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Why the PR Proposal Needs an Overhaul
Pull out a PR proposal from five years ago and compare it with one being presented today. Chances are, a large part of it will look surprisingly familiar: media coverage, press releases, journalist interactions, interviews, story opportunities and monthly reports. Coverage. Coverage. Coverage. Then twelve months later, when the contract is up for renewal, everyone goes back to that same proposal. How many releases were promised? How many were delivered? How many journalist interactions happened? How much coverage came in? Which publications covered us? We spend the year managing communications and reputation, and then assess the relationship against a checklist of activities agreed twelve months earlier. PR has moved on.…
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Salman Khan Said “PR” Like a Cuss Word; and He Wasn’t Entirely Wrong.
Salman Khan opened the final season of Koffee with Karan, and the internet clipped everything: marriage, kids, Karisma. I was stuck on one sentence. “Since PR has come in, some people pay the PR for their sighting or whatever it is called.” He was talking about the paparazzi: actresses photographed from angles they never agreed to, and the difference between stars who invite cameras and those who don’t. On the facts, he wasn’t wrong. The airport look exists. The tipped-off photographers exist. So does the “candid” gym exit that took three calls to arrange. What stayed with me was the word doing the work in that sentence. ‘PR’, said the…
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I Traded a Corner Office for a Blank Page. Two Decades Later, Here’s the Project Report.
They say the seven-year itch in a partnership is what makes people do some crazy things. Nobody warns you it also applies to careers. Mine hit somewhere around year seven of corporate life … a quiet, persistent restlessness that had nothing to do with the job being bad and everything to do with the job being finite. Someone else’s ceiling, someone else’s calendar, someone else’s definition of what “senior” meant for me. Almost two decades ago, I scratched that itch by starting a PR boutique instead of waiting for a corner office. I did not, at the time, understand I was signing up for a different life entirely …one…
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Bridging Worlds: Lessons from Two Decades across Corporate Boardrooms, Agency Halls and the Entrepreneurial Fire.
Joining a PR agency, straight after the masters degree was an eye opener – pardon my language – a hell of an eye opener! There is no excuse for hardwork (lets keep smart work for later), constantly learning & relearning your basics and never forgetting that your boss puts her neck on the line for you (everytime). Apart from this the agency gifted me with the best lifelong friends and mentors as a blessing. In the high-stakes arena of public relations and communications, I’ve spent more than two decades navigating the delicate dance between perception and reality. My journey? An interesting path from the polished corridors of corporate to the raw thrill of bootstrapping…
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Your SEO Budget Got a Promotion. It’s Now Called “PR.”
There’s a particular headline that’s making PR people sit up a little straighter in their chairs: Gartner Says PR Budgets Will Double by 2027. So pop the champagne! Share the LinkedIn posts. Let’s add a fresh slide titled “The Vindication Slide” in new-business decks! The reason? According to the Gartner-backed prediction covered by Inc., earned media budgets are set to double by 2027, on the theory that AI is replacing traditional search as the primary way people discover brands and that AI leans heavily on earned media rather than paid media. The logic, on paper, is elegant: Google traffic is declining while ChatGPT traffic more than doubled year-over-year in 2024, with weekly active…
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PR Budgets Are Rising. The Question Is: So What?
Here’s a question I’ve asked myself for three decades. If you have a throbbing frontal headache, do you reach for antibiotics? No, you reach for a Saridon. No dose of even the most powerful antibiotic will fix that headache, because you’re treating the wrong problem. Yet in corporate communications, we keep having the wrong conversation. We talk about budgets rising and budgets being cut as if a bigger number is always the answer. It’s not. A company facing a governance crisis needs a different intervention than one launching a new product. A brand struggling with consumer trust needs something entirely different from one battling regulatory scrutiny. The treatment must match…
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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…
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June & Jeopardy: The Peculiar Madness of Corp Comm at the Half-Year Mark
Every December, PR teams across the country sit down for the same ritual – the Annual Plan. The vision is always beautiful – neat content calendars, proactive media pitches, a CEO who reads his briefing notes, campaigns that sail through Legal in the first round. And then June happens. So let’s talk about the half-year reckoning nobody talks about. Ask any corp comm professional what mid-year feels like and you’ll get one of two responses: a shrieky laugh, or a very detailed account of the crisis that landed right in the middle of earnings call prep. The half-year mark isn’t a milestone. It’s a mirror held up to that beautiful,…
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Welcome to the industry. Now the real work begins.
Placements are the gateway, not the destination. The next twenty-four months will decide whether this becomes a career or just a job you held for a while. What follows is not theoretical. It is what twenty years across agency and in-house work has taught me – and what I tell every young member who joins my team. 1. Begin your career in an agency. An agency will teach you what no classroom and no corporate induction ever will. You will handle five sectors in three years. You will pitch, write, present, recover from a missed deadline, and do it all again before the week ends. You will learn how to…
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The Agency Doesn’t Need Another Rockstar. It Needs Someone Reliable.
Class of 2026: Congratulations. Placements Are Over. The Actual Job Begins Now. To the fresh graduates entering the workforce this month, armed with degrees, internship certificates, LinkedIn announcements saying “Excited to begin my professional journey…”, and enough optimism to survive agency life — welcome. You’ve made it through assignments, attendance shortages, group projects where one person worked and four got equal marks, presentations made overnight, and internships where your biggest takeaway was “Please coordinate.” Now comes the real world. And if your first stop is an agency across PR, advertising, digital, branding, communications or marketing, here’s a perspective from someone who has spent years watching fresher’s walk in enthusiastic, overwhelmed,…
