When choosing a PR agency, one of the first questions businesses often ask is, “How many years of experience do you have?” It’s a fair question. Experience builds confidence, develops judgement and provides reassurance that your agency has seen and managed a wide range of situations.

However, in today’s communications landscape, years alone don’t tell the whole story.

A more valuable question is, “How broad is your experience, and how current is it?” The strongest agencies don’t simply have decades of experience. They combine that experience with exposure to multiple industries, evolving media landscapes and changing audience behaviours. They never stop learning, because PR never stands still.

PR is constantly changing

Public relations is one of the fastest-moving industries there is. Journalists change beats, media outlets evolve, social media platforms introduce new features, search behaviour shifts and artificial intelligence is already transforming how people discover businesses online.

What worked five or even two years ago may no longer deliver the same results today.

That’s why experience shouldn’t simply be measured by time. It should also be measured by relevance. The most effective PR professionals are continually adapting, testing new approaches and understanding how changes in the communications landscape affect the way businesses build their reputation.

A wider range of experience creates stronger ideas

One of the biggest advantages of working with a PR agency is the breadth of industries they work across. On any given week, an agency might be supporting a hospitality group, a technology company, a healthcare provider, a professional services firm and a commercial property business.

At first glance, these sectors couldn’t be more different.

In reality, they constantly influence one another.

A campaign that successfully engages customers in hospitality may inspire a professional services business to rethink how it tells client success stories. A thought leadership strategy developed for a technology company could help a manufacturer position itself as an industry expert. Sometimes the best ideas aren’t completely new, but instead they’re proven approaches that have been successfully adapted from another industry.

That wider perspective is difficult to achieve when your experience is limited to one market.

Fresh perspectives prevent businesses from standing still

Every industry develops habits. Over time, businesses naturally begin watching their competitors and adopting similar approaches. Before long, everyone is saying the same things in similar ways.

An agency that works across multiple sectors brings fresh thinking because it isn’t confined by one industry’s expectations. It sees different ways of solving problems, different storytelling techniques and different opportunities to engage audiences.

Often, the most successful PR campaigns come from challenging the assumption that “this is how our industry always does it.”

Innovation rarely happens by copying competitors. It happens by looking beyond them.

Years of experience still matter

None of this means that length of experience isn’t important.

Years in PR develop invaluable skills. They build media relationships, strengthen strategic thinking and provide the judgement needed to navigate difficult situations with confidence. Those experiences cannot be replaced overnight.

However, years of experience are at their most valuable when they’re combined with continuous learning.

Someone with 30 years of experience who continues to embrace new technology, follows changes in the media and works across a broad range of industries brings enormous value. Equally, someone who relies solely on techniques that worked decades ago may struggle in an industry that evolves almost daily.

Experience should never become static. It should continue growing alongside the industry itself.

Why this matters for your business

When you appoint a PR agency, you’re not simply paying for the number of years they’ve been operating. You’re investing in the knowledge, ideas and insight they bring to your business today.

An agency with broad, current experience is more likely to spot emerging trends, identify opportunities before competitors do and introduce ideas that have been proven elsewhere. They can see connections that businesses working solely within one industry may never notice.

That breadth of experience often becomes a competitive advantage.

What to look for when choosing a PR agency

Rather than focusing only on how long an agency has been established, look at the bigger picture. Ask which industries they currently work in, how they stay up to date with changes in PR, media and AI, and how they continue developing their expertise.

The answers to those questions will often tell you far more than the number of years listed on their website.

The best PR agencies combine depth with breadth

At Briscoe PR, we believe the strongest communications advice comes from combining experience with continuous learning.

This November marks 20 years of Briscoe PR, while our Director, Kevin Briscoe, brings almost 40 years of communications experience, having started his career as a journalist in Portsmouth. That background provides a deep understanding of what makes a story newsworthy, how the media works and how reputations are built over time.

However, as we have discussed, we don’t believe experience should ever stand still.

As a Chartered PR Practitioner and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), Kevin is committed to continuous professional development and staying at the forefront of an industry that evolves every day. Alongside our work across hospitality, commercial property, technology, healthcare, professional services, logistics and many other sectors, we’re constantly exposed to new ideas, emerging trends and changing audience behaviours.

That’s exactly why we believe range of experience matters just as much as length of experience.

Every client, every industry and every campaign teaches us something new. The insight we gain from one sector often helps another. Combined with decades of communications expertise, that breadth of experience allows us to bring fresh thinking while grounding every recommendation in proven PR principles.

For us, experience isn’t simply about how long you’ve been doing the job. It’s about how willing you are to keep learning, how well you adapt to change and how effectively you use everything you’ve learned to deliver better results for your clients.

Looking for a PR agency with both depth and breadth of experience? Get in touch.