Management Loves to Hate PR
There is a peculiar dynamic that exists in organisations of all sizes and across all industries. The management team, from the CEO to the board of directors, loves to hate public relations. PR is simultaneously considered essential and expendable. It is the first function to be scrutinised when budgets tighten and the last to be credited when things go well. This tension is not accidental. It is rooted in a set of structural challenges that make PR one of the most misunderstood functions in business.
Understanding what is wrong with PR requires examining why this love-hate relationship exists. The issues are not primarily about PR professionals or PR agencies. They are about how organisations perceive, structure, and support their PR efforts.
Why Management Struggles with PR
The Absence of a Direct Revenue Stream
The most fundamental challenge PR faces within organisations is the absence of a direct revenue stream. Sales generates revenue. Marketing generates leads. Product development creates the offerings that customers buy. PR, in contrast, generates something far more intangible: visibility, credibility, and reputation.
These are enormously valuable assets, but they are difficult to quantify in a spreadsheet. When a CEO asks for the ROI of PR, the honest answer is complicated. PR creates organic visibility that triggers curiosity among potential customers, partners, and investors. That curiosity leads to website visits, inquiries, and conversations. Those conversations, nurtured by the sales team, eventually convert to revenue.
But the chain of causation is long, indirect, and influenced by many other factors along the way. This makes it nearly impossible to attribute a specific rupee amount to a specific PR activity. And in a business culture that demands measurable returns, this ambiguity is PR's greatest institutional vulnerability.
The Thin Line Between PR and Lead Generation
Closely related to the revenue question is the confusion about PR's role in lead generation. Many management teams expect PR to generate leads directly. When a story appears in a major publication, they expect the phone to start ringing. When it does not, they question the value of the coverage.
The reality is more nuanced. PR assists marketing in lead generation, but it does so indirectly. A well-placed story builds the brand credibility that makes marketing campaigns more effective. A thought leadership article positions the company as an authority, which makes prospects more receptive to sales outreach. A positive media mention provides third-party validation that strengthens every other touchpoint in the customer journey.
PR does not replace lead generation. It amplifies it. But this supporting role is often undervalued because the contribution is difficult to isolate and measure.
The Hunger for Tier-I Media Stories
Almost every organisation wants to be featured in the most prestigious publications in their market. For Indian companies, this means The Economic Times, Business Standard, Mint, or similar Tier-I outlets. There is nothing wrong with this aspiration. Tier-I coverage carries significant weight and credibility.
The problem arises when this hunger becomes the sole metric by which PR is judged. Tier-I publications have limited space and high editorial standards. They cover stories that are relevant to their large, diverse readership. A niche B2B company with a specialised product may never be the subject of a front-page feature in a national daily, no matter how brilliant its PR strategy is.
When management equates PR success exclusively with Tier-I coverage, they set up the PR function for perceived failure. They overlook the value of trade media coverage, digital media visibility, thought leadership platforms, and other channels that may reach the company's actual target audience far more effectively than a national newspaper.
Competition Between Marketing and Sales Teams
In many organisations, PR sits within or adjacent to the marketing function. This proximity creates competition for budget, credit, and management attention. When a deal closes, the sales team claims credit. When a marketing campaign performs well, the marketing team claims credit. PR's contribution, which often operates in the background shaping perceptions and building credibility, is rarely acknowledged.
This internal competition creates a dynamic where PR is constantly justifying its existence rather than focusing on delivering its best work. PR professionals spend as much time defending their function within the organisation as they do executing their external communication strategy.
PR helps those who help themselves. The organisations that get the most out of PR are the ones that invest in it as a strategic function, not just a tactical one.
The Reality of How PR Works
To fix what is wrong with PR, organisations need to understand how PR actually works. The process is neither mysterious nor magical. It follows a logical sequence, but that sequence requires cooperation from across the organisation.
PR Creates Organic Visibility
At its core, PR creates organic visibility for the organisation. Unlike paid advertising, which places a message in front of an audience through purchased media space, PR earns visibility through stories that media outlets choose to publish because they are relevant and interesting to their readers.
This organic visibility carries a credibility premium that paid media cannot match. When a respected journalist writes about your company, the implied endorsement is worth far more than a display advertisement in the same publication. Readers trust editorial content more than advertising, and that trust translates into stronger brand perception.
Visibility Triggers Curiosity
When a potential customer, investor, or partner sees your company mentioned in a credible media outlet, it triggers curiosity. They may visit your website, look up your leadership team on LinkedIn, or mention your name in a conversation with colleagues. This curiosity is the first step in a journey that, if nurtured properly, leads to a business relationship.
Curiosity Leads to Queries and Revenue
Curiosity, once triggered, needs to be captured and nurtured. This is where PR hands off to marketing and sales. A well-designed website converts curious visitors into leads. A responsive sales team converts leads into customers. PR starts the chain, but it cannot complete it alone.
This is perhaps the most important insight about PR: it is a team sport. PR can generate the visibility and credibility that start the business development process, but other departments, including the CEO, marketing, sales, and product teams, must cooperate to turn that visibility into revenue.
PR Starts with a Realisation
Effective PR starts with the realisation that the PR team, whether internal or external, can only provide guidance. They can identify opportunities, craft messages, build media relationships, and execute campaigns. But they cannot do it alone. Other departments, including and especially the CEO, have to cooperate.
The CEO needs to be available for interviews and thought leadership pieces. The product team needs to share developments that can be turned into stories. The sales team needs to provide customer success stories that can be used as case studies. The marketing team needs to align their campaigns with the PR narrative.
When this cooperation exists, PR produces remarkable results. When it does not, even the most talented PR professionals will struggle to generate meaningful outcomes.
What You Need for PR to Work
If you are an organisation wondering why your PR is not delivering the results you expected, here is a checklist of what you need to have in place:
1. Useful Content
Content is everything in PR. Not media relations. Not events. Not press releases. Content. Do you have insights, data, perspectives, and stories that are genuinely useful to your target audience? If you do, PR can amplify them. If you do not, no amount of media relationships will compensate for the absence of substance.
2. Time
PR is not an overnight solution. Building media relationships, establishing thought leadership, and earning editorial trust takes time. Organisations that expect results within the first month are setting themselves up for disappointment. A realistic timeline for seeing meaningful PR results is three to six months of consistent, strategic effort.
3. Clarity About Your Target Audience
Who are you trying to reach? If the answer is "everyone," you have a problem. Effective PR requires precision about the audience: their demographics, their media consumption habits, their information needs, and their decision-making criteria. Without this clarity, PR efforts become scattered and ineffective.
4. Appetite to Try New Formats
The media landscape is evolving rapidly. Press releases and press conferences are no longer the only tools in the PR toolkit. Podcasts, webinars, social media thought leadership, video content, newsletters, and interactive digital experiences are all legitimate PR formats. Organisations that limit themselves to traditional formats miss opportunities to reach their audience through the channels that matter most.
5. Willingness to Listen to Your PR Advisor
Perhaps the most critical requirement is a genuine willingness to listen to your PR advisor. This means accepting feedback that may be uncomfortable. Your press release may not be newsworthy. Your product launch may not warrant media coverage. Your CEO's speech may need significant reworking to be suitable for an opinion editorial.
PR professionals who tell clients only what they want to hear are not doing their job. The ones who push back, challenge assumptions, and offer honest counsel are the ones who deliver the best results. But they can only do this if the client is willing to listen.
The Path Forward
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with PR as a discipline. What is wrong is how organisations perceive it, structure it, and support it. PR is a powerful strategic function when it is given the resources, cooperation, and time it needs to succeed.
The organisations that get the most out of PR are the ones that treat it as a strategic investment rather than a tactical expense. They define clear objectives. They provide useful content. They cooperate across departments. They measure success in terms of reputation and business impact, not just media clippings. And they give their PR partners the trust and freedom to do their best work.
Conclusion
If management loves to hate PR, it is often because they expect PR to operate like sales or marketing, with direct, measurable, and immediate returns. PR does not work that way. It works through influence, credibility, and sustained visibility that compounds over time. Understanding this fundamental nature of PR, and building organisational support around it, is the first step toward transforming PR from a source of frustration into a genuine competitive advantage.
PR helps those who help themselves. Make sure you have the content, the time, the clarity, the appetite for innovation, and the willingness to listen. Then let PR do what it does best: build a reputation that makes everything else in your business easier.