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Public Relations

The companies that define the public relations industry, each read on the same nine-check website rubric — a 0–100 score with the exact fixes — alongside the concepts, the developments and the questions that shape the field.

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The companies

20 companies in the public relations industry, each graded on the nine things that decide whether a buyer or an AI assistant can find and trust them online. Open any name for the full write-up and the specific fixes.

70+ solid   45–69 gaps   under 45 costing customers

Sites we couldn’t reach

12 businesses whose website blocked our scanner — common when a site filters datacenter traffic, and not a sign the site is broken. A blocked site is never scored zero.

Who defines the public relations market

The firms, funds and institutions that set the terms in public relations — context, not local listings; never scored.

Public Relations guides

Concepts

PRSA Code of Ethics

The profession's core ethical framework in the US, built on six values (advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty, fairness) and provisions covering free flow of information, competition, disclosure of information, safeguarding confidences, conflicts of interest and enhancing the profession. It is enforced by expulsion from membership rather than by law, so it functions as a professional standard, not a regulation.

Disclosure of client relationships

The obligation to reveal who is paying for a communication — to journalists, to audiences and in third-party placements. Undisclosed sponsorship is the single most common way PR work becomes an ethics story about the firm rather than a coverage story about the client.

FTC endorsement guides

The Federal Trade Commission's guidance on endorsements and testimonials, revised in 2023, requiring that any material connection between an endorser and a brand be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. It reaches influencers, employees, incentivized reviewers and the brands and agencies that hire them.

Material connection

Any relationship between an endorser and a brand that a reasonable audience would not expect and that could affect the weight given to the endorsement — payment, free product, employment, family ties, contest entry. Its existence, not its size, triggers the disclosure duty.

Pay-for-play and sponsored-content labelling

Paying an outlet or contributor for placement or favourable treatment. It is not illegal when disclosed and labelled as sponsored or paid content, and it is deceptive when it is presented as independent editorial. The label has to be visible before the audience engages, not buried at the end.

Native advertising disclosure

Paid content designed to match the form and function of the surrounding editorial. The FTC's guidance turns on the net impression: if a reasonable consumer would think it was independent journalism, the disclosure is inadequate no matter what the fine print says.

Regulation FD

The SEC rule requiring that when a public company discloses material non-public information to analysts or selected investors, it must disclose it broadly and simultaneously (or promptly, if unintentional). It is why embargoed briefings, selective press exclusives and off-hand executive remarks are a legal exposure for a listed company, not just a comms decision.

Embargo and exclusive

An embargo gives multiple journalists information early on the agreement that nothing publishes before a set time; an exclusive gives one outlet the story alone in exchange for depth and prominence. Breaking an embargo — or quietly giving a nominal exclusive to two outlets — costs the relationship, and journalists share the fact widely.

On the record, background, deep background, off the record

The four attribution levels. On the record: everything is quotable and attributable by name. On background: usable but attributed to a described source ('a company spokesperson'). Deep background: usable as the reporter's own framing with no source reference. Off the record: not usable at all. The terms must be agreed before the information is given, never after, and definitions vary enough between outlets that they should be stated explicitly.

Source verification

Confirming that a claim, statistic, credential or quote is real and correctly attributed before it goes into a pitch or release. A single fabricated or misattributed figure retires a spokesperson's credibility with a beat reporter permanently.

AI-generated pitches and quotes

Outreach or executive quotes drafted by a language model. The practical risk is detection and discard — journalists report recognising generic AI-written pitches and deprioritising the sender. The ethical risk is a quote attributed to a human who never said it and a statistic the model invented.

Media list

The working list of journalists, editors, producers and independent writers who genuinely cover a topic, with beat, outlet, contact preference and recent coverage. A researched list of forty is worth more than a purchased list of four thousand, which is how most pitches end up in spam.

Pitch

The short, personalised message proposing a story to a specific journalist. It has to answer why this, why now, why you and why this reporter, in the length of a phone screen.

Hook

The angle that makes a story interesting to that outlet's audience rather than to the client. Most rejected pitches describe a company; accepted pitches describe a change, a conflict, a number or a person.

News peg

The current event, data release, regulatory change or anniversary that makes a story timely today. Without a peg, an editor's answer is almost always 'not now' rather than 'no'.

Newsjacking

Inserting a client's expert perspective into a breaking story while it is still developing. It rewards speed and genuine expertise and punishes obvious opportunism, especially around tragedy.

Press release vs media alert vs backgrounder

A press release is the formal announcement written for quotation and distribution; a media alert is the who/what/when/where logistics note inviting coverage of an event; a backgrounder is the deeper non-promotional reference document supplying context, history and technical detail a reporter needs to write accurately.

Boilerplate

The standing 'About [company]' paragraph at the foot of a release. It is the description that gets copied verbatim into coverage and increasingly into AI-generated summaries, which makes it worth far more attention than it usually gets.

Media kit

The assembled press resources — fact sheet, boilerplate, executive bios and headshots, logos, product images, B-roll, past coverage — kept current and downloadable so a journalist on deadline never has to ask.

Byline / contributed article

An article written under a client executive's name and published by an outlet as editorial contribution rather than paid placement. Trade publications run them widely; most require exclusivity and prohibit promotional language about the author's own product.

Op-ed

An opinion piece submitted to a news outlet arguing a position. It requires an actual argument, standing to make it and a timely peg, and major outlets accept a very small fraction of submissions — regional and trade placement is usually the realistic target.

Source request (HARO-style)

Marketplaces where journalists post what expertise they need and sources respond — the model popularised by Help a Reporter Out and now served by Qwoted, Featured, MentionMatch and Source of Sources. High volume, low hit rate, and effective only when responses are fast, specific and genuinely expert.

Desk-side briefing

A short, off-news meeting between an executive and a journalist to build understanding and relationship before there is anything to announce. It is an investment, not a placement tactic, and it is what makes a later pitch get read.

Media tour and press junket

A sequence of briefings with multiple outlets, either in one city or across several, often around a launch or trade show. A junket where the brand pays travel and hospitality carries disclosure obligations for the journalist's outlet and reputational risk for both sides.

Launch embargo strategy

The plan governing who is briefed when before an announcement — tier-one exclusive, embargoed briefings for trades, wire crossing at hour zero, and the sequencing of blog, customer and analyst notification so nothing leaks ahead of the story that matters most.

Tier-one vs trade coverage

Tier one is the large general-audience outlet with mass reach and low buyer density; trade press reaches a small audience that is almost entirely buyers, specifiers and peers. Trade coverage usually moves the business; tier one usually moves the boardroom.

Impressions vs reach vs readership

Impressions counts potential exposures and double-counts the same person; reach counts unique people; readership estimates how many actually read the piece. Most PR reports quote impressions because it is the largest number available, which is exactly why it persuades nobody senior.

Share of voice

A brand's proportion of the total coverage or conversation in its category over a period, versus named competitors. It is the most defensible comparative earned-media metric because it normalises for how much the whole category was covered.

Message pull-through

The percentage of coverage that actually carries the key messages the campaign set out to place. It measures whether the story was told the way it was pitched, and it is the metric that most often exposes coverage that looked good and said nothing.

Sentiment

Whether coverage reads positive, neutral or negative toward the subject. Automated scoring handles volume but misreads sarcasm, industry idiom and neutral-but-damaging framing, so credible programs sample and human-verify.

Quality of coverage scoring

A weighted score per article combining outlet relevance, prominence (headline or passing mention), message pull-through, spokesperson quotation, visuals, links and sentiment. It replaces clip counting with a defensible ranking of what each placement was worth.

AVE (advertising value equivalency)

The discredited practice of pricing coverage at what the equivalent ad space would have cost, sometimes multiplied by an invented 'credibility multiplier'. It confuses cost with value, ignores whether the coverage was positive, and cannot be reconciled with the fact that nobody bought anything.

Barcelona Principles

AMEC's international framework for communications measurement, first set in 2010 and updated to version 3.0 in 2020. They require goal setting and measurement, measurement of outcomes rather than only outputs, effect on organisational performance, both qualitative and quantitative methods, transparent and replicable measurement, and they state explicitly that AVEs are not the value of communication.

Outputs vs outcomes vs impact

Outputs are what the program produced (releases sent, placements landed); outcomes are what changed in the audience (awareness, understanding, preference, action); impact is what changed in the organisation (pipeline, hiring, valuation, policy, risk avoided). Reporting stops at outputs precisely where budgets get cut.

Referral traffic and branded search lift

The two hard digital signals a placement leaves: clicks arriving from the article, and the rise in people searching the brand by name afterwards. Branded search lift often survives when referral traffic does not, because most readers never click the link.

Awards program economics

Entry fees, tiered submission deadlines, category proliferation and paid gala tables mean many 'awards' are revenue products. The test is whether the judging panel is named and independent and whether anyone outside the industry has heard of the award.

Speaking placement

Securing conference and panel slots through call-for-papers submissions, program committee relationships and sponsorship-adjacent tracks. A keynote is earned; a 'sponsored speaking opportunity' is bought, and audiences increasingly tell the difference.

Analyst relations

The structured discipline of briefing industry research firms, responding to inquiry, participating in vendor evaluations and correcting the record. Analysts influence enterprise shortlists directly, and unlike journalists they will usually tell you what they think before publishing.

Holding statement

The pre-drafted first response issued within minutes of an incident: what is known, what is being done, care for those affected, and when more will follow. Its job is to occupy the vacuum before speculation fills it, not to explain the incident.

Dark site

A pre-built, unpublished crisis web page or site section ready to go live in minutes with statements, facts, contacts and updates. It gives the organisation a citable source of record when its main site and social channels are overwhelmed.

Spokesperson designation and escalation matrix

The pre-agreed decision of who speaks for the organisation at each severity level, and the matrix defining which incidents escalate to whom, within what time, with what approval path. Both must exist before the incident, because the argument about who speaks is what costs the first hour.

Tabletop exercise

A simulated crisis run against the plan with the real decision-makers in the room, testing notification, drafting, approval and spokesperson readiness under time pressure. It reliably exposes the approval bottleneck that would otherwise be discovered live.

Apology framework: statement of regret vs admission

A statement of regret expresses sympathy for what happened; an admission accepts responsibility for causing it. The difference carries legal and insurance consequences, so the language is drafted with counsel — but audiences read hedged non-apologies accurately, and the reputational cost of sounding evasive is often larger than the liability being protected.

Reputation risk register

A maintained inventory of the scenarios that could damage the organisation, scored by likelihood and severity, each with an owner, a pre-drafted position and a trigger for escalation. It converts crisis communications from improvisation into preparation.

Media training

Rehearsed preparation for interviews: message discipline, bridging from a hostile question back to the point, handling hypotheticals and silence, and knowing that nothing said with a reporter present is truly off the record unless it was agreed in advance.

Retainer vs project vs performance-based fees

A retainer buys ongoing capacity and relationships, usually monthly against a staffing plan; a project buys a defined deliverable such as a launch or crisis response; performance-based pricing ties fees to placements or outcomes. Performance pricing is uncommon in earned media for a structural reason — the agency does not control the publication decision — and where it exists it tends to pull work toward low-quality guaranteed placements.

What’s happening

• The earned-media surface itself is shrinking, and the numbers are worse than the ones usually quoted. Northwestern's Medill State of Local News 2025 report counts nearly 3,500 newspapers closed since 2005 -- almost 40% of all local US newspapers, with papers per 100,000 Americans falling from 3.0 to 1.6 -- and more than three-quarters of newspaper industry jobs gone, over 270,000 positions. It leaves 212 counties with no local news source at all and 1,525 more served by a single outlet, with roughly 50 million Americans having limited or no access. Trade titles have consolidated in parallel. The practical consequence for PR is that the number of reachable, credible outlets in most categories has fallen faster than the number of people pitching them. 2026-08 source ↗
• AI answer engines and zero-click search are changing what a placement is worth. Pew Research Center's 2025 analysis of the browsing behaviour of 900 US adults found users clicked through to a traditional search result on 8% of visits where a Google AI summary appeared, against 15% where none did -- nearly twice as often without the summary. Coverage increasingly gets read as a summarised, uncited fact rather than a visited page, which pushes PR toward optimising for being cited by answer engines and toward branded search lift rather than referral clicks as the proof of impact. 2026-08 source ↗
• AI-written outreach is changing the pitching relationship, though the widely repeated statistics deserve care. Muck Rack's State of Journalism 2026, surveying roughly 1,100 journalists, reports that 86% say at least some of their work began with a PR pitch and that 82% of journalists now use AI in some form; Cision's 2026 State of the Media surveys more than 1,800 journalists on the same ground. The often-quoted figures -- that around nine in ten journalists prefer email, and that a growing share can identify and deprioritise generic AI-generated pitches -- sit behind the gated reports and come from older editions, so do not present them as current without pulling the PDF. What is not in dispute is the direction: volume automation has made personalisation the scarce good. 2026-08 source ↗
• Journalists are moving to Substack and independent newsletters, and they are now a distinct pitch target. Muck Rack's State of Creator Journalism research found more than a third of all journalists identify as creator journalists -- running Substacks, publishing commentary on social platforms, recording podcasts and publishing on channels they own -- with creative and editorial freedom the primary motivation for 57%, and creator journalists about 60% more likely than traditional journalists to say the PR relationship is very important. Laid-off and departing staff writers have taken their beats, their contacts and often their most engaged readers with them, so the outlet-level media list no longer captures where the coverage lives. Independent writers have no editor, no embargo desk and no institutional email -- they respond to relationships, not to distribution. 2026-08 source ↗
• Brand newsrooms and owned media are substituting for earned coverage. Companies publish their own research, data reports, executive blogs and podcasts, and increasingly get cited by journalists and AI systems directly from those sources -- a shift reinforced by collapsing platform referrals, with publishers reporting sharp multi-year declines in Facebook, X and search traffic. Original proprietary data is consistently among the things journalists say they most want, because it is the one thing a newsroom cannot produce itself at scale; treat any stronger claim that it is the single most reliable route to coverage as practitioner assertion rather than a survey finding. 2026-08 source ↗
• Measurement is moving from AVE toward business outcomes, and the governing framework has been updated. AMEC launched Barcelona Principles 4.0 in mid-2025, superseding the 3.0 version from 2020. It still repudiates advertising value equivalency outright, naming ACE, ASR, EAV, EMV, EVR, MAV and PRV as aliases of the same flawed metric and stating plainly that they should be avoided -- yet AVE persists in client reporting because it produces a large single number. The credible replacement is a weighted quality-of-coverage score plus outcome evidence -- share of voice, message pull-through, branded search lift and pipeline or policy effect -- and agencies that cannot produce it are losing budget to channels that can. 2026-08 source ↗
• The crisis response window is measured in the first hour, and that standard is long-standing doctrine rather than a recent change -- the Institute for Public Relations' crisis management guidance has called for a response in the first hour after a crisis occurs, with pre-drafted and legally pre-approved holding statements, dark-site content, a designated trained spokesperson and annual exercises, for close to two decades. What has changed is the consequence of missing it: a video posted by a customer or employee can reach millions before an organisation's first meeting convenes. Preparation has shifted from a nice-to-have retainer line to the primary reason mid-size companies hire a firm at all. 2026-08 source ↗
• Executive and founder-led communications are taking share from corporate statements. Audiences respond to a named human posting in their own voice more than to a statement attributed to a company, and founders now break their own news on their own channels ahead of, or instead of, the wire. That raises the stakes on Regulation FD compliance for public companies: the SEC's 2013 report of investigation arising from a Netflix CEO's Facebook post established that a personal or corporate social channel is a valid disclosure channel only if investors have been alerted to watch it. An unreviewed executive post is now a primary corporate communication. 2026-08 source ↗
• Agency consolidation continued at the top of the market, and the pieces connect. WPP announced in January 2024 that it would combine BCW and Hill & Knowlton into Burson, operational from July 2024. Omnicom completed its acquisition of Interpublic on November 26, 2025, creating a holding company of unprecedented scale. Golin and Ketchum -- both formerly IPG agencies -- then launched as the combined Golin Ketchum on June 10, 2026, under Omnicom ownership, downstream of that close. Each consolidation frees senior talent into independents and boutiques, which is where much of the category's growth has gone. 2026-08 source ↗
• In-housing has taken routine work back from agencies. Bain's analysis of marketer-agency relationships describes companies struggling with multiple external agencies, ballooning costs and a lack of innovation, and advises deciding which capabilities to build in house and which to outsource based on where proximity to the brand and the data matters most -- while warning that hybrid setups fall short without a defined strategy. Companies now staff their own media relations, content and monitoring functions and buy agencies for what they cannot keep on the bench: crisis response, launch surges, sector expertise and outside judgment. The commonly repeated corollary -- that the ongoing publicity retainer has shrunk to a smaller advisory retainer plus project work -- is practitioner observation rather than a sourced compensation finding. 2026-08 source ↗
• Podcast and creator placements now compete directly with traditional media for the same objective. An appearance on a well-targeted industry podcast or a segment from a trusted creator can outperform a trade article on reach, dwell time and trust -- while carrying influencer-marketing disclosure obligations that traditional editorial placements do not. The FTC's own guidance is explicit that a material connection includes a personal, family or employment relationship or a financial one, that financial relationships are not limited to money, and that free or discounted products must be disclosed even when the mention was not requested -- with responsibility resting on the endorser, not only the brand. 2026-08 source ↗
• Disclosure enforcement has hardened around reviews, endorsements and sponsored content. The FTC's revised Endorsement Guides (2023) and its Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465 -- finalized August 2024, published in the Federal Register on August 22, 2024 and effective October 21, 2024 -- brought civil penalties into play against knowing violators for fake and incentivised reviews and for undisclosed endorsements by officers, managers, employees, agents and their immediate relatives. The Commission has continued bringing fake-review cases under it. Agencies now carry real exposure for what a client's influencers, employees and reviewers say on their behalf. 2026-08 source ↗
• Austin's own PR market has been reshaped by the same forces. Long-established local firms have rebranded and broadened -- Hahn Public now trades as Hahn at hahn.agency, describing itself as an integrated marketing and AI solutions agency selling advertising, social, influencer and media alongside public relations and crisis work, while Elizabeth Christian Public Relations now operates as ECPR Texas, a civic impact communications firm built around advocacy, public affairs, crisis and coalition building across Texas -- while national technology firms serve Austin clients remotely. The local differentiator has narrowed to genuine relationships with Austin and Texas newsrooms and knowledge of state and city government, which is exactly the thing a remote agency cannot replicate. 2026-08 source ↗

Questions people ask

What is the difference between PR and advertising?

advertising buys guaranteed placement and controls the message; PR earns coverage a third party chooses to publish and controls only the pitch -- the credibility difference and the control difference are the same trade

What is earned, owned, paid and shared media?

define the PESO model plainly and note that the boundaries blur in practice -- a sponsored post is paid even when it looks earned, which is exactly why disclosure rules exist

What is a press release and when is one actually the right format?

say a release is a record and a distribution artifact, not a pitch; it earns its place for material announcements and searchable record, while a targeted email pitch does more for coverage

What is the difference between a press release, a media alert and a backgrounder?

release announces news; alert is logistics for an event a journalist might attend; backgrounder gives context that is never itself published -- each has a different reader and a different length

What does off the record actually mean, and how is it different from background?

define on the record, on background, deep background and off the record, and stress that the terms mean nothing unless agreed in advance with that specific reporter -- assume everything is on the record until it is not

What is an embargo and what happens if a journalist breaks it?

describe it as an agreed publication time offered in exchange for prep time, note it is a norm rather than a contract, and say the real remedy is future access -- and that an unagreed embargo is not an embargo at all

What is a news peg and why do pitches fail without one?

explain that a journalist needs a reason to publish today; a peg is that reason -- data, a decision, a deadline, a conflict -- and that a company milestone is rarely a peg on its own

What is the difference between tier-one and trade coverage, and which matters more?

say tier-one buys credibility and reach while trade reaches buyers; which matters more depends on the sales cycle and audience, which the reader knows and you do not

What is a byline or contributed article, and how is it different from an op-ed?

byline is expertise published in a trade under an executive's name; an op-ed argues a position for a general audience; both are earned placements with editorial standards, not paid content

What is AVE and why do measurement people object to it?

define advertising value equivalency as pricing earned coverage at ad rates, and state the industry position plainly: AVE is not the value of communication -- it survives because it produces one big number, not because it measures anything

What are the Barcelona Principles?

describe them as AMEC's consensus framework for communication measurement -- goal setting, measuring outcomes not just outputs, no AVEs, transparency and consistency -- and name the current version correctly: AMEC launched Barcelona Principles 4.0 in mid-2025, superseding 3.0 from 2020

What is a holding statement and when do you use one?

describe it as pre-approved language that acknowledges an event, states what is known and what is being done, and commits to an update -- its whole value is that it can go out in minutes

What can a PR firm actually promise?

a firm can promise effort, targeting, quality of materials, response speed and specific deliverables; it cannot promise placements, sentiment, or a story in a named outlet -- and a guarantee of any of those is either paid placement or a red flag worth naming

Can a PR agency guarantee coverage in a specific publication?

answer no without hedging: the publication decides, and any guarantee means the placement is paid, which then carries sponsored-content disclosure obligations; treat the guarantee itself as the disqualifying signal

How much does PR cost -- retainer, project or performance-based?

explain the three models and what each is good for, and be explicit that performance-based pricing pushes the firm toward volume placements; the actual fee depends on scope and market, so ask for a scoped proposal rather than a rate

What should be in a PR scope of work so I can compare two proposals?

require named senior hours per month, deliverable counts, media list ownership, response-time commitments, reporting cadence and what happens in a crisis -- hours and seniority are where proposals actually differ

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