What is public relations (PR)?
Public relations is the work of shaping a brand's reputation through everything it does not pay to say. Advertising buys the space and controls the message. PR earns the space: a story a journalist chooses to write, a mention on a podcast, an award, a founder's interview, a well-handled crisis that leaves the brand looking better than before. The discipline covers media relations, press releases and press kits, executive positioning, events, partnerships, community relations, internal communications and the unglamorous work of answering the phone when something has gone wrong.
PR used to mean the press almost exclusively. Now it includes anyone with an audience, from a trade reporter to a creator with a million followers to the customer whose review ranks first on Google. The principle is the same: a brand's reputation is built by what others say about it, and PR is how a brand influences that without buying it.
Why it matters
Why PR matters
People believe a story more than they believe an ad, because someone else chose to tell it. A single feature in the right publication can do what a quarter of paid media cannot, which is make a brand feel like it has arrived. PR also compounds: coverage leads to more coverage, credibility leads to better partnerships, and a reputation built over years is the asset that lets a brand charge more, hire better and survive a bad month.
It matters most when things go wrong. Every brand has a crisis eventually, whether a product failure, a bad hire, a tone-deaf post or a lawsuit, and the difference between a brand that recovers and one that does not is usually how it communicated in the first forty-eight hours. That is PR, and it cannot be bought on the day.
In practice
How PR works in practice
- 01
A PR program begins with a narrative: what the brand is, why it matters now, and which stories it can credibly tell. From that the team builds a plan of moments, such as launches, hires, partnerships, data, founder opinions and events, and a list of the journalists, outlets and creators who would care. Each moment gets its materials: a press release, a press kit with imagery and film, a briefing document for the spokesperson, and an exclusive offered to the outlet that matters most before the wider release.
- 02
Then there is the relationship work, which is most of the job: knowing what a reporter is working on, offering useful comment when it is not about you, and being quick and honest when they call. Film and photography have become part of the toolkit, because a launch with a strong film and a set of stills is far easier to cover than a launch with a quote. Results are measured in coverage, reach, sentiment and share of voice, and increasingly in the search results a brand's name returns.
At RIOT
PR at RIOT
We are not a PR firm, but we make the things PR teams launch. The rebrand film and new identity trailer for the Washington Commanders, the Major Tuddy mascot reveal and the "Making the Mascot" documentary were made to be released into a press moment, and the Cannes Lions 2026 recap film for Coach is the kind of asset a communications team can send instead of a paragraph.
Watch out
What people get wrong about PR
Confusing PR with press releases. A release is a tool, and most of them are never read. PR is the relationships and the story; the release is a formality that follows.
The other mistake is treating PR as free advertising. Coverage cannot be bought, scheduled or scripted, and a brand that approaches journalists with the same control it expects over an ad gets ignored. The brands that get covered are the ones that give the press something true and interesting to say.
