Authored by : Rishu Singh, Deputy General Manager - Corporate Communications Fortis Healthcare Ltd.“PR is not strategic. It’s just issuing press releases.” A colleague said this to me recently. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it, and it probably won’t be the last. Recently, a renowned healthcare practitioner gave me a one-line brief “Make me a hero.” I smiled, because if PR could simply “make” heroes, our jobs would be much easier.The reality is different……Public Relations isn’t about creating an image. It’s about discovering stories worth telling, earning credibility instead of buying attention, managing reputation when it’s under scrutiny, and building trust that compounds over years. After 12 years in leading PR consultancies and the five years in corporate communications, I’ve come to believe that our biggest challenge isn’t getting stories placed. It’s helping people understand what PR actually does.Marketing creates awareness. Sales generates revenue.PR builds trust, reputation and influence.And here’s the irony……Trust rarely appears on a balance sheet. Reputation doesn’t have a quarterly revenue target. Yet when a crisis hits, a regulator asks questions, a patient chooses a hospital, an investor evaluates a company, or top talent decides where to work - these intangible assets suddenly become the most valuable ones.Perhaps it’s time we stopped asking whether PR contributes to revenue and started asking a better question: Can any organization build sustainable revenue without trust? This distinction becomes particularly important in healthcare. Patients don’t choose hospitals based only on advertising. They choose institutions they trust. They seek clinicians whose expertise has been consistently demonstrated. They rely on credible information when making some of the most important decisions of their lives.Trust influences behavior long before revenue appears on a financial statement.Yet PR often struggles for recognition because its greatest contributions don't always fit neatly into a dashboard. Revenue can be reported quarterly. Sales can be tracked daily. Marketing campaigns can be measured through impressions, clicks and conversions.But PR creates value in ways that extend beyond immediate metrics. It builds stakeholder confidence, strengthens credibility and shapes reputation - assets that influence every business outcome, even if they cannot always be captured in a single number. While trust and reputation may be challenging to quantify, their impact is unmistakable: It take years of consistent effort to build and become invaluable when an organization faces uncertainty or crisis. Increasingly, the communications industry is also adopting more sophisticated frameworks that connect reputation, stakeholder sentiment and business outcomes, making PR's contribution more measurable than ever before.Ironically, organizations often recognize the value of communications only when trust is at risk. During a crisis, everyone looks to communications. During regulatory scrutiny, communications becomes indispensable. When attracting talent, engaging investors, reassuring patients, strengthening partnerships or navigating change, communications suddenly moves from being a support function to a strategic business function.The reality is that PR has always been strategic. It simply operates on a different timeline.Revenue is an outcome. Trust is an enabler.One without the other may produce short-term success, but sustainable growth requires both.Because in the end, reputations are built by purpose, performance, consistency - and by the stories that truthfully connect organizations with the people who matter most.DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and theprpost.com does not necessarily subscribe to it.
