There are two women selling food at Kariakoo. They have set their stalls side by side, shoulder to shoulder. This one’s pilau and that one’s pilau come from the same market. The same oil. The same price. Yet every afternoon one stall is packed until people are left standing, while the other sits silent as a shop closed for a funeral.
One day I sat to the side and listened. A customer told his friend, “Let’s go to this one, her food has the taste.” The other shot back, “True, that neighbor, I once heard someone got a bad stomach there.” Nobody had cooked. Nobody had tasted. Yet the verdict was passed before a single plate was served.
Right there I remembered something many business owners still stubbornly refuse to understand: people do not buy the product first; they buy the reputation first. That is why companies with average products strut around the market while those with better products struggle quietly in the corner. And this is where PR enters. Not as decoration. Not as noise. But as power.
We are living in an era that is dangerous and fascinating at the same time. An era where a single tweet can shake a company before the morning tea is finished. An era where one podcast interview can turn a person into an authority in their industry overnight. An era where a review written by a customer lying in bed can crash the reputation of a billion-shilling company before dawn.
Research by Nielsen shows that 92 percent of consumers worldwide trust what other people say about you, what our learned friends call earned media, more than the advertisements you blow your own trumpet with. Read that sentence carefully. People believe what others say about you more than what you say about yourself. That changes everything.
It means a beautiful logo alone is no longer enough. Paid advertising alone is no longer enough. Today’s customer has become a detective. He reads the comments, follows the reviews, watches the interviews, studies how a company’s leaders behave when pressure arrives. The modern customer does not just buy a product. He buys trust.
The biggest mistake many organizations still make is treating PR like a fire taskforce. They remember the Communications Department only when a fire breaks out. Only when reputation begins to bleed in public. But serious organizations understand something different: PR does not come to rescue reputation after the damage, PR builds reputation before the damage even arrives.
That is why smart companies invest heavily in strategic media relations. Not merely to be seen in the papers. But because credibility has become economic power. A company that appears regularly in respected media looks more trustworthy than one that only praises itself on its own pages. That is human psychology. One interview on a respected business platform can close a deal faster than ten sales meetings.
Today everyone is visible. CEOs post motivational quotes every morning. Companies dance on TikTok. But being seen and being trusted are two entirely different things. You can be trending every day and still lack credibility. Because reputation is not built by visibility alone. It is built by consistency, by not wobbling.
This is where real thought leadership matters. Not corporate noise dressed in the robes of wisdom. When a leader speaks with clarity, offers light, understands the problems of the industry deeply enough to educate the market rather than entertain it, people begin to trust him differently. And trust changes the behavior of the market. Suddenly investors listen differently. Customers engage differently.
Every company looks strong in peacetime. The real test begins when pressure arrives. A product fails. A customer complains in public. A scandal surfaces online. That is when an organization discovers whether its reputation was real or merely pasted on. That is why crisis communication has become one of the most important functions in modern PR.
Because in a crisis, people do not watch the problem alone. They watch behavior. Does the company hide? Does the leadership panic? Do they tell the truth? Sometimes reputation grows stronger after a crisis because people respect accountability. And sometimes billion-shilling companies collapse because arrogance walked into the room before honesty did.
In the past, companies held the reins of the narrative almost completely. Today the narrative has scattered into everybody’s hands. A young person with a phone can move public opinion faster than a campaign worth million. That is why influencer relations has become a business strategy, not merely online entertainment.
But even here, audiences have grown clever. People spot a pasted-on partnership instantly. Today’s consumer is looking for authenticity. He wants real voices. He wants genuine alignment between a company and the people who represent it. The days of forcing reputation are slowly dying.
Many executives still think PR is about publicity. It is not. PR is positioning. It is deciding how people will feel before they make a decision. Because before an investor invests, reputation speaks. Before a customer buys, reputation speaks. Before the public trusts an institution, reputation speaks.
PR sits quietly behind all these processes, shaping the narrative, steering the conversation, building authority and managing trust. Smart organizations already understand this. The rest are still spending millions trying to advertise their way out of a weak reputation. Unfortunately, reputation no longer obeys advertising. Let us not fool ourselves, today PR decides reputation, and reputation decides everything else.
And here is my small fear: that second woman at Kariakoo, the one with the sweeter pilau but no name, unless she learns to build her reputation, will keep cooking good food for customers who never come. Because in today’s world, he who does not build his own reputation has one built for him by rumor.
Insightful piece. Thanks for sharing.