The Daily Grind of PR Professionals
Public relations professionals spend the vast majority of their time on one singular pursuit: trying to get their clients' stories published in the media. Day after day, they craft press releases, draft pitches, follow up with journalists, and push to get even a small mention in a relevant publication. It is exhausting, repetitive, and often unrewarding work.
But here is the fundamental problem that most PR professionals either do not see or choose to ignore: the media does not care about the client's story. The media cares about the readers. Editors and journalists are not in the business of doing favours for companies. They are in the business of publishing content that their audience finds valuable, relevant, and engaging.
This disconnect between what PR teams are pushing and what the media actually wants creates a vicious loop. The PR team sends pitches about the client's latest product launch, office expansion, or leadership hire. The journalist ignores them because none of these developments matter to their readers. The PR team follows up again. The journalist remains unresponsive. The client grows frustrated with the lack of coverage. The PR team works harder, sending more pitches. And the cycle continues.
Breaking the Vicious Loop
The way to break this cycle is not to pitch harder or more frequently. It is to pitch differently. And that starts with ideation: the process of developing ideas that connect the client's business objectives to the needs of their target audience and, by extension, the media's readers.
Ideation in PR is about finding the intersection between what the client wants to communicate and what the world wants to hear. It requires a shift in perspective, from inside-out thinking (what does the client want to say?) to outside-in thinking (what does the audience want to know?).
The media does not care about your client's story. It cares about its readers. The moment you start thinking about the reader, your PR results will transform.
The Power of the Right Idea: Real Examples
Let us illustrate this with a concrete example. Consider a market research firm that specialises in industry analysis. This firm has two options for generating media interest.
Option A: The Technical Report
The firm publishes a detailed technical report on the air conditioning industry, covering manufacturing trends, component suppliers, and efficiency ratings. This report is valuable to a narrow set of readers: people within the AC industry itself. As a result, the media outlets likely to cover this story are limited to trade publications and niche industry journals. The reach is minimal, and the brand visibility generated is modest at best.
Option B: The Strategic Report
The same firm issues a report based on feedback gathered from companies across industries about the Union Budget. This report captures the business community's reaction to government policy, a topic that interests CEOs, investors, policy makers, and the general business-reading public. The potential audience is enormous, and Tier-I business media outlets are far more likely to pick it up because the story is relevant to their readers.
The difference between these two options is not the quality of research. It is the quality of the idea behind it. Option B is a better PR idea because it connects the firm's capabilities (market research) to a topic of wide public interest (the Union Budget). The firm still gets positioned as a credible research organisation, but the story reaches a vastly larger audience.
Feedback Consulting: A Case in Point
This is not a hypothetical scenario. Feedback Consulting, a market research firm, took precisely this approach. By issuing a report on corporate India's reaction to the Union Budget, they received four-column coverage in Business Standard, one of India's most respected business newspapers. That kind of coverage would have been impossible with a narrow, industry-specific technical report.
The coverage did not happen because of media relationships. It happened because the idea was right. The story was relevant to the newspaper's readers, which made it relevant to the newspaper.
Myforexeye: Turning Expertise into a Story
Consider another example. Myforexeye, a foreign exchange management platform, could have approached media outreach by pitching their platform features, their technology stack, or their funding milestones. Instead, they focused on a story that mattered to the media's audience: how they help MSMEs save money on foreign exchange transactions.
The result? The founders were interviewed by The Economic Times, one of India's largest financial dailies. The story was not about Myforexeye's product. It was about a problem that millions of small businesses face and a solution that was making a real difference. The idea, not the pitch, made the coverage possible.
Why Ideation Is the Most Valuable Skill in PR
These examples illustrate a truth that the PR industry often overlooks: ideation is not a nice-to-have skill. It is the single most valuable capability in public relations. A brilliant idea with mediocre execution will outperform a mediocre idea with brilliant execution every single time.
The best media relationships in the world will not save a story that is not newsworthy. The most polished press release will not generate coverage if the underlying idea does not resonate with readers. Ideation is the foundation upon which all successful PR is built.
So, Whose Job Is It?
This brings us to the central question: whose job is it to come up with these ideas?
In many PR engagements, the answer is unclear. The client expects the PR agency to generate ideas. The PR agency expects the client to provide information and stories worth pitching. The result is often a stalemate where nobody takes ownership of ideation, and the engagement drifts into a routine of uninspired press releases and ignored media pitches.
The Client's Responsibility
Clients have deep domain expertise. They understand their industry, their competitors, their customers, and their market dynamics. They have access to data, insights, and perspectives that no external agency can replicate. This makes them essential contributors to the ideation process.
However, most clients lack the media perspective. They know what is important in their industry but not necessarily what is interesting to a journalist's audience. They tend to think in terms of company milestones and product features rather than reader-relevant stories.
The PR Agency's Responsibility
PR agencies bring the media perspective. They understand what journalists are looking for, what stories are trending, what formats work, and what angles are likely to get picked up. They can take a client's raw information and shape it into a story that resonates with a broader audience.
But agencies often lack the deep domain knowledge to generate truly insightful ideas independently. They need the client's input to understand the nuances of the business and identify opportunities for thought leadership.
The Answer: Shared Ownership
The truth is that ideation must be a collaborative process. It is not exclusively the client's job, nor is it exclusively the agency's job. It is a shared responsibility that requires regular, structured interaction between both parties.
The most successful PR engagements are those where the client and the agency sit down together on a regular basis to brainstorm ideas. The client brings domain knowledge and business context. The agency brings media insight and storytelling expertise. Together, they generate ideas that are both substantive and newsworthy.
Building an Ideation Process
If your PR engagement does not have a structured ideation process, it is time to build one. Here are the key elements:
- Monthly brainstorming sessions between the client team and the PR team, dedicated exclusively to generating ideas
- A shared calendar of upcoming events, industry milestones, and news cycles that can be leveraged for timely stories
- Regular media monitoring to identify trending topics and opportunities for thought leadership
- A feedback loop where both parties review what worked, what did not, and why
- An idea bank where concepts are stored, refined, and prioritised for execution
Conclusion
Ideation is the engine that drives successful public relations. Without strong ideas, even the best media relationships and the most polished execution will fall flat. The responsibility for ideation does not rest with any single party. It is a collaborative endeavour that requires the client's domain expertise and the agency's media insight working in concert.
If you are a client wondering why your PR agency is not generating enough coverage, ask yourself: are you providing them with the raw material they need to create compelling stories? And if you are a PR professional frustrated by the lack of media pickups, ask yourself: are you investing enough time in ideation, or are you simply repackaging the same company-centric stories and hoping for different results?
The answer to better PR is better ideas. And better ideas come from better collaboration.