‘What do you do?’ The perennial question that haunts every family gathering or awkward first encounter. ‘I work in public relations,’ I reply. ‘And what does that involve?’ logically comes next.
This, usually, is where I fall short. It’s not that what I do is oh-so-hard to-explain, more, the industry is evolving so quickly that it genuinely is hard to define succinctly.
Often, I’ve positioned PRs as press officers – intermediaries between clients and the media. This is, in many respects, a perfectly apt and accurate description of the job. But increasingly, I think that definition risks doing modern PR a disservice – particularly at a time when what most of the public consider ‘the press’ is waning in influence.
Much has been made recently of AI models’ eagerness to cite earned media as some kind of evidence in a resurgence of traditional PR. That debate is for another time. What does feel undeniably true, however, is that Fleet Street’s grip on the public consciousness weakens year-on-year, while the number of alternative channels shaping opinion continues to grow.
As a result, perceptions of brands are becoming more fragmented. Reputation is now formed through an expanding mix of creators, communities, AI summaries, employee advocacy, Reddit threads, and niche online spaces – rather than through a handful of trusted outlets as in years past. Audiences are scattered, attention is fleeting, and trust is increasingly difficult to earn.
That is how I see the state of modern communications today. And it means the role of PR professionals has fundamentally changed. We are not simply intermediaries between organisations and journalists; we are strategic storytellers responsible for shaping how brands are understood across an ever-expanding communications landscape. This isn’t a new phenomenon – indeed, PRs have always had to navigate adapting media environments (be that the decline of print or the rise in social media, for example) – but I think the rise in AI-powered communications coupled with the cutting of newsroom budgets makes this moment particularly pertinent.
Reputation is now formed through an expanding mix of creators, communities, AI summaries, employee advocacy, Reddit threads, and niche online spaces – rather than through a handful of trusted outlets as in years past. Audiences are scattered, attention is fleeting, and trust is increasingly difficult to earn.
Front page coverage remains impactful and needle-moving – and we’re still going to chase coverage and pitch journalists. Don’t let the above detract from that. But it’s no longer the be-all-and-end-all – it’s one tactic within a much broader repertoire.
Today, the best stories are ones that travel – across platforms, through communities, into search results, AI-generated summaries and internal conversations. Their impact lies in visibility, but more so in how they shape perception, sentiment, and trust over time. Media coverage retains immense value, but its importance lies in how it contributes to a wider, consistent narrative about a brand or organisation.
The challenge, therefore, lies in seeding winning tactics across a variety of channels – all while remaining coherent. Brands are being interpreted simultaneously by journalists, AI models, and unique, regional audiences all operating differently. The job is to ensure those interpretations ladder up to something consistent and meaningful.
This is why communications has become more strategic than ever before. ‘Strategic’ is a word thrown around too casually in the industry, but in an environment where perception is shaped from countless directions at once, long-term, multi-channel thinking – that genuinely feeds into broader business objectives – is utterly essential.
The best PRs today are translators between organisations and their target audiences – helping clients understand not only what they want to say, but how those messages will be interpreted once released into the world. And, how those interpretations support broader business objectives. (Because if they’re not doing that, they shouldn’t be done at all.)
That perhaps is now the simplest answer to the question of what PR actually involves.
Yes, securing headlines is important. But, increasingly, our role is to help organisations navigate attention, credibility, and trust in world where influence is dispersed, narratives are fast-moving, and reputation is being shaped constantly from countless directions at once.
The channels with which we try and persuade will continue to change. The responsibility, however, will remain the same.
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