A question founders bring to me is whether they should hire a publicist or a PR agency. From the outside the two can look identical apart from the price.
The honest answer is that the choice matters less than two questions most people skip. Is the story you, or is it your company? And do you have something worth covering yet? Get those right and the hire becomes obvious. Get them wrong and neither option will save you.
The most press I have ever earned came from a campaign that had a reason to exist on its own: more than 250 billboards across the United States in 2021, asking for federal recognition of National Arab American Heritage Month. It generated more coverage than any paid campaign I have ever run, and the lesson I took from it is the one this whole article rests on. The story comes before the representative.
The short answer
If the story is you, your expertise, your point of view, your book, your talks, a publicist is usually the better fit.
If the story is a company, a product launch or a funding round, with a steady cadence of news and several people who can speak for it, an agency is usually the better fit.
If you cannot yet name the specific thing a journalist would write about this quarter, you need neither. You need a story first.
What a publicist does
A publicist represents a person. The relationship is close and usually exclusive in practice: one person, or a very small team, who knows your history, your positions and your limits well enough to pitch you without checking every sentence.
The daily work is pitching you to journalists and producers, booking interviews, podcasts and panels, preparing you before each one, and keeping your public description accurate and consistent. A good publicist is also the person who tells you not to take an interview, which is a service people undervalue until they need it.
The limit is capacity. A publicist cannot run a product launch across ten markets, staff a crisis at three in the morning, and write your company's investor communications at the same time.
What a PR agency does
An agency represents an organisation. You get a team: someone senior on strategy, account staff doing the outreach, often specialists in a sector, in media training or in crisis work.
That structure fits companies with recurring news, multiple spokespeople and the need for coordinated announcements. Agencies are generally less suited to building one individual's profile, unless that person is attached to a business, a book or a project the agency is also promoting.
The limit is attention. On a larger roster, the person who sold you the account may not be the person working on it, and an individual founder can get lost between bigger clients.
Four questions that make the decision
Who is the story? Write the headline you want. If your name is the subject, think publicist. If the company's name is the subject, think agency.
How often do you have news? A retainer pays for a team to be ready. If you have one real announcement a year, you are paying for readiness you will not use. A project engagement around that one moment is usually the better structure.
How available will you be? Press runs on the spokesperson's time. Neither a publicist nor an agency can produce coverage if you will not take the call, approve the quote, or turn up prepared. Hiring does not mean you have outsourced the work.
What does success look like in a year? A short list of specific outlets and a clear description of you points one way. An ongoing narrative about a company in its market points the other.
When you need neither yet
This is the answer founders least want to hear and most often need.
If you do not have a hook, a launch, a real milestone, a finding nobody else has, or a position that runs against the consensus, a representative has nothing to sell. You will pay them to send pitches that journalists ignore, and you will conclude that press does not work.
Before that point, build the owned assets that every future pitch will lean on. A clear bio. A page of verified facts about you and your company. Good photographs. A press kit, like the one I keep on this site. A body of published writing that shows your thinking, which is the work I describe in thought leadership that lasts. And practise pitching a small list of writers yourself, using the campaign design questions in how to design a digital PR campaign journalists cover.
When you have done that, you will know whether you need help, and you will be a far better client when you hire it.
How fees are usually structured
I am not going to quote prices, because they vary too much by market, seniority and scope for any number to be useful. The structures, though, are consistent.
Retainer. A fixed monthly fee for ongoing work. Right when there is a steady stream of news and you need someone continuously in market.
Project. A fixed fee for a defined moment: a launch, a book release, an announcement. Right when your news is occasional.
Pay per placement. You pay only when coverage runs. It sounds aligned, and sometimes it is. The risk is that it rewards volume, which pushes toward outlets that are easy to land rather than outlets that matter to you.
Whichever you choose, ask in writing who will do the work, how often you will hear from them, and what the engagement will have produced by the end if it goes well.
The red flags
Most of the damage I see in this market comes from confusing earned coverage with bought placement. Both exist, both can be legitimate, and they are not the same thing.
Guaranteed coverage in a top outlet. Editorial decisions belong to editors. A promise of a specific feature in a major publication usually means sponsored content, a paid contributor arrangement, or a page dressed to look like one.
"Featured in" packages. A row of famous logos for a fixed price is almost always paid distribution. Readers, journalists and fact checkers increasingly recognise it, and once they do, it discredits the real coverage sitting next to it.
Awards that charge to enter. Some are legitimate. Many exist to sell the award. If the main requirement is payment, it will not hold up when someone serious checks it.
No questions about you. A good representative asks hard questions before signing you, because their reputation with journalists depends on not pitching weak stories. If nobody asks, nobody is protecting that reputation.
The economics behind this are similar to what I described in digital PR vs buying links: paid shortcuts tend to cost more over time than they save, because they have to be explained away later.
What to prepare before you hire anyone
Whichever route you take, you will get more from it if you arrive with the following.
A one paragraph bio that is accurate, current and identical everywhere it appears. A list of facts you can document instantly: founding dates, titles, numbers, partners. Your strongest past coverage, with links. A list of fifteen to twenty outlets or shows you would genuinely be proud to appear in, and a sentence on why each one. Two or three positions you hold that would make a writer want to quote you.
Then check what someone finds when they search your name, because the first thing any journalist does with a pitch is exactly that. If the results disagree with each other, fix that before spending money on outreach. I explain how in Personal SEO: how to control what Google says about your name. If you are young and building toward recognitions like the one I describe in how to get on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, this preparation is the same work.
How to judge the results
Count the coverage that names you accurately, that you would be glad to link to, and that will still be there in three years. That last test matters more than people expect. Durable coverage becomes the corroboration that search engines, editors and future clients use to decide whether you are who you say you are.
Do not judge it by impressions, by the number of syndicated copies of one press release, or by logos. Judge it by whether the people you most wanted to reach now know your name and describe you correctly.
My view
Hire a publicist when you are the story and you have something to say. Hire an agency when your company has news on a schedule and needs a team behind it. Hire nobody until you can name the story.
And whoever you hire, stay close to the work. The best press I have earned came from things that were worth doing even if nobody wrote about them. Representation amplifies that. It cannot invent it.