Public Relations Has a New Definition. And It's Beautiful
The Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) decided to reconsider the definition of the term PR (Public Relations)
The Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) decided to reconsider the definition of the term PR (Public Relations). The association’s members launched an internal discussion about what PR actually is and what it does in practice today. The old definition no longer reflects the current reality. Spoiler alert: the new version turned out to be more than adequate. But let’s take it step by step.
What was previously understood by PR?
For many years, the business understanding of PR has been reduced exclusively to media placements (media relations). This single tool has substituted the entirety of PR. Not long ago, I spoke with the founder of a performance-first advertising agency that wanted to introduce outsourced PR as a service for its clients. I tried in roundabout ways to find out what exactly he meant by PR, but every time we still ended up at media relations. And this is symptomatic.
In slightly more complex and slightly more advanced cases, the conversation turns to publicity in general, but almost always these activities are expected to deliver performance outcomes: KPIs in the form of the number of publications or mentions (debatable metrics, but that’s not what we’re discussing today).
If we generalize, for business, PR is about the ability to broadcast one-sidedly to an audience and create noise. PR typically doesn’t appear in business strategies.
Why was it necessary to update the definition of PR?
This decision was long overdue. Times have changed, the ways and tools of communication have changed, the audience has changed. The old formulations stopped reflecting reality.
PRCA cites the following reasons:
Their inconsistency with modern realities. As I mentioned above, PR was viewed primarily through the outdated lens of media work, as a tool for one-way broadcasting and manipulation. The pursuit of publicity at any cost, of course. All of this is a very narrow understanding that doesn’t reflect the breadth and depth of modern practice.
Recognition of the strategic role. PR professionals are no longer just executors. They act as strategic advisors who help leaders navigate complex situations (crises, criticism), manage risks, and build relationships with stakeholders. There arose a need to establish PR’s status as a management discipline at the board level, and not just “give me 10 laudatory publications.”
The environment has changed. The world has become more volatile and complex due to geopolitical uncertainty, political polarization (look at how fragmented and divided we are), technological disruptions, and disinformation. The new definition should reflect PR’s ability to help organizations survive in such conditions.
A paradigm shift from attention to trust: attention can be bought, but trust cannot. And PR is the primary tool for building that trust. Old approaches focused on “creating noise” and flooding the internet with content have been recognized as ineffective compared to the long-term accumulation of reputational capital. And this trend will only deepen. Judge for yourself: the world currently has an excess of literally everything. Recently, I tried to find a platform for brand management and was completely stumped: Google returned a dozen and a half solutions. What to choose? I have no idea. I closed it and decided to vibe-code my own :).
The shift to two-way dialogue. The old understanding of PR as “one-way broadcasting” to a passive audience is outdated. Now the emphasis has shifted to mutual collaboration, listening, and engaging the audience as an active participant in the process.
How is PR defined now?
The updated definition finally shifts the emphasis from “public” to “relations.” It looks like this:
PR is a strategic management discipline that builds trust, strengthens reputation, and helps leaders better cope with crises and situations of uncertainty. It delivers measurable results such as stakeholder confidence, long-term value creation, and commercial growth. What is proposed to be measured is not reach, mentions, ER, and other performance metrics, but the quality and depth of relationships: sentiment, reputation, the quality of relationships between all parties and their development (at this point, adherents of performance-first logic should leave this post).
In the new expanded version, PR:
Increases brand value and shapes corporate culture that helps gain and maintain recognition in the eyes of society. What does this mean? Essentially, through PR activities, a business (or a person) proves to people that it has the right to operate and develop because its actions bring value and meet the expectations of society.
Becomes ethical. The foundation is built on ethical approaches and tools in order to build trusting relationships on which all metrics depend, as well as lifetime value for clients and shareholders. It would be strange to build relationships and trust on lies, wouldn’t it?
Acts as a strategic advisor, helping leadership reduce uncertainty and manage risks through working with data, forecasting, and crisis management.
Ensures two-way interaction that shapes perception, informs the decision-making process, and contributes to changes in behavior of both the company and the audience.
At its core, PR works to create strong and healthy relationships with people and groups (including within the company) on which the organization’s ability to function, grow, and succeed depends.
What does all of this mean for business in practice?
This paradigm shift has been brewing for a long time. Seasoned brand strategists have been talking for about four years now about the changing audience and its behavior. First, it has become very, very fragmented, living in its own echo chambers with its own heroes and villains, news and narratives. The algorithmic nature of platforms has led to the fact that even while being on the same platform, different groups of users may never cross paths. Making noise and becoming visible, as people used to love doing, is already harder, and often impossible. Second, no matter how much noise you generate, it’s unlikely to captivate anyone for more than an hour. Especially if the news hook is not interesting or important to anyone but yourselves (99% of corporate PR cases). What difference does it make how many publications and mentions you have if you’ll be forgotten in 15 minutes? Third, products or services are easy and inexpensive to replicate. Betting on a unique product in the era of Lovable and Claude Code is naive (even I, a person who got a D in math, not being a programmer, vibe-coded myself a handy tool for working with photos on macOS). Engineers and technologies (unless they are revolutionary) are no longer an advantage: there is no longer a need to translate from the language of engineers into plain human language. So what is the advantage then?
That very trust. When you have an unlimited choice of everything that is more or less the same, you will most likely choose not even from those you know, but from those you trust.
Where to start with PR?
A veeeery obvious answer: with yourself. It would be worth starting by establishing connections within the company, increasing transparency, and explaining to employees what exactly they have gathered here for. Management paranoidly tries to hide everything (both the good and the bad), which in times of crisis only destabilizes the situation within the company, raising the level of anxiety (I’ll write a post later about how distrust leads to employee attrition, a decline in their productivity (I’m sick of this word) and engagement, this has already been calculated).
Only after establishing contact internally can you move forward to building relationships externally.