We’ve Been in the Communications Business for Decades. So Why Are We Still Getting the Basics Wrong?

Let me say something that nobody in a client meeting will say out loud.

The agency model — across PR, content, creator partnerships, digital, is broken. Not cracked. Not going through a transition. Broken.

And the frustrating part? Everyone can see it. Agency heads see it. Brand teams see it. The talent certainly sees it. But we keep showing up to the same meetings, presenting the same decks, renewing the same retainers, and pretending the foundation isn’t shifting under our feet.

I’ve been in this business for sixteen-plus years. I run a boutique firm. I pitch, I deliver, I lose sleep over client mandates the way only founders do. So this isn’t coming from a corner office with no skin in the game. This is coming from the middle of it.

And before anyone reaches for the AI disruption argument — STOP.

What I’m about to talk about has nothing to do with technology. These are fundamental failures. The kind that were being discussed in agency corridors twenty-five years ago. The world has changed, the tools have changed, the pace has changed. But the fundamentals? Same. And we’re still getting them wrong.

Also, this is not a brand versus agency piece. I’m not here to pick a side. I think the function of communication itself is broken. We are all responsible for it. And we need to fix it. Hiring an agency is not buying a ready-made answer.

Nobody knows how to write a brief. Or take one.

A brief is not a formality. It’s not a document you fill out so the agency can say they received instructions. A brief is the foundation of everything – the shared understanding of what we’re trying to achieve, for whom, by when, and what success actually looks like. Without it, you’re not briefing an agency. You’re starting a very expensive game of broken telephone.

Here’s what actually happens. Someone comes to an agency with a feeling. We need more visibility. We want to be seen as thought leaders. Our competitor is getting more coverage. These are feelings, not briefs. And agencies – eager to win the business, nod along and start working. Three months in, everyone is frustrated. The brand feels misunderstood. The agency feels like goalposts are moving. Both are right. Because nobody stopped at the beginning to ask: what are we actually aligned on?

I remember working with one of the top VC firms in the world. Their brief was remarkably clear, and that clarity is what made everything possible. They said: we’ve become so big that early-stage entrepreneurs are now intimidated by us. They assume we won’t fund them. But we’ve backed some of the country’s biggest companies when they were nobodies and we need that community to know we’re still accessible. Make us, and our team, relevant to that founder.

That was it. No demand for a specific number of media stories. No channel prescription. Just a clear problem, a clear audience, and a clear goal. It gave us room to explore possibilities across opportunities and media outreach became one part of a larger effort, not the whole mandate. And what we tracked wasn’t clips. It was applications to their early-stage accelerator program from across India. The volumes kept growing. That was the proof. That is what a good brief unlocks.

Most briefs don’t look like that. Most briefs are vague because the thinking hasn’t been done yet, on either side. And agencies who accept vague briefs without pushing back are as responsible for what follows as the client who gave one.

Experience isn’t a designation. It’s having dealt with situations.

When I say that people on both sides often lack experience, I want to be precise. I don’t mean junior or senior. Those are titles. Experience is something else entirely.

Experience is having been in the room when a crisis broke at 11pm. It’s knowing that a journalist’s maybe almost always means no. It’s having made the wrong call and knowing how to course-correct before it unravels. You can have two years and be deeply experienced. You can have fifteen and still be operating on muscle memory without judgment.

So here’s what I think we need to start asking when we bring teams together — on either side of the table. What crisis situations have you dealt with? Where has your work produced measurable movement? Can I speak to the people you’ve worked with and not just read their logos on a case study, and understand what they actually got from working with you?

We don’t ask these questions. We sit across beautifully designed PPT decks with case studies that, honestly, may have been delivered five years ago by a team that no longer exists. We nod. We look impressed. We sign.

What I want to know is simpler and harder: has the person in front of me been tested? Because they will make mistakes — everyone does. What matters is whether they know how to fix them. That instinct, that recovery reflex, is what experience actually looks like. And you cannot see it in a case study.

Hiring an agency is not buying a ready-made answer.

There’s a version of agency onboarding that goes like this: brand signs contract, shares a deck, does one introductory call, and then waits for results. As if the agency arrived pre-loaded with your brand’s context, your internal dynamics, your founder’s communication style, your category’s nuances, your past missteps, and your actual business goals.

It doesn’t work that way. It has never worked that way.

An agency is not a vending machine. You don’t insert a retainer and get strategy out. Good work is built together. It requires the brand to show up, to share context generously, give honest feedback early, and treat the agency as a thinking partner rather than an execution vendor. The agencies doing the best work are almost always the ones with clients who invest in the relationship. That is not a coincidence. That is the model.

We’re measuring the wrong things. And losing the point entirely.

This is the one that stays with me.

Somewhere along the way, communications measurement became about volume. Clips. Impressions. Stories this month versus last month. Brands started holding agencies accountable to these numbers. Agencies started optimising for them. And now we have an entire industry producing output that looks impressive in a report and moves nothing in the real world.

I worked with a fintech – a genuinely interesting business operating in a complex, underreported space. Early in the mandate, there was pressure to show coverage numbers. To be everywhere. But the editorial reality was different. The real opportunity was one well-crafted, well-placed story in the right publication — something that could anchor their thought leadership for months, that journalists and investors could reference, that would actually build the narrative they needed. Getting there required resisting the instinct to flood the zone. It required surgical decisions about what to say, where, and through whom. When that story landed, it did more than a dozen scattered mentions would have.

That’s not a method. That’s a mindset. And it’s one we’ve largely lost in the chase for volume.

The question that should be asked at every review and almost never is, is simple: what did this achieve? Can we use it? Does it ladder up to where we’re trying to go?

A podcast feature means nothing if your audience isn’t listening. Fifty clips mean nothing if none of them shifted perception, opened a door, or built the story you needed told.

We are so busy counting that we’ve stopped asking what we’re counting for.

The fix isn’t complicated. But it is hard.

• Write the brief properly. Read it even more carefully. Ask real questions about experience — not years, not logos, but situations survived. Show up for your agency the way you expect them to show up for you. And stop measuring volume when what you actually need is impact.
• These aren’t new ideas. They’re the oldest ideas in the room. We’ve just gotten very good at ignoring them while blaming everything else.
• The function of communication is broken. Agencies know it. Brands know it. And until both sides decide to fix it together, we’ll keep having the same frustrated conversations — just with shinier decks. 

– Chaitalli Roy,

Founder, CPR Global