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In an AI-powered, social-first world, reputation is no longer a communications issue. It is a business issue, and PR leaders are increasingly responsible for seeing the risks and opportunities across the entire marketing ecosystem.
Callaway Golf did not produce the video that landed in a reputational firestorm this week. But it approved it.
That distinction would make every CMO, communications executive and agency leader uncomfortable.
In case you missed it, the promotional video, created by Good Good Golf to support the brands' co-branded driver, showed Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark running toward golfer Alexis Miestowski, shoving her to the ground and standing over her as he warned her not to touch his new driver. The backlash was swift. The video was removed, apologies followed and Callaway CEO Chip Brewer acknowledged a critical detail: Although Good Good produced the content, Callaway approved it before it was published.
The obvious question is: who thought this was a good creative idea?
But there is a more important one: who was in the room asking what this could do to the brand's reputation?
That question gets to a much bigger shift taking place across marketing. For years, PR has been treated as one piece of the marketing mix. Advertising drove awareness, digital drove conversion, social drove engagement and influencers built communities. PR was often brought in to manage earned media, corporate reputation and, when necessary, a crisis.
The model is outdated.
In today's social-first, AI-powered world, nearly every marketing decision can become a reputation decision in minutes. A social post can become a national headline. An influencer partnership can create a brand crisis. An AI-generated campaign can raise questions about authenticity and judgment. A provocative piece of creative can enter a cultural conversation far larger than anything the marketing team intended.
That is why PR is no longer simply another marketing channel. It should serve as the reputation lens across the entire marketing ecosystem. And increasingly, senior communications executives need to think and operate with the enterprise-wide perspective traditionally associated with CMOs.
Consumers Don't See Your Marketing Silos
Companies may divide marketing into specialties such as PR, advertising, social, digital, influencer, experiential, performance and content, but consumers do not experience brands that way. They see one company, one voice and one reputation.
They do not care which agency created the campaign, which influencer posted the video or which department approved the copy. If your logo is on it, your reputation is attached to it.
Viewed purely through a creative lens, someone may have considered the Callaway and Good Good video provocative, irreverent or funny. Viewed through a reputation lens, the risks become much more apparent. That is where modern communications leadership belongs.
The job is no longer simply to ask whether people will see a campaign or whether it will perform. Communications leaders also need to ask how people will interpret it, whether it aligns with what the company says it stands for and what could happen once the content leaves the context in which it was created.
One of the most effective questions is also one of the simplest: if this becomes tomorrow's headline, are we comfortable defending it?
That question alone could prevent a surprising number of corporate crises.
Callaway is hardly the first major brand to learn how quickly creative execution can become a reputation story. Apple apologized in 2024 after its "Crush!" iPad Pro ad showed musical instruments, cameras, art supplies and other symbols of creativity being destroyed by an industrial press. Jaguar's dramatic "Copy Nothing" rebrand generated enormous attention and an equally intense debate about whether the automaker was boldly reinventing itself or distancing itself from decades of brand equity. Jaguar leadership defended the strategy, arguing that the company needed to break from traditional automotive marketing to avoid disappearing into a sea of sameness. That distinction matters because controversy is not inherently bad marketing.
PR's job is not to make marketing safe, boring or controversy-free. It is not to stand at the end of the creative process with a red pen and a list of reasons something cannot be done.
The reputation lens is not a veto. It is a decision-making tool.
Sometimes provocation works. A brand may intentionally challenge convention, enter an uncomfortable conversation or make a dramatic break from its past. Good communications leadership does not eliminate those possibilities. It helps the organization understand the conversation it is entering, anticipate how different audiences may receive it and consciously decide whether the potential upside is worth the reputational risk.
Provocation can be strategic. Discovering what your campaign means to the public only after you publish it is not.
The Role of PR in Modern Marketing Has Changed
PR professionals are still storytellers. We build visibility, earn credibility, establish thought leadership and secure media coverage. But the role of senior communications leaders has expanded significantly. Increasingly, we are also reputation architects.
That requires visibility across advertising, social media, influencer marketing, executive communications, AI-generated content, partnerships, employee communications, product launches and cultural conversations. Not because PR should control every marketing function, but because someone needs to connect them.
This is also why PR should be involved earlier in marketing decisions. Too often, communications teams are asked to manage the fallout from a decision they had no opportunity to pressure-test in the first place. By the time a campaign has been produced, approved, distributed and criticized, the role of communications has already shifted from strategy to damage control.
A communications leader with a view across the business can pressure-test a creative idea against the reputation a company has spent years building. They can identify when an influencer partnership carries implications beyond reach and engagement. They can anticipate how an employee message might land if it becomes public, how AI-generated content might affect trust or how a campaign created for one audience could be interpreted very differently by another.
That is what applying a reputation lens to modern marketing actually means.
Great PR has always been about more than publicity. At its best, it helps an organization understand how it is perceived, how it earns credibility and what its decisions communicate to the people who matter to the business. What has changed is the speed, scale and number of places in which reputation is now being shaped.
The social team may publish the post, the advertising agency may develop the campaign, the influencer may create the video and the performance team may distribute it. AI may even generate part of it. Internally, those responsibilities may belong to five different teams. Externally, the public attributes all of them to one entity: the brand.
That is why communications leaders need to be in the room before the work reaches the world, not simply called into the room after something goes wrong.
Campaigns come and go ... algorithms change ... platforms evolve. Trends can disappear almost as quickly as they emerge. Reputation is different; it compounds over years and can be damaged in minutes.
For organizations asking where PR belongs in the modern marketing organization, that is the answer. It no longer belongs at the edge of the marketing mix, waiting to amplify what everyone else has created. It belongs closer to the center, helping leaders understand not only whether an idea will generate attention but what that attention could ultimately mean for the business.
The companies that understand this will increasingly look to their senior communications executives not simply as the people responsible for press, but as leaders responsible for helping protect, strengthen and grow one of the most valuable assets any brand owns: trust.
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