PR and social media executive, Ella Adams, tries to explain (once again) what PR is to people who still think it’s ‘just marketing’.
It’s been over six months since I left student life (where going to the pub on a Monday night until the early hours was deemed socially acceptable or writing a 3000-word essay in two days was the norm), and stepped foot into the world of PR and communications.
After some reflection, I came to the realisation that during these six months I had been asked a handful of times the same question and realised that each time I had completely struggled to give a coherent answer.
“So…what actually is PR?”
*Queue a long pause – do I tell them the short answer or the long answer?
“It’s…erm…well it’s PR.”
Shocking, minimal and uninformative – I know. But here is the thing, PR is oddly hard to explain. It is dynamic, versatile, fast-paced, and exciting. Which is exactly why we are here today to talk about what it is.
Let’s start with addressing the rumours – what people think PR is. If you work in the industry, I can guarantee that you’ve had the following questions asked during work-related conversations:
Whilst none of these are totally off the mark, they’re incomplete. It sparks the question as to why people may have these assumptions. And to answer that, I would say that people don’t misunderstand PR because they’re clueless, no, they misunderstand it because they only ever see the visible parts.
Headlines, scandals, celebrity crises. From the outside, PR looks like promotion, spin or last-minute damage control, with pop culture putting PR into a stereotype that just isn’t that factual (does Emily in Paris ring a bell?). But when PR is working properly, nothing dramatic happens at all, which is…not very helpful when you’re trying to explain it over dinner.
Now let’s get into the good stuff, explaining the man, the myth, the legend…PR.
At its core, PR is about reputation and trust, and these work together to help people understand who you are, what you stand for, and why they should believe you. It’s storytelling and brand building. It doesn’t matter whether you are a customer, journalist, employee, or just the general public – PR is what people think and say about you when you’re not in the room.
For example, PR is helping a business explain why they exist, not just what they do. It’s about ensuring credibility and turns complex information into a story that people can actually understand. Think timing and judgement.
To expand, PR is not just reacting when something happens, it is about preparing for it. This could mean advising a team on what to or what not to announce, quietly shaping how a business talks about their growth or change, building trust with journalists over long periods of time, and positioning leaders as credible experts, not salespeople. I could go on and on.
In a nutshell, when PR is done well, it doesn’t look like “PR” at all. It looks like a business who knows who they are and communicates it clearly. It is strategic, judgement-based, and it’s rarely flashy.
So why can PR be hard to explain? As I said, PR is not just one thing, and when it is executed correctly, very little happens.
What I’m trying to say is, there is no obvious before and after, no instant spike and no single moment you can point to and say, that is PR working. Alternatively, it grows over time. In B2B especially, PR works in the background, supporting longer term campaigns, complex decisions and building a business’ reputation. So, it is there but not always noticed. In a way this makes it useful, but also awkward when having to explain it at family drinks. If everything feels calm, then PR is probably doing its job.
The truth is, you’ll most likely be explaining PR again, whether that’s to your family, to a client, or to someone who thinks it’s ‘basically marketing’. And that is fine.
Because PR doesn’t fit neatly into a one-line job description, instead it sits somewhere between strategy, communication, judgement and risk management. It’s about helping businesses sound credible, maintain consistency and earn trust over time.
So next time someone asks you what you do, you can keep it simple. We help people build trust before they need it, guiding them to say the right things, at the right time, or nothing at all.
Ella Adams- PR and Social Media Executive
Ella is the newest edition to the Source team. As a PR and Social Media Executive, she works with clients on press releases and social media campaigns and strategy. Drawn to the creative and dynamic nature of PR, her days involve working closely with clients, building relationships and helping them get their campaigns out there. When she is not at her desk, she is most likely chasing miles on a long run, head in a book, or plotting her next shopping trip. Don’t be fooled, she is extremely partial to a sweet treat and if anyone mentions a movie night in to watch Pride and Prejudice for the one hundredth time, she will be there.
