PR’s Mission: Create Understanding

One of the best pieces of PR advice I ever received came from a mentor, Brian Cohen: "Our job is to create understanding."???

That idea is central to effective communication. It’s more than just relaying information. It’s about helping people make sense of the world. Every story, campaign, and message should provide knowledge, emotion and context to enable informed choices.?By providing context and meaning, effective communication empowers individuals. This empowerment enables them to make sound judgments.???

The Power of Understanding

People make choices every day. They decide who to trust, where to go, and how to spend their time and money. They also decide when to engage. Communications shape those choices.?It’s not enough to simply inform or make people “aware.”?You can be aware of a lot of things, and yet do nothing about most of them. The message that moves you is the sweet spot.

To serve employers and clients well and help them achieve their goals, we must persuade, clarify and provide meaning. Real communication doesn’t just deliver facts. It enables choices and purposeful action. Yet, every day we see or hear communications without clear intention. ?It washes over you with no effect.

The Problem with Empty Communication

Too many press releases, articles and corporate statements exist just to check a box.?They fill websites, meet deadlines, and satisfy policies, but they don’t move people, change minds or drive real results. Such content is often dismissed by journalists. Who can blame them? We waste our time and theirs. You don’t need binoculars to find this stuff. It is all around us.???

Corporate press releases disguised as news are full of jargon but lack substance. They are missing any effect on people’s lives.?AI-generated content floods online spaces. It is efficient but devoid of real insight. It's merely the mundane average of everything that’s already out there. “Stories” with numbers but no narrative, facts without context, and information without persuasion do not create understanding.?They just add to the noise.???

PR With a Purpose

Great communicators understand that their role is more than just delivering information.?Understanding is the goal. Every message should serve a purpose. The best communications are not neutral. They have intention. Whether we’re working with brands, nonprofits, or institutions, our job isn’t just to publish and distribute. It’s to craft messages that resonate, inspire, and provide clarity. That is the difference between communication that works and communication that disappears.???

Proceed with Purpose

We don’t need more generic content. We need smarter, more purposeful communication.?This means telling stories that educate, engage, and inspire action. It means crafting messages with clear intent and creating real value. Intent means messages and stories with purpose, designed to persuade people to think, feel, and act.???

Consider these examples of purpose-driven communication. A nonprofit tackling food insecurity could share real stories of families they’ve helped, connecting with audiences emotionally, instead of flooding inboxes with statistics. A startup launching a new tech product could highlight how the technology improves daily life, transforming their pitch from data to impact, instead of focusing on specs. A university experiencing declining enrollment could let students tell the campus story authentically and in their own words, instead of distributing traditional promotional materials.???

The best PR doesn’t just inform. It makes people think, feel, and act with confidence. We can do better. We can aim to create understanding.

#strategy #PR #publicrelations #understanding

? 2025 Robert Hornsby, Founder,?Practicum Strategy

Image by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

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