What is PR?

By Mansi Agrawal – Founder at Prime Factor

This morning I was sitting quietly with my coffee, just thinking about how misunderstood PR really is. Over the years I’ve seen so many brands believe that PR means running ads or simply getting featured somewhere, but in reality, PR is much deeper than that. It is about building credibility, earning visibility, and creating long-term trust for a brand. Before I ever pitch a story or speak to a journalist, the first thing I do is study the brand properly — not just the logo or the website, but the business behind it. I look at who their competitors are, where those competitors are getting visibility, which publications are writing about the industry, and what kind of headlines are actually being read and shared. Because without research, PR is just guessing, and guessing never builds strong brands.

Working with multiple agencies in the past and now running my own firm, I’ve learned one very important thing: headlines come first. If you don’t understand the headlines your industry respects, your brand will never be taken seriously. That’s why before we even think of pitching a story, we do proper market research. We study the target audience, the competition, the industry trends, the size of the market, and which stories already carry credibility. Only after understanding all of this do we start building the PR narrative. That’s how real brand value is created — not through temporary hype, but through consistent, meaningful visibility. PR is not about being everywhere; it’s about being in the right place, for the right reason. And that is exactly what I love building every day as a founder.