing; it’s just that it performs differently or has different channels to reach buyers and industry. A few examples of this:
- Opinion-led content
- Research, reports and insight
- Founder narratives and stories
But PR content earns trust and carries third-party validation and editorial weight – making it more persuasive, more shareable and more effective across digital channels.
In practice, PR content now underpins, or even powers paid and organic social, SEO and discoverability and sales and programmes. Often in our work, it starts with the PR campaign generation, which leads to the marketing campaign, and together they work in perfect harmony.
In a dream scenario, PR and marketing converge to look like this:
- PR creates content you can trust
- Marketing amplifies and scales it
- Growth teams convert it into pipeline
PR manages reputation more than marketing can
Finally, don’t forget that PR can step in where marketing can’t, when it comes to category scepticism, founder visibility, crisis management or trust gaps in difficult B2B buying cycles. It all falls into the comms remit to correct these missing elements by managing perception, third party endorsement, and brand trust.
Reputation is also a huge growth asset (and it can also have a very adverse effect), with a modern PR campaign covering positioning, content, digital influence and reputation.
So, what is PR now? I’d maybe say it’s more of a digital growth channel. Of course, media relations still really matter, but the PR portfolio has thankfully evolved to become so much more to a fast-growth, ambitious scale up.
When you’re considering PR – think PR, but not as you know it.
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