What is considered PR experience?

PwC Australia lost its chief executive, government contracts and a chunk of its international standing in 2023, not because of a single leaked email, but because the firm had no answer ready for the question that followed it.

A PwC partner had shared confidential Treasury briefings on multinational tax law with colleagues, who then used that information to help clients get ahead of legislation still being drafted. Once the leak surfaced, the firm’s communications response arrived late, thin and defensive. CEO Tom Seymour stepped down. The federal government suspended PwC from new contracts. The Senate opened an inquiry that ran for months, dragging the firm’s international network into the story as well.

That sequence is the clearest illustration available of a question boards rarely ask before they hire a communications adviser: what actually counts as PR experience?

Most people answer that question with a resume line. Years in the industry. Agencies worked for. Campaigns delivered. As a result, the answer misses the point.

PwC did not lack communications resourcing. It had expert PR and marketing, built around brand campaigns, thought leadership and client-facing content. None of that experience had been tested against a genuine trust crisis involving government confidentiality, regulatory exposure and criminal referral risk. When that crisis arrived, the team managing it was applying marketing-grade instincts to a legal and reputational emergency, and the gap showed within days.

This is why crisis communications is treated as a distinct discipline, not an extension of standard corporate affairs. A senior title on a business card says nothing about what a person has actually done when a regulator calls, a journalist already has the documents, and a board wants an answer within the hour.

If titles do not settle the question, results do. Three tests separate a real track record from a polished resume.

Boards evaluating a crisis communications consultant should ask which crises, not how many years. A reputation management consultant worth retaining should be able to point to the sectors, the regulators and the recoveries, rather than reaching for language about “strategic counsel.”

CEO reputation management in Australia carries particular weight, because the leader’s personal credibility and the organisation’s credibility are rarely separable once a crisis breaks. PwC’s global network felt the effects of a domestic tax leak within weeks, which shows how quickly a leadership failure travels once it becomes public.

A chief executive under pressure needs an adviser who has stood in that exact position before, not a generalist applying broad skills to an unfamiliar situation. My model has always been direct, senior involvement rather than a rotating account team. Clients get 24 years of pattern recognition from actual crises, not a junior escalating questions upward. My background as a journalist before moving into this work sharpened that instinct further. Newsrooms train you to chase the story a company is failing to control, not just the policy failure sitting underneath it.

The PwC leak was also visible internally for a long stretch before it became public, which is why issues management matters as much as crisis response. Organisations that invest in early monitoring and escalation protocols through a retained model such as Wilkinson Confidante tend to catch these situations before a Senate inquiry becomes the only remaining option.

Genuine PR experience shows up in specifics. Which regulator. Which leak. Which executive departure was handled without the response itself becoming a second scandal.

It does not show up in years served or campaigns launched, because those figures accumulate without ever being tested. A communications professional can spend fifteen years in the industry and never manage a genuine crisis. Another can build sharper judgment in three years of doing nothing else.

Boards hiring their next adviser should ask for the specific crises, not the specific years on a resume. If the answer stays vague, the experience probably is too.

Real experience is not a claim. It is a record that survives scrutiny.