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Every IWD, HR asks marketing to post something. Marketing obliges. Nobody asks the obvious question.
A wave of branded graphics rolls across LinkedIn. Purple. Polished. Pointless.
A logo. A slogan. Maybe a stock photo of women laughing in a meeting room that looks nothing like any meeting room any of us have ever actually sat in.
And then, on the 9th of March, it's over. Back to normal.
I find this quietly infuriating. Not because I think the companies doing it are evil. But because it's so easy.
Posting today doesn't celebrate women. It celebrates your marketing team's ability to follow a content calendar.
And easy is exactly the wrong response to a problem that, in 2026, still doesn't have a solution.
So, if you're a business leader who actually wants to do something, here is where I'd start.
Look at your numbers honestly
Pay gap reporting exists. Promotion rates by gender are trackable. The ratio of men to women in your senior leadership team is not a mystery. Most companies know exactly what their numbers look like. They just hope nobody forces them to publish them.
And here is the thing. Publishing them is not the solution. But it is the start. Because the moment numbers are visible, the conversation changes. Stop hiding behind the fact that nobody has made it mandatory yet. Pull up the spreadsheet. Share it with your leadership team. Then decide what you are actually going to do about it.
Understand the difference between mentorship and sponsorship
Here is a question worth sitting with. When did you last put your own reputation on the line for someone who didn't look or sound like you?
Mentorship is telling someone what they could do better. Sponsorship is walking into a room and saying "this person should be here" when they are not in the room to advocate for themselves. One costs you nothing. The other costs you something. That difference is exactly why sponsorship is rare and exactly why it matters.
That, incidentally, is what Give to Gain actually means. Not a slogan. A transaction with real stakes.
Fix your meeting culture
This one is personal to me. I wrote a song about it (its really not that bad but you be the judge).
It's called "Let Me Just Stop You There" and it came out of years of coaching marketers who had experienced exactly this dynamic. The interrupted pitch. The stolen idea. The meeting where someone repeated what you said, louder, two minutes later, and got the credit.
Give it a listen in the Marketing Mixtape section of our site and tell me how strongly you feel I shouldn't give up my day job.
'Let me just stop you there' a song Rich Fitzmaurice wrote for IWD. B2B Marketing United @ b2bmarketing.com
In the song there's a guy called Jonas. Jonas pulls up a chair and spreads his legs like he owns the whole room. Before you've even started, he's decided he's the main character and will walk you all through your area of expertise.
Jonas is not one person. Jonas is a pattern.
Watch who gets interrupted in your next meeting. Watch whose idea comes back around wearing someone else's name. Watch who fills every silence and who has quietly learned it's safer to say nothing at all.
This is where workplace culture actually lives. Not in the values on the wall. Not in the IWD graphic. In the room. In the meeting. In the moment where someone decides whether to speak or not.
Audit how you hire and promote
"Culture fit" is one of the most reliable ways to keep hiring people who look, sound and think like the people already there. And it is women, disproportionately, who get filtered out by that particular phrase.
The leaders who rely on it most are usually the ones with the most to lose from a genuinely diverse room. They do not ask "is this person excellent?" They ask "will this person fit?" And fitting, too often, means not challenging, not disrupting and not threatening the existing order.
Structured interviews, blind CV screening and explicit promotion criteria are not radical ideas. They are just uncomfortable ones for the people who benefit most from the current system. Which is probably why most companies haven't bothered.
Think about who gets the stretch assignments
The high-visibility projects. The big pitches. The roles that build careers and reputations. Who gets nominated? And who gets quietly assumed to not want the travel, the pressure or the step up, without ever being asked?
That assumption has ended more careers than any deliberate act of discrimination.
And if you work in marketing, this one is aimed directly at you
You are the first line of defence.
You control the brief. You control the content calendar. You decide what goes out under your company's name. Which means when a hollow branded graphic gets posted on International Women's Day with nothing behind it, that is partly on you.
I know how it goes. HR sends a message. "Make sure we post something for IWD." The path of least resistance is a purple graphic and a caption. Job done. Box ticked.
But here is the thing about HR. They are often the same people sitting on the pay gap data, the promotion ratios and the gender breakdown of your senior leadership team. They know exactly what the numbers look like. And they will insist that data cannot be shared publicly.
So they want the post. They just don't want the substance.
That is not celebrating women. That is reputation management dressed up as progress.
Next time HR asks you to post for IWD, ask them one question before you open Canva.
"If we're proud of our commitment to women, what are the numbers we can share to prove it?"
If they can't answer that, you have your answer. And so does everyone watching.
If you must post today, here are the only things worth posting
Your actual numbers. Pay gap, promotion ratio, percentage of women in senior leadership. No spin, no context dressing it up. Just the number and one sentence on what you are doing about it.
A specific commitment. Not "we celebrate women." Something measurable, on the record, that you will report back on in twelve months. One thing. Concrete. Signed off.
Specific people. Not "we're so proud of our amazing female colleagues." Named individuals, specific achievements, genuine reasons why people should pay attention to their great work. Use your platform to expand theirs.
Or say nothing. If you have nothing real to offer today, silence is more respectful than a hollow graphic.
And if you see a branded graphic today with nothing behind it, ask them a question publicly
"What is your current gender pay gap?"
"What percentage of your senior leadership team are women?"
"What specific commitment are you making today that we can hold you to next year?"
Not aggressively. Just genuinely. Because sunlight is the best disinfectant and companies that post without substance should be gently, publicly, reminded of that.
Do something. Or say nothing.
Every IWD, HR asks marketing to post something. Marketing obliges. Nobody asks the obvious question.
A wave of branded graphics rolls across LinkedIn. Purple. Polished. Pointless.
A logo. A slogan. Maybe a stock photo of women laughing in a meeting room that looks nothing like any meeting room any of us have ever actually sat in.
And then, on the 9th of March, it's over. Back to normal.
I find this quietly infuriating. Not because I think the companies doing it are evil. But because it's so easy.
Posting today doesn't celebrate women. It celebrates your marketing team's ability to follow a content calendar.
And easy is exactly the wrong response to a problem that, in 2026, still doesn't have a solution.
So, if you're a business leader who actually wants to do something, here is where I'd start.
Look at your numbers honestly
Pay gap reporting exists. Promotion rates by gender are trackable. The ratio of men to women in your senior leadership team is not a mystery. Most companies know exactly what their numbers look like. They just hope nobody forces them to publish them.
And here is the thing. Publishing them is not the solution. But it is the start. Because the moment numbers are visible, the conversation changes. Stop hiding behind the fact that nobody has made it mandatory yet. Pull up the spreadsheet. Share it with your leadership team. Then decide what you are actually going to do about it.
Understand the difference between mentorship and sponsorship
Here is a question worth sitting with. When did you last put your own reputation on the line for someone who didn't look or sound like you?
Mentorship is telling someone what they could do better. Sponsorship is walking into a room and saying "this person should be here" when they are not in the room to advocate for themselves. One costs you nothing. The other costs you something. That difference is exactly why sponsorship is rare and exactly why it matters.
That, incidentally, is what Give to Gain actually means. Not a slogan. A transaction with real stakes.
Fix your meeting culture
This one is personal to me. I wrote a song about it (its really not that bad but you be the judge).
It's called "Let Me Just Stop You There" and it came out of years of coaching marketers who had experienced exactly this dynamic. The interrupted pitch. The stolen idea. The meeting where someone repeated what you said, louder, two minutes later, and got the credit.
Give it a listen in the Marketing Mixtape section of our site and tell me how strongly you feel I shouldn't give up my day job.
'Let me just stop you there' a song Rich Fitzmaurice wrote for IWD. B2B Marketing United @ b2bmarketing.com
In the song there's a guy called Jonas. Jonas pulls up a chair and spreads his legs like he owns the whole room. Before you've even started, he's decided he's the main character and will walk you all through your area of expertise.
Jonas is not one person. Jonas is a pattern.
Watch who gets interrupted in your next meeting. Watch whose idea comes back around wearing someone else's name. Watch who fills every silence and who has quietly learned it's safer to say nothing at all.
This is where workplace culture actually lives. Not in the values on the wall. Not in the IWD graphic. In the room. In the meeting. In the moment where someone decides whether to speak or not.
Audit how you hire and promote
"Culture fit" is one of the most reliable ways to keep hiring people who look, sound and think like the people already there. And it is women, disproportionately, who get filtered out by that particular phrase.
The leaders who rely on it most are usually the ones with the most to lose from a genuinely diverse room. They do not ask "is this person excellent?" They ask "will this person fit?" And fitting, too often, means not challenging, not disrupting and not threatening the existing order.
Structured interviews, blind CV screening and explicit promotion criteria are not radical ideas. They are just uncomfortable ones for the people who benefit most from the current system. Which is probably why most companies haven't bothered.
Think about who gets the stretch assignments
The high-visibility projects. The big pitches. The roles that build careers and reputations. Who gets nominated? And who gets quietly assumed to not want the travel, the pressure or the step up, without ever being asked?
That assumption has ended more careers than any deliberate act of discrimination.
And if you work in marketing, this one is aimed directly at you
You are the first line of defence.
You control the brief. You control the content calendar. You decide what goes out under your company's name. Which means when a hollow branded graphic gets posted on International Women's Day with nothing behind it, that is partly on you.
I know how it goes. HR sends a message. "Make sure we post something for IWD." The path of least resistance is a purple graphic and a caption. Job done. Box ticked.
But here is the thing about HR. They are often the same people sitting on the pay gap data, the promotion ratios and the gender breakdown of your senior leadership team. They know exactly what the numbers look like. And they will insist that data cannot be shared publicly.
So they want the post. They just don't want the substance.
That is not celebrating women. That is reputation management dressed up as progress.
Next time HR asks you to post for IWD, ask them one question before you open Canva.
"If we're proud of our commitment to women, what are the numbers we can share to prove it?"
If they can't answer that, you have your answer. And so does everyone watching.
If you must post today, here are the only things worth posting
Your actual numbers. Pay gap, promotion ratio, percentage of women in senior leadership. No spin, no context dressing it up. Just the number and one sentence on what you are doing about it.
A specific commitment. Not "we celebrate women." Something measurable, on the record, that you will report back on in twelve months. One thing. Concrete. Signed off.
Specific people. Not "we're so proud of our amazing female colleagues." Named individuals, specific achievements, genuine reasons why people should pay attention to their great work. Use your platform to expand theirs.
Or say nothing. If you have nothing real to offer today, silence is more respectful than a hollow graphic.
And if you see a branded graphic today with nothing behind it, ask them a question publicly
"What is your current gender pay gap?"
"What percentage of your senior leadership team are women?"
"What specific commitment are you making today that we can hold you to next year?"
Not aggressively. Just genuinely. Because sunlight is the best disinfectant and companies that post without substance should be gently, publicly, reminded of that.
Do something. Or say nothing.
Every IWD, HR asks marketing to post something. Marketing obliges. Nobody asks the obvious question.
A wave of branded graphics rolls across LinkedIn. Purple. Polished. Pointless.
A logo. A slogan. Maybe a stock photo of women laughing in a meeting room that looks nothing like any meeting room any of us have ever actually sat in.
And then, on the 9th of March, it's over. Back to normal.
I find this quietly infuriating. Not because I think the companies doing it are evil. But because it's so easy.
Posting today doesn't celebrate women. It celebrates your marketing team's ability to follow a content calendar.
And easy is exactly the wrong response to a problem that, in 2026, still doesn't have a solution.
So, if you're a business leader who actually wants to do something, here is where I'd start.
Look at your numbers honestly
Pay gap reporting exists. Promotion rates by gender are trackable. The ratio of men to women in your senior leadership team is not a mystery. Most companies know exactly what their numbers look like. They just hope nobody forces them to publish them.
And here is the thing. Publishing them is not the solution. But it is the start. Because the moment numbers are visible, the conversation changes. Stop hiding behind the fact that nobody has made it mandatory yet. Pull up the spreadsheet. Share it with your leadership team. Then decide what you are actually going to do about it.
Understand the difference between mentorship and sponsorship
Here is a question worth sitting with. When did you last put your own reputation on the line for someone who didn't look or sound like you?
Mentorship is telling someone what they could do better. Sponsorship is walking into a room and saying "this person should be here" when they are not in the room to advocate for themselves. One costs you nothing. The other costs you something. That difference is exactly why sponsorship is rare and exactly why it matters.
That, incidentally, is what Give to Gain actually means. Not a slogan. A transaction with real stakes.
Fix your meeting culture
This one is personal to me. I wrote a song about it (its really not that bad but you be the judge).
It's called "Let Me Just Stop You There" and it came out of years of coaching marketers who had experienced exactly this dynamic. The interrupted pitch. The stolen idea. The meeting where someone repeated what you said, louder, two minutes later, and got the credit.
Give it a listen in the Marketing Mixtape section of our site and tell me how strongly you feel I shouldn't give up my day job.
'Let me just stop you there' a song Rich Fitzmaurice wrote for IWD. B2B Marketing United @ b2bmarketing.com
In the song there's a guy called Jonas. Jonas pulls up a chair and spreads his legs like he owns the whole room. Before you've even started, he's decided he's the main character and will walk you all through your area of expertise.
Jonas is not one person. Jonas is a pattern.
Watch who gets interrupted in your next meeting. Watch whose idea comes back around wearing someone else's name. Watch who fills every silence and who has quietly learned it's safer to say nothing at all.
This is where workplace culture actually lives. Not in the values on the wall. Not in the IWD graphic. In the room. In the meeting. In the moment where someone decides whether to speak or not.
Audit how you hire and promote
"Culture fit" is one of the most reliable ways to keep hiring people who look, sound and think like the people already there. And it is women, disproportionately, who get filtered out by that particular phrase.
The leaders who rely on it most are usually the ones with the most to lose from a genuinely diverse room. They do not ask "is this person excellent?" They ask "will this person fit?" And fitting, too often, means not challenging, not disrupting and not threatening the existing order.
Structured interviews, blind CV screening and explicit promotion criteria are not radical ideas. They are just uncomfortable ones for the people who benefit most from the current system. Which is probably why most companies haven't bothered.
Think about who gets the stretch assignments
The high-visibility projects. The big pitches. The roles that build careers and reputations. Who gets nominated? And who gets quietly assumed to not want the travel, the pressure or the step up, without ever being asked?
That assumption has ended more careers than any deliberate act of discrimination.
And if you work in marketing, this one is aimed directly at you
You are the first line of defence.
You control the brief. You control the content calendar. You decide what goes out under your company's name. Which means when a hollow branded graphic gets posted on International Women's Day with nothing behind it, that is partly on you.
I know how it goes. HR sends a message. "Make sure we post something for IWD." The path of least resistance is a purple graphic and a caption. Job done. Box ticked.
But here is the thing about HR. They are often the same people sitting on the pay gap data, the promotion ratios and the gender breakdown of your senior leadership team. They know exactly what the numbers look like. And they will insist that data cannot be shared publicly.
So they want the post. They just don't want the substance.
That is not celebrating women. That is reputation management dressed up as progress.
Next time HR asks you to post for IWD, ask them one question before you open Canva.
"If we're proud of our commitment to women, what are the numbers we can share to prove it?"
If they can't answer that, you have your answer. And so does everyone watching.
If you must post today, here are the only things worth posting
Your actual numbers. Pay gap, promotion ratio, percentage of women in senior leadership. No spin, no context dressing it up. Just the number and one sentence on what you are doing about it.
A specific commitment. Not "we celebrate women." Something measurable, on the record, that you will report back on in twelve months. One thing. Concrete. Signed off.
Specific people. Not "we're so proud of our amazing female colleagues." Named individuals, specific achievements, genuine reasons why people should pay attention to their great work. Use your platform to expand theirs.
Or say nothing. If you have nothing real to offer today, silence is more respectful than a hollow graphic.
And if you see a branded graphic today with nothing behind it, ask them a question publicly
"What is your current gender pay gap?"
"What percentage of your senior leadership team are women?"
"What specific commitment are you making today that we can hold you to next year?"
Not aggressively. Just genuinely. Because sunlight is the best disinfectant and companies that post without substance should be gently, publicly, reminded of that.
Do something. Or say nothing.
London
Mar 8, 2026
Rich Fitzmaurice
Letters
"Dear Rich,
I am a Marketing Director at a B2B fintech. We have about 300 employees but have secured new funding to hire 100 more before the end of the year so we're growing fast.
About 18 months ago we hired a creative agency to handle our brand refresh, website redesign, and campaign creative. The founder is well connected and spoke at an event our CEO attended. He worked his charm and our CEO personally introduced us to them and was very enthusiastic about using them. You can probably see where this is going.
I had no choice but to roll with it. The brand work was fine. Not exceptional, but fine. The website was delivered late and over budget, and the end result was acceptable. Since then we have moved into the ongoing retainer phase and the quality has fallen off a cliff.
The senior people who pitched us are nowhere to be seen. Our day-to-day contact is a mid-level account manager who is perfectly nice but clearly overwhelmed. The creative work is generic. I have sent back briefs three and four times on the same piece of work. Timelines slip constantly and every delay comes with a cheerful apology and no change in behaviour. I feed back clearly and fairly but I strongly feel that there are side conversations going on between my CEO and their founder.
Last month they delivered campaign concepts for our upcoming product launch of the year. It was so off-brief that my team could not even identify which product it was supposed to be for. We will have to redo most of it internally over a few weekends.
Here is the complication. Our CEO still thinks they are great. He plays golf with the agency founder. He references "our agency" in board meetings like it is a point of pride. When I have gently raised concerns, he tells me to "give them clearer briefs" or "be more collaborative" or "manage them better". I honestly feel as if he is being coached by the other side.
I have tried clearer briefs. I have tried workshops. I have tried giving feedback directly to the agency. Each time I get nodding, agreement, promises to put more senior resource on the account, and then absolutely nothing changes.
Meanwhile the retainer is costing us around $15k a month. That is $180k a year going to an agency that is actively making my team's job harder. I would much rather swap them out for someone else or hire in-house.
I do not want to be dramatic about it. They are not terrible people. They are just not delivering. But I feel trapped between an underperforming agency and a CEO who has emotional equity in the relationship.
How do I handle this without losing sleep or my job?"
Laura, Texas
Rich's reply
Laura, I expect most marketing leaders have been in similar situations and it's always a bit maddening.
I remember once when one of my VPs of marketing was having an affair with an agency I couldn't stand and I refused to sign off their purchase orders as they just felt off. I knew saying no could be career limiting but I felt that was the better option for me at that time.
It is one of the hardest dynamics to deal with because the problem is not really about the agency. That on its own would be relatively easy to manage if you had full autonomy. The problem is about relationships and the fact that your CEO has accidentally created a situation where giving honest feedback feels career threatening.
Let us deal with that part first because it is the part that matters most.
Your CEO introduced this agency. He is personally connected to the founder. He references them proudly. He likes them because he liked what he heard about them and he enjoys their company.
When you tell him the agency is underperforming, what he hears, whether he realises it or not, is that his judgement was wrong. Nobody enjoys hearing that, and CEOs enjoy it less than most. Maybe he even, myopically, feels that you'll make him look bad in front of his friend.
So you cannot approach this as "the agency is bad" as that has got you nowhere so far. But you could approach it as "the business has outgrown what this agency can deliver." That is a completely different conversation. One is a whinge. The other is a natural occurrence. Same facts, different frame.
But before you have that conversation, it wouldn't be a bad idea to bring some facts to the table, just in case you need them. Not because your CEO is unreasonable, but because when emotions and personal relationships are involved, fact based arguments may help change the tide.
Here is something you could try and, as always, feel free to take it on board and chart your own course.
Have your team start a simple log. Nothing elaborate. A shared document that tracks every piece of work the agency delivers. Date requested. Date due. Date actually delivered. Number of revision rounds. Whether the final output was used as delivered or reworked internally. Time your team spent on rework.
Do this for eight to twelve weeks. Be scrupulously fair. If they deliver something on time and on brief, log that too. You are not building a prosecution. You are building a picture that you should be mature enough to treat like a hypothesis. "We need to change our agency to get better value for money and drive growth."
At the same time, start tracking the internal cost of rework. When your team spent a weekend redoing that campaign concept, that has a cost. Calculate it. Hours multiplied by loaded salary rates. You do not need to be exact, just be directional. If you are paying $15k a month for agency output and then spending another $8k in internal time fixing it, the real cost of this relationship is $23k a month. That number may get attention in a way that "the creative is not very good" never will.
Now, while you are building this evidence base, I want you to try one more thing with the agency. Because you have to try and be balanced and give the hypothesis a chance to go in whatever direction is true, regardless of feelings.
Request a formal quarterly business review. Put it in writing. Make it structured. Not a coffee and a chat with the founder. An actual meeting with an agenda where you present the data: delivery timelines, revision counts, brief adherence, internal rework hours. Bring your log. Be specific.
If your CEO values the relationship as much as you think he does, then this agency founder should value it too and be mortified by the prospect of not delivering for him.
Cut out the middleman and build that relationship yourself. But the important advice is to be factual.
Say something like: "You are our retained agency for a reason and we want this to continue. But the current delivery model is not meeting our needs and here is the evidence. We need to agree on specific changes and a timeline to see improvement, otherwise we're going to outgrow you pretty soon."
It's not a threat. It's not personal opinion based. It's numbers. You're being fair. And you're giving them a chance to step up.
Give them 60 days after that meeting. Set clear expectations. If the senior people need to be back on the account, say that explicitly. If turnaround times need to improve, define what good looks like. Put it in an email after the meeting so there is a record.
Two things will happen. Either they step up, in which case you have solved the problem without any political fallout and possibly gained an external ally. Or they do not step up, in which case you now have a documented trail that shows you gave them every opportunity and they still could not deliver.
That trail is your protection.
Now let us talk about the CEO conversation.
If the 60 days are up and nothing has changed, you go to your CEO. But you do not go with a complaint. You go with a proposal.
"I want to talk about how we set up our creative support for the next stage of growth. Our pipeline targets are more than what they were when we brought the agency on. I have been tracking our delivery metrics and I think we have outgrown the current model. Here is what I am seeing."
Then you show the data. Timelines. Revision rounds. Rework costs. You are not saying they are bad. You are saying the business has moved and the agency has not moved with it. You are also detailing your dialogue with the founder. You treated his friend fairly.
Then you present the alternative.
Give him a side-by-side comparison. Agency model versus in-house model. Cost, capacity, speed, quality. Make it about what the business needs, not about what the agency is failing to do.
If your CEO still pushes back, and he might, then you have one more card to play. Suggest a hybrid. Keep the agency on a reduced retainer for project work or overflow, which preserves the CEO's relationship, but bring the core capability in-house. This gives him a way to save face while you get the resources you actually need.
The golf friendship does not need to end. And you don't need to be frustrated forever.
By the time you have that conversation you will have four months of evidence, a documented attempt to fix the relationship, and a clear alternative that is better for the business. No reasonable CEO pushes back on that. And if your CEO is unreasonable, well, that is a different letter entirely.
You are not trapped. You just need to sequence this properly. Build the case, give them a fair shot, then move decisively if they miss it.
Onwards,
Rich
Got a question for Rich? Email it to editor@b2bmarketing.com
"Dear Rich,
I am a Marketing Director at a B2B fintech. We have about 300 employees but have secured new funding to hire 100 more before the end of the year so we're growing fast.
About 18 months ago we hired a creative agency to handle our brand refresh, website redesign, and campaign creative. The founder is well connected and spoke at an event our CEO attended. He worked his charm and our CEO personally introduced us to them and was very enthusiastic about using them. You can probably see where this is going.
I had no choice but to roll with it. The brand work was fine. Not exceptional, but fine. The website was delivered late and over budget, and the end result was acceptable. Since then we have moved into the ongoing retainer phase and the quality has fallen off a cliff.
The senior people who pitched us are nowhere to be seen. Our day-to-day contact is a mid-level account manager who is perfectly nice but clearly overwhelmed. The creative work is generic. I have sent back briefs three and four times on the same piece of work. Timelines slip constantly and every delay comes with a cheerful apology and no change in behaviour. I feed back clearly and fairly but I strongly feel that there are side conversations going on between my CEO and their founder.
Last month they delivered campaign concepts for our upcoming product launch of the year. It was so off-brief that my team could not even identify which product it was supposed to be for. We will have to redo most of it internally over a few weekends.
Here is the complication. Our CEO still thinks they are great. He plays golf with the agency founder. He references "our agency" in board meetings like it is a point of pride. When I have gently raised concerns, he tells me to "give them clearer briefs" or "be more collaborative" or "manage them better". I honestly feel as if he is being coached by the other side.
I have tried clearer briefs. I have tried workshops. I have tried giving feedback directly to the agency. Each time I get nodding, agreement, promises to put more senior resource on the account, and then absolutely nothing changes.
Meanwhile the retainer is costing us around $15k a month. That is $180k a year going to an agency that is actively making my team's job harder. I would much rather swap them out for someone else or hire in-house.
I do not want to be dramatic about it. They are not terrible people. They are just not delivering. But I feel trapped between an underperforming agency and a CEO who has emotional equity in the relationship.
How do I handle this without losing sleep or my job?"
Laura, Texas
Rich's reply
Laura, I expect most marketing leaders have been in similar situations and it's always a bit maddening.
I remember once when one of my VPs of marketing was having an affair with an agency I couldn't stand and I refused to sign off their purchase orders as they just felt off. I knew saying no could be career limiting but I felt that was the better option for me at that time.
It is one of the hardest dynamics to deal with because the problem is not really about the agency. That on its own would be relatively easy to manage if you had full autonomy. The problem is about relationships and the fact that your CEO has accidentally created a situation where giving honest feedback feels career threatening.
Let us deal with that part first because it is the part that matters most.
Your CEO introduced this agency. He is personally connected to the founder. He references them proudly. He likes them because he liked what he heard about them and he enjoys their company.
When you tell him the agency is underperforming, what he hears, whether he realises it or not, is that his judgement was wrong. Nobody enjoys hearing that, and CEOs enjoy it less than most. Maybe he even, myopically, feels that you'll make him look bad in front of his friend.
So you cannot approach this as "the agency is bad" as that has got you nowhere so far. But you could approach it as "the business has outgrown what this agency can deliver." That is a completely different conversation. One is a whinge. The other is a natural occurrence. Same facts, different frame.
But before you have that conversation, it wouldn't be a bad idea to bring some facts to the table, just in case you need them. Not because your CEO is unreasonable, but because when emotions and personal relationships are involved, fact based arguments may help change the tide.
Here is something you could try and, as always, feel free to take it on board and chart your own course.
Have your team start a simple log. Nothing elaborate. A shared document that tracks every piece of work the agency delivers. Date requested. Date due. Date actually delivered. Number of revision rounds. Whether the final output was used as delivered or reworked internally. Time your team spent on rework.
Do this for eight to twelve weeks. Be scrupulously fair. If they deliver something on time and on brief, log that too. You are not building a prosecution. You are building a picture that you should be mature enough to treat like a hypothesis. "We need to change our agency to get better value for money and drive growth."
At the same time, start tracking the internal cost of rework. When your team spent a weekend redoing that campaign concept, that has a cost. Calculate it. Hours multiplied by loaded salary rates. You do not need to be exact, just be directional. If you are paying $15k a month for agency output and then spending another $8k in internal time fixing it, the real cost of this relationship is $23k a month. That number may get attention in a way that "the creative is not very good" never will.
Now, while you are building this evidence base, I want you to try one more thing with the agency. Because you have to try and be balanced and give the hypothesis a chance to go in whatever direction is true, regardless of feelings.
Request a formal quarterly business review. Put it in writing. Make it structured. Not a coffee and a chat with the founder. An actual meeting with an agenda where you present the data: delivery timelines, revision counts, brief adherence, internal rework hours. Bring your log. Be specific.
If your CEO values the relationship as much as you think he does, then this agency founder should value it too and be mortified by the prospect of not delivering for him.
Cut out the middleman and build that relationship yourself. But the important advice is to be factual.
Say something like: "You are our retained agency for a reason and we want this to continue. But the current delivery model is not meeting our needs and here is the evidence. We need to agree on specific changes and a timeline to see improvement, otherwise we're going to outgrow you pretty soon."
It's not a threat. It's not personal opinion based. It's numbers. You're being fair. And you're giving them a chance to step up.
Give them 60 days after that meeting. Set clear expectations. If the senior people need to be back on the account, say that explicitly. If turnaround times need to improve, define what good looks like. Put it in an email after the meeting so there is a record.
Two things will happen. Either they step up, in which case you have solved the problem without any political fallout and possibly gained an external ally. Or they do not step up, in which case you now have a documented trail that shows you gave them every opportunity and they still could not deliver.
That trail is your protection.
Now let us talk about the CEO conversation.
If the 60 days are up and nothing has changed, you go to your CEO. But you do not go with a complaint. You go with a proposal.
"I want to talk about how we set up our creative support for the next stage of growth. Our pipeline targets are more than what they were when we brought the agency on. I have been tracking our delivery metrics and I think we have outgrown the current model. Here is what I am seeing."
Then you show the data. Timelines. Revision rounds. Rework costs. You are not saying they are bad. You are saying the business has moved and the agency has not moved with it. You are also detailing your dialogue with the founder. You treated his friend fairly.
Then you present the alternative.
Give him a side-by-side comparison. Agency model versus in-house model. Cost, capacity, speed, quality. Make it about what the business needs, not about what the agency is failing to do.
If your CEO still pushes back, and he might, then you have one more card to play. Suggest a hybrid. Keep the agency on a reduced retainer for project work or overflow, which preserves the CEO's relationship, but bring the core capability in-house. This gives him a way to save face while you get the resources you actually need.
The golf friendship does not need to end. And you don't need to be frustrated forever.
By the time you have that conversation you will have four months of evidence, a documented attempt to fix the relationship, and a clear alternative that is better for the business. No reasonable CEO pushes back on that. And if your CEO is unreasonable, well, that is a different letter entirely.
You are not trapped. You just need to sequence this properly. Build the case, give them a fair shot, then move decisively if they miss it.
Onwards,
Rich
Got a question for Rich? Email it to editor@b2bmarketing.com
"Dear Rich,
I am a Marketing Director at a B2B fintech. We have about 300 employees but have secured new funding to hire 100 more before the end of the year so we're growing fast.
About 18 months ago we hired a creative agency to handle our brand refresh, website redesign, and campaign creative. The founder is well connected and spoke at an event our CEO attended. He worked his charm and our CEO personally introduced us to them and was very enthusiastic about using them. You can probably see where this is going.
I had no choice but to roll with it. The brand work was fine. Not exceptional, but fine. The website was delivered late and over budget, and the end result was acceptable. Since then we have moved into the ongoing retainer phase and the quality has fallen off a cliff.
The senior people who pitched us are nowhere to be seen. Our day-to-day contact is a mid-level account manager who is perfectly nice but clearly overwhelmed. The creative work is generic. I have sent back briefs three and four times on the same piece of work. Timelines slip constantly and every delay comes with a cheerful apology and no change in behaviour. I feed back clearly and fairly but I strongly feel that there are side conversations going on between my CEO and their founder.
Last month they delivered campaign concepts for our upcoming product launch of the year. It was so off-brief that my team could not even identify which product it was supposed to be for. We will have to redo most of it internally over a few weekends.
Here is the complication. Our CEO still thinks they are great. He plays golf with the agency founder. He references "our agency" in board meetings like it is a point of pride. When I have gently raised concerns, he tells me to "give them clearer briefs" or "be more collaborative" or "manage them better". I honestly feel as if he is being coached by the other side.
I have tried clearer briefs. I have tried workshops. I have tried giving feedback directly to the agency. Each time I get nodding, agreement, promises to put more senior resource on the account, and then absolutely nothing changes.
Meanwhile the retainer is costing us around $15k a month. That is $180k a year going to an agency that is actively making my team's job harder. I would much rather swap them out for someone else or hire in-house.
I do not want to be dramatic about it. They are not terrible people. They are just not delivering. But I feel trapped between an underperforming agency and a CEO who has emotional equity in the relationship.
How do I handle this without losing sleep or my job?"
Laura, Texas
Rich's reply
Laura, I expect most marketing leaders have been in similar situations and it's always a bit maddening.
I remember once when one of my VPs of marketing was having an affair with an agency I couldn't stand and I refused to sign off their purchase orders as they just felt off. I knew saying no could be career limiting but I felt that was the better option for me at that time.
It is one of the hardest dynamics to deal with because the problem is not really about the agency. That on its own would be relatively easy to manage if you had full autonomy. The problem is about relationships and the fact that your CEO has accidentally created a situation where giving honest feedback feels career threatening.
Let us deal with that part first because it is the part that matters most.
Your CEO introduced this agency. He is personally connected to the founder. He references them proudly. He likes them because he liked what he heard about them and he enjoys their company.
When you tell him the agency is underperforming, what he hears, whether he realises it or not, is that his judgement was wrong. Nobody enjoys hearing that, and CEOs enjoy it less than most. Maybe he even, myopically, feels that you'll make him look bad in front of his friend.
So you cannot approach this as "the agency is bad" as that has got you nowhere so far. But you could approach it as "the business has outgrown what this agency can deliver." That is a completely different conversation. One is a whinge. The other is a natural occurrence. Same facts, different frame.
But before you have that conversation, it wouldn't be a bad idea to bring some facts to the table, just in case you need them. Not because your CEO is unreasonable, but because when emotions and personal relationships are involved, fact based arguments may help change the tide.
Here is something you could try and, as always, feel free to take it on board and chart your own course.
Have your team start a simple log. Nothing elaborate. A shared document that tracks every piece of work the agency delivers. Date requested. Date due. Date actually delivered. Number of revision rounds. Whether the final output was used as delivered or reworked internally. Time your team spent on rework.
Do this for eight to twelve weeks. Be scrupulously fair. If they deliver something on time and on brief, log that too. You are not building a prosecution. You are building a picture that you should be mature enough to treat like a hypothesis. "We need to change our agency to get better value for money and drive growth."
At the same time, start tracking the internal cost of rework. When your team spent a weekend redoing that campaign concept, that has a cost. Calculate it. Hours multiplied by loaded salary rates. You do not need to be exact, just be directional. If you are paying $15k a month for agency output and then spending another $8k in internal time fixing it, the real cost of this relationship is $23k a month. That number may get attention in a way that "the creative is not very good" never will.
Now, while you are building this evidence base, I want you to try one more thing with the agency. Because you have to try and be balanced and give the hypothesis a chance to go in whatever direction is true, regardless of feelings.
Request a formal quarterly business review. Put it in writing. Make it structured. Not a coffee and a chat with the founder. An actual meeting with an agenda where you present the data: delivery timelines, revision counts, brief adherence, internal rework hours. Bring your log. Be specific.
If your CEO values the relationship as much as you think he does, then this agency founder should value it too and be mortified by the prospect of not delivering for him.
Cut out the middleman and build that relationship yourself. But the important advice is to be factual.
Say something like: "You are our retained agency for a reason and we want this to continue. But the current delivery model is not meeting our needs and here is the evidence. We need to agree on specific changes and a timeline to see improvement, otherwise we're going to outgrow you pretty soon."
It's not a threat. It's not personal opinion based. It's numbers. You're being fair. And you're giving them a chance to step up.
Give them 60 days after that meeting. Set clear expectations. If the senior people need to be back on the account, say that explicitly. If turnaround times need to improve, define what good looks like. Put it in an email after the meeting so there is a record.
Two things will happen. Either they step up, in which case you have solved the problem without any political fallout and possibly gained an external ally. Or they do not step up, in which case you now have a documented trail that shows you gave them every opportunity and they still could not deliver.
That trail is your protection.
Now let us talk about the CEO conversation.
If the 60 days are up and nothing has changed, you go to your CEO. But you do not go with a complaint. You go with a proposal.
"I want to talk about how we set up our creative support for the next stage of growth. Our pipeline targets are more than what they were when we brought the agency on. I have been tracking our delivery metrics and I think we have outgrown the current model. Here is what I am seeing."
Then you show the data. Timelines. Revision rounds. Rework costs. You are not saying they are bad. You are saying the business has moved and the agency has not moved with it. You are also detailing your dialogue with the founder. You treated his friend fairly.
Then you present the alternative.
Give him a side-by-side comparison. Agency model versus in-house model. Cost, capacity, speed, quality. Make it about what the business needs, not about what the agency is failing to do.
If your CEO still pushes back, and he might, then you have one more card to play. Suggest a hybrid. Keep the agency on a reduced retainer for project work or overflow, which preserves the CEO's relationship, but bring the core capability in-house. This gives him a way to save face while you get the resources you actually need.
The golf friendship does not need to end. And you don't need to be frustrated forever.
By the time you have that conversation you will have four months of evidence, a documented attempt to fix the relationship, and a clear alternative that is better for the business. No reasonable CEO pushes back on that. And if your CEO is unreasonable, well, that is a different letter entirely.
You are not trapped. You just need to sequence this properly. Build the case, give them a fair shot, then move decisively if they miss it.
Onwards,
Rich
Got a question for Rich? Email it to editor@b2bmarketing.com
Content
Mar 3, 2026
Content
How to's
In my experience, most PR underperforms for one simple reason. It is built to generate coverage, not influence.
Press releases go out. Coverage appears. Logos get dropped into decks. Somewhere along the way, teams convince themselves that visibility equals impact.
It does not.
In complex B2B buying, nobody buys because they saw your logo in the trade press. They buy because choosing you feels safe, defensible, and sensible to the people who have to put their names against the decision.
PR only works when it reduces risk. When it does not, it becomes noise.
What PR is actually for in B2B
PR is not about announcements or press releases (I am not even sure journalists read them anymore). It is not about share of voice. It is not about chasing journalists for coverage.
In our world, PR exists to build external credibility that buyers can borrow internally.
When a deal is live, buying group members are quietly asking themselves variations of:
Are these people legitimate?
Do they understand our world?
Have others trusted them before?
Would I look foolish defending this choice internally?
This aligns closely with buying group research from Gartner, which shows that deals stall far more often due to lack of confidence and consensus than lack of information. PR contributes to what Gartner calls sense making. It helps groups align around whether a decision feels safe.
So from that viewpoint, PR is another tool in the arsenal that helps do that job.
PR is not the same as media relations
One reason PR disappoints is because it is often reduced to media relations alone.
It actually includes:
Media commentary
Executive visibility
Analyst relations
Third party validation
Consistent narrative across external touchpoints
Media coverage is just one output. Credibility is the outcome.
You can get plenty of coverage and still be ignored in deals if what you say sounds generic, inconsistent, or self-congratulatory.
Why most B2B PR fails
Most B2B PR fails in predictable ways.
It sounds like marketing
It talks about the company, not the problem
It overclaims and underexplains
It avoids trade-offs and reality
It focuses on announcements that only matter to that firm, rather than insight for anybody else
This is why buyers skim it or ignore it entirely. They are not looking for promotion. They are looking for reassurance.
Research from the Edelman Trust Barometer consistently shows that people trust expertise, transparency, and third-party validation far more than corporate messaging. PR that feels polished but empty actively erodes trust.
What is actually newsworthy in B2B
Most B2B companies are not newsworthy because they exist. They become newsworthy when they help others make sense of change.
What journalists and buyers actually care about:
What is changing in the market?
What is breaking or no longer working?
What leaders are seeing that others are missing?
What trade-offs organizations are facing?
What mistakes are being repeated?
This is why commentary outperforms announcements. Insight travels further than information.
If your PR plan is built around what you want to say rather than what your market is struggling to understand, it will not perform. It simply adds to the plethora of noise that is already out there.
Credibility is built through consistency, not volume
Buyers do not remember one article. They remember patterns.
This is where mental availability matters. Research from the B2B Institute shows that brands grow by being consistently associated with specific problems and outcomes over time.
Effective PR reinforces the same story across:
Executive interviews
Bylined articles
Panel appearances
Analyst commentary
Partner quotes
If each appearance tells a slightly different version of who you are, or if different executives say conflicting things, you are not building credibility, you are creating friction.
Reality check
If your CEO sounds visionary, your CTO sounds tactical, your PR agency sounds promotional, and your sales team sounds defensive, buyers will trust none of them.
How PR actually supports live deals
PR will never close deals directly, of course, but bad PR can lose it.
It can make sales conversations easier.
Good PR helps when:
Prospects already recognize your name
Stakeholders reference your perspective unprompted
Objections sound familiar rather than hostile
Sales spends less time proving legitimacy
This aligns with Forrester guidance on executive thought leadership, which emphasizes that credibility shortens evaluation cycles by reducing perceived risk.
PR works best when sales does not have to explain it.
How to tell if your PR is building credibility
If you want a simple diagnostic, ask these questions:
Would a journalist describe us as experts in one specific thing?
Do our leaders sound consistent across interviews?
Does sales ever forward this coverage without being asked?
Would a cautious buyer feel safer after reading this?
If the answer is no, the issue is not distribution it is a lack of substance.
How to measure PR without pretending attribution
PR does not lend itself to last click attribution and pretending otherwise damages its credibility internally.
Avoid over relying on:
Raw coverage volume
Share of voice without context
Generic sentiment scores
Last click revenue models
Instead, look for signals that confidence is forming:
Sales referencing coverage in meetings
Increased inbound credibility rather than inbound volume
Faster movement through late-stage objections
Analyst inclusion and citation
Executives being sought out for perspective
PR should be discussed in the language of influence, not performance marketing.
The simple rule to remember
PR in B2B is not about being visible. It is about being believable.
If your PR helps buyers feel safer choosing you and helps sales spend less time proving legitimacy, it is working. If it just fills a coverage report, it is not. Especially if you don’t actually recognise the publications who picked up your press release verbatim.
Call to action
Audit your last six months of PR and ask one hard question.
If a cautious buyer read this, would they feel more confident choosing us?
If the answer is unclear, stop producing more content and fix the narrative first.
Decide what you want to be trusted for.
Ensure your leaders sound consistent.
Prioritize insight over announcements.
Measure confidence, not clicks.
If you want help turning PR into a credibility engine rather than a coverage machine, get in touch and we will introduce you to people who genuinely know what good looks like.
In my experience, most PR underperforms for one simple reason. It is built to generate coverage, not influence.
Press releases go out. Coverage appears. Logos get dropped into decks. Somewhere along the way, teams convince themselves that visibility equals impact.
It does not.
In complex B2B buying, nobody buys because they saw your logo in the trade press. They buy because choosing you feels safe, defensible, and sensible to the people who have to put their names against the decision.
PR only works when it reduces risk. When it does not, it becomes noise.
What PR is actually for in B2B
PR is not about announcements or press releases (I am not even sure journalists read them anymore). It is not about share of voice. It is not about chasing journalists for coverage.
In our world, PR exists to build external credibility that buyers can borrow internally.
When a deal is live, buying group members are quietly asking themselves variations of:
Are these people legitimate?
Do they understand our world?
Have others trusted them before?
Would I look foolish defending this choice internally?
This aligns closely with buying group research from Gartner, which shows that deals stall far more often due to lack of confidence and consensus than lack of information. PR contributes to what Gartner calls sense making. It helps groups align around whether a decision feels safe.
So from that viewpoint, PR is another tool in the arsenal that helps do that job.
PR is not the same as media relations
One reason PR disappoints is because it is often reduced to media relations alone.
It actually includes:
Media commentary
Executive visibility
Analyst relations
Third party validation
Consistent narrative across external touchpoints
Media coverage is just one output. Credibility is the outcome.
You can get plenty of coverage and still be ignored in deals if what you say sounds generic, inconsistent, or self-congratulatory.
Why most B2B PR fails
Most B2B PR fails in predictable ways.
It sounds like marketing
It talks about the company, not the problem
It overclaims and underexplains
It avoids trade-offs and reality
It focuses on announcements that only matter to that firm, rather than insight for anybody else
This is why buyers skim it or ignore it entirely. They are not looking for promotion. They are looking for reassurance.
Research from the Edelman Trust Barometer consistently shows that people trust expertise, transparency, and third-party validation far more than corporate messaging. PR that feels polished but empty actively erodes trust.
What is actually newsworthy in B2B
Most B2B companies are not newsworthy because they exist. They become newsworthy when they help others make sense of change.
What journalists and buyers actually care about:
What is changing in the market?
What is breaking or no longer working?
What leaders are seeing that others are missing?
What trade-offs organizations are facing?
What mistakes are being repeated?
This is why commentary outperforms announcements. Insight travels further than information.
If your PR plan is built around what you want to say rather than what your market is struggling to understand, it will not perform. It simply adds to the plethora of noise that is already out there.
Credibility is built through consistency, not volume
Buyers do not remember one article. They remember patterns.
This is where mental availability matters. Research from the B2B Institute shows that brands grow by being consistently associated with specific problems and outcomes over time.
Effective PR reinforces the same story across:
Executive interviews
Bylined articles
Panel appearances
Analyst commentary
Partner quotes
If each appearance tells a slightly different version of who you are, or if different executives say conflicting things, you are not building credibility, you are creating friction.
Reality check
If your CEO sounds visionary, your CTO sounds tactical, your PR agency sounds promotional, and your sales team sounds defensive, buyers will trust none of them.
How PR actually supports live deals
PR will never close deals directly, of course, but bad PR can lose it.
It can make sales conversations easier.
Good PR helps when:
Prospects already recognize your name
Stakeholders reference your perspective unprompted
Objections sound familiar rather than hostile
Sales spends less time proving legitimacy
This aligns with Forrester guidance on executive thought leadership, which emphasizes that credibility shortens evaluation cycles by reducing perceived risk.
PR works best when sales does not have to explain it.
How to tell if your PR is building credibility
If you want a simple diagnostic, ask these questions:
Would a journalist describe us as experts in one specific thing?
Do our leaders sound consistent across interviews?
Does sales ever forward this coverage without being asked?
Would a cautious buyer feel safer after reading this?
If the answer is no, the issue is not distribution it is a lack of substance.
How to measure PR without pretending attribution
PR does not lend itself to last click attribution and pretending otherwise damages its credibility internally.
Avoid over relying on:
Raw coverage volume
Share of voice without context
Generic sentiment scores
Last click revenue models
Instead, look for signals that confidence is forming:
Sales referencing coverage in meetings
Increased inbound credibility rather than inbound volume
Faster movement through late-stage objections
Analyst inclusion and citation
Executives being sought out for perspective
PR should be discussed in the language of influence, not performance marketing.
The simple rule to remember
PR in B2B is not about being visible. It is about being believable.
If your PR helps buyers feel safer choosing you and helps sales spend less time proving legitimacy, it is working. If it just fills a coverage report, it is not. Especially if you don’t actually recognise the publications who picked up your press release verbatim.
Call to action
Audit your last six months of PR and ask one hard question.
If a cautious buyer read this, would they feel more confident choosing us?
If the answer is unclear, stop producing more content and fix the narrative first.
Decide what you want to be trusted for.
Ensure your leaders sound consistent.
Prioritize insight over announcements.
Measure confidence, not clicks.
If you want help turning PR into a credibility engine rather than a coverage machine, get in touch and we will introduce you to people who genuinely know what good looks like.
In my experience, most PR underperforms for one simple reason. It is built to generate coverage, not influence.
Press releases go out. Coverage appears. Logos get dropped into decks. Somewhere along the way, teams convince themselves that visibility equals impact.
It does not.
In complex B2B buying, nobody buys because they saw your logo in the trade press. They buy because choosing you feels safe, defensible, and sensible to the people who have to put their names against the decision.
PR only works when it reduces risk. When it does not, it becomes noise.
What PR is actually for in B2B
PR is not about announcements or press releases (I am not even sure journalists read them anymore). It is not about share of voice. It is not about chasing journalists for coverage.
In our world, PR exists to build external credibility that buyers can borrow internally.
When a deal is live, buying group members are quietly asking themselves variations of:
Are these people legitimate?
Do they understand our world?
Have others trusted them before?
Would I look foolish defending this choice internally?
This aligns closely with buying group research from Gartner, which shows that deals stall far more often due to lack of confidence and consensus than lack of information. PR contributes to what Gartner calls sense making. It helps groups align around whether a decision feels safe.
So from that viewpoint, PR is another tool in the arsenal that helps do that job.
PR is not the same as media relations
One reason PR disappoints is because it is often reduced to media relations alone.
It actually includes:
Media commentary
Executive visibility
Analyst relations
Third party validation
Consistent narrative across external touchpoints
Media coverage is just one output. Credibility is the outcome.
You can get plenty of coverage and still be ignored in deals if what you say sounds generic, inconsistent, or self-congratulatory.
Why most B2B PR fails
Most B2B PR fails in predictable ways.
It sounds like marketing
It talks about the company, not the problem
It overclaims and underexplains
It avoids trade-offs and reality
It focuses on announcements that only matter to that firm, rather than insight for anybody else
This is why buyers skim it or ignore it entirely. They are not looking for promotion. They are looking for reassurance.
Research from the Edelman Trust Barometer consistently shows that people trust expertise, transparency, and third-party validation far more than corporate messaging. PR that feels polished but empty actively erodes trust.
What is actually newsworthy in B2B
Most B2B companies are not newsworthy because they exist. They become newsworthy when they help others make sense of change.
What journalists and buyers actually care about:
What is changing in the market?
What is breaking or no longer working?
What leaders are seeing that others are missing?
What trade-offs organizations are facing?
What mistakes are being repeated?
This is why commentary outperforms announcements. Insight travels further than information.
If your PR plan is built around what you want to say rather than what your market is struggling to understand, it will not perform. It simply adds to the plethora of noise that is already out there.
Credibility is built through consistency, not volume
Buyers do not remember one article. They remember patterns.
This is where mental availability matters. Research from the B2B Institute shows that brands grow by being consistently associated with specific problems and outcomes over time.
Effective PR reinforces the same story across:
Executive interviews
Bylined articles
Panel appearances
Analyst commentary
Partner quotes
If each appearance tells a slightly different version of who you are, or if different executives say conflicting things, you are not building credibility, you are creating friction.
Reality check
If your CEO sounds visionary, your CTO sounds tactical, your PR agency sounds promotional, and your sales team sounds defensive, buyers will trust none of them.
How PR actually supports live deals
PR will never close deals directly, of course, but bad PR can lose it.
It can make sales conversations easier.
Good PR helps when:
Prospects already recognize your name
Stakeholders reference your perspective unprompted
Objections sound familiar rather than hostile
Sales spends less time proving legitimacy
This aligns with Forrester guidance on executive thought leadership, which emphasizes that credibility shortens evaluation cycles by reducing perceived risk.
PR works best when sales does not have to explain it.
How to tell if your PR is building credibility
If you want a simple diagnostic, ask these questions:
Would a journalist describe us as experts in one specific thing?
Do our leaders sound consistent across interviews?
Does sales ever forward this coverage without being asked?
Would a cautious buyer feel safer after reading this?
If the answer is no, the issue is not distribution it is a lack of substance.
How to measure PR without pretending attribution
PR does not lend itself to last click attribution and pretending otherwise damages its credibility internally.
Avoid over relying on:
Raw coverage volume
Share of voice without context
Generic sentiment scores
Last click revenue models
Instead, look for signals that confidence is forming:
Sales referencing coverage in meetings
Increased inbound credibility rather than inbound volume
Faster movement through late-stage objections
Analyst inclusion and citation
Executives being sought out for perspective
PR should be discussed in the language of influence, not performance marketing.
The simple rule to remember
PR in B2B is not about being visible. It is about being believable.
If your PR helps buyers feel safer choosing you and helps sales spend less time proving legitimacy, it is working. If it just fills a coverage report, it is not. Especially if you don’t actually recognise the publications who picked up your press release verbatim.
Call to action
Audit your last six months of PR and ask one hard question.
If a cautious buyer read this, would they feel more confident choosing us?
If the answer is unclear, stop producing more content and fix the narrative first.
Decide what you want to be trusted for.
Ensure your leaders sound consistent.
Prioritize insight over announcements.
Measure confidence, not clicks.
If you want help turning PR into a credibility engine rather than a coverage machine, get in touch and we will introduce you to people who genuinely know what good looks like.
Content
Feb 8, 2026
Content
