Every PR relationship starts with a briefing conversation, and the quality of that conversation tends to predict the quality of everything that follows. Over nearly two decades of client meetings, three gaps come up more than any other, and each one is entirely avoidable with a small amount of preparation.
1. What you want to be known for, in a sentence
Not your services list. The thing you’d want a journalist to introduce you as. A clinic offering thirty treatments has thirty possible stories, and an agency working from a menu rather than a single clear positioning will spend the first month guessing which one matters to you. Decide the sentence before the meeting, not during it.
2. What commercial outcome the PR is meant to support
New patient enquiries for a specific treatment. Credibility ahead of an investment round. Recruitment. A partnership you’re chasing. Each of these needs a genuinely different press strategy, built around different journalists, different publications and a different definition of success. An agency can build a strategy around almost any of these outcomes, but it cannot guess which one you mean, and a strategy built on the wrong assumption wastes months before anyone notices.
3. What you’re not willing to do
Some practitioners won’t discuss celebrity treatments. Some clinics won’t run before-and-after imagery. Some founders don’t want to be on camera. All of this is entirely fine, and a good agency will work within any of it, but it needs to be said at the outset rather than discovered three months into a retainer, usually at the exact moment a strong opportunity depends on it.
None of this is complicated, and none of it takes more than a conversation with yourself before the meeting. But a clear, well-thought-through brief at the start saves real time and real budget, and it’s the single biggest difference between clients who feel their PR is working within the first quarter and those who are still circling the brief at month three.
Worth having ready, in writing, the next time you’re sitting down with an agency!
Have three things ready: a one-sentence answer to what you want to be known for, the specific commercial outcome the PR should support, and anything you’re not willing to do, such as before-and-afters or celebrity treatment commentary
A good briefing conversation can be covered in under an hour, provided you arrive with clear answers rather than working them out in the room.
It helps but isn’t essential. Having the three answers above in writing, even a few lines, gives the agency something concrete to build a strategy around rather than working from a general impression.
Leading with a services list rather than a single clear positioning. An agency working from ‘we do everything’ rather than ‘this is what we want to be known for’ will spend the first month guessing.