PR is no longer optional!

- Strategic necessity for business and political leaders -

Trust is a currency in today’s corporate and political worlds. Perception shapes reality along with reputations more than ever before. Truth Telling is perceived as subjective, belonging to the beholder’s interpretation rather than a universally accepted standard.

While personal interpretations of these may be growing in prominence, broader societal factors still play a significant role in shaping and influencing what is accepted as reality.

These are just some of the key reasons why Edelman's Trust Barometer and those of other global business and research organisations continue to show a decline in reputation and business and leadership trust.

The decline highlights the misconception of public relations' (PR) value in boardrooms and undermines its true potential: to serve as a critical driver of reputation management, internal alignment and long-term business success.

Every leading trust and reputation research shows that today's business environment is defined by constant scrutiny, real-time media cycles, and a workforce that expects transparency, especially in communication and leadership.

In this landscape, PR has a critical role in strategic planning. It is the only one at 'the table' capable of mitigating risk, enhancing brand reputation, influencing stakeholders, and enabling cultural alignment within an organisation. 

These are critical reasons why Senior business leaders need to reassess the PR function and reframe it as a ‘trusted advisor’. It should not be siloed as a separate entity and as a ‘doer’ – an implementor. 

PR should be positioned as a leadership function, not an afterthought. When integrated properly, PR offers measurable value in several areas:

• Reputation Management: A brand’s reputation is one of its most valuable assets. According to Deloitte, 87% of executives rate reputation risk as more important than other strategic risks. PR plays a central role in shaping perception and managing crises before they escalate.
• Stakeholder Engagement: From investors and regulators to employees and customers, effective PR ensures consistent, credible messaging across audiences. This alignment is critical for achieving business objectives and maintaining trust.
• Crisis Communication: In a volatile business climate, crisis management isn’t a possibility—it’s a necessity. PR must be embedded within leadership teams can for reputational risks (if not anticipate it in the implementation of operational response strategies), prepare response protocols, and act swiftly when the need arises in ensuring accountability, perception management and public trust.
• Cultural and Internal Communication Alignment: Internal culture drives performance. PR ensures that internal narratives match external messaging, enabling employees to become brand ambassadors rather than disengaged bystanders.

These four areas alone highlight the need to redress the current PR Business Model in business structures because senior business management is not only ‘outdated’ in their thinking, but also short-changing themselves in strategic planning. They fall short by thinking that:

• PR is a Tactical Executor: Many businesses use the outdate practice of solely seeing PR for media releases, event management, or social content—tasks that, while necessary, do not represent the full spectrum of PR’s capabilities. This “doer” mentality positions PR far from the strategic table.
• PR KPIs are vanity metrics: Measuring PR in “vanity” metrics is a waste of business time and money—media coverage, impressions, or sentiment. It is old school thinking. Leaders should be looking to assess how PR influences strategic goals, such as stakeholder perceptions, reputation status, brand equity, stakeholder trust, regulatory compliance, and employee engagement.
• PR is not strategic: When PR is siloed from the leadership team, it becomes reactive rather than proactive. This is cutting short the importance of the acceptance of stakeholder framing in policy development and implementation. Reacting to issues, instead of forecasting them and planning mitigation processes as part of any overall strategic implementation plan undermines the plan from the start. Strategic PR is tactics and implementation stages; it is a visionary function to protect and enhance the reputation of an organisation.

In a world where corporate reputation can rise or gall overnight, public relations must be treated as a boardroom-level function. It capacity to influence reputation, guide internal communication and support strategic planning makes it indispensable in today’s complex business environment.

PR practitioners themselves must also be cognisant of their Business model so that their counsel, strategic communication and engagement thinking is vital to, and valued by the executive leadership. Their counsel must be as such that it is rightly heard and considered alongside that of legal, financial, and operational counsel. This is because they are the ‘keepers’ of reputation and trust for the organisation.

To explore how strategic communication can transform your business reputation and leadership alignment, connect with Robert Masters & Associates. There are 30 plus years of strategic communication planning and stakeholder engagement experience at all levels of politics, government, industry, associations and international organisations and think-tanks.