The agency landscape is constantly evolving, with new and emerging firms bringing fresh thinking, sharper specialisations and new approaches to the way brands communicate. From “What If?” to “What’s Next?” explores the ideas, ambitions and strategies shaping these agencies as they build their place in a changing industry.
Starting Avance PR from home in 2022 with one intern, Ritika Garg, Founder & CEO, Avance PR, has since grown the agency into a communications partner that has worked with more than 100 companies. As client expectations move beyond conventional media coverage towards credibility, executive visibility and measurable business impact, Garg reflects on how the agency has evolved and how emerging shifts such as AI-led discovery are reshaping the PR landscape.
1. Avance PR has grown from a boutique PR firm into a strategic communications agency working across multiple sectors. What have been the biggest shifts in the agency’s journey, and how has your approach to PR evolved with the changing market?I started Avance PR in 2022 from home with one intern. Since then, we have worked with more than 100 companies, and the questions clients ask us have changed as much as our team has grown.At first, a brief might centre on announcing a launch and securing coverage. Today, a founder may need to explain an unfamiliar business model, build a voice in the industry, reach different regional markets and prepare for difficult questions. That requires us to understand the business before we pitch its story.For an EV company, we may need to make infrastructure and adoption understandable; for a hotel opening, we may need to connect the property with local travel and hospitality conversations. We have grown our work in executive positioning, LinkedIn thought leadership, media engagement and reputation alongside traditional announcements.The biggest lesson for me has been that good PR starts with a clear business problem and an honest, relevant story, then finds the right audience and format.2. Today, brands are looking beyond media coverage towards credibility, influence and business impact. How is this changing the way PR agencies define and measure success for their clients?I still care about coverage, but I want to know what the coverage accomplished. A story in a relevant publication that accurately explains a client’s proposition can be more useful than several mentions that give readers little reason to remember the brand.At Avance PR, we agree on the objective before we decide what to measure. For a launch, we may examine whether target media picked up the announcement and whether the key facts came through. For a founder, we may look at the quality of interview opportunities, engagement from relevant peers and whether their perspective is becoming part of an industry conversation.We can directly track coverage, message inclusion, audience relevance and enquiries that come through a campaign. Clients may also tell us that a story supported a partnership discussion or helped a prospect understand their business, but we should not claim PR alone caused that outcome. Success is a pattern of useful visibility and growing credibility, assessed against the client’s actual goal.3. With AI changing search, content discovery and how audiences consume information, how do you see AI reshaping the PR function and the way brands build visibility? AI is changing how people encounter information. Someone researching an EV charging network or a hospitality brand may see an AI-generated answer before they reach the company’s website or a news article. For us, that raises a practical question: if a tool summarises a client, will the information it can find be accurate, current and clear?At Avance PR, that means working closely with clients on factual company descriptions, consistent spokesperson details, well-supported claims and stories that explain what makes their work relevant. Credible media coverage contributes to a brand’s public record, although no placement guarantees that an AI tool will surface or interpret it correctly.AI also helps our team organise research and spot questions audiences may be asking. Every claim and quote still needs a human check, especially when we work across technical sectors. We are learning how to monitor AI-led discovery alongside familiar PR measures, while keeping our focus on information people can verify and trust.4. Avance PR works extensively on founder and CXO personal branding, including LinkedIn thought leadership. Why has executive visibility become such an important part of brand communication, and what makes an executive voice genuinely credible? A company can tell you what it does. Its founder can often tell you why a decision was made, what went wrong along the way and what the industry is still getting wrong. Those details matter, especially when a business is introducing something unfamiliar or asking customers and partners to place trust in its leadership.At Avance PR, we build executive communication around conversations with the person, not a calendar of generic motivational posts. We ask about decisions they have made, questions customers keep raising and changes they can see firsthand in their sector. From there, we identify ideas that can work as a LinkedIn post, an interview or an authored article, while keeping the language close to how they actually speak.Credibility comes from a distinct point of view backed by experience. An executive does not have to comment on every trend; they need to be useful and consistent on subjects they know well. That is when personal visibility strengthens the company’s reputation.5. Looking ahead, what do you believe will fundamentally change the Indian PR and communications landscape over the next three to five years, and how is Avance PR preparing for that shift?I think the next three to five years will demand more precision from Indian PR agencies. A company may need to speak to national business media, regional audiences, potential hires and industry partners, each of whom cares about a different part of its story. At the same time, people will encounter that story through journalists, LinkedIn, video, search and AI-generated summaries. Keeping the facts and message consistent across those channels will become harder and more valuable.I also expect clients to ask tougher questions about what communication has achieved and to expect evidence behind every claim we put forward.At Avance PR, we are preparing by strengthening sector knowledge across our team and connecting media relations with founder positioning, digital content and reputation work. Our pan-India experience has shown us why a national story sometimes needs a strong local angle. As we expand, I want us to retain the habit of getting close to a client’s business before deciding what deserves to be said publicly.
