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Too many PR firms confuse the output with the outcome.
They act like the headline is the win. That visibility is the value.
But in reality? PR isn’t the goal. It’s the lever.
A great media moment should unlock something bigger—credibility, capital, customers, influence.
That’s what we’re after. Always.
There are two types of PR firms:
The ones that chase vanity
And the ones that chase leverage
Most fall into the first camp. They’ll promise you logos—TechCrunch, Forbes, Bloomberg, etc. They’ll emphasize splashy headlines, shiny “as seen in” badges, and awards that look good on a pitch deck.
They’ll sell you visibility.
But they rarely deliver impact.
If you’ve ever worked with a PR firm that got you a decent headline but didn’t actually move the needle on anything that matters—revenue, investor attention, key partnerships—you know the feeling.
It’s like lighting money on fire in a very well-lit room.
We know because we’ve been there—on the client side. Before we started Bonfire, we were venture-backed founders ourselves. We hired the traditional firms. We got the logo placements. And we got... nothing out of it.
No momentum. No leverage. No growth.
That’s why we built Bonfire to be different.
When we work with a client, we aren’t thinking about how to make them “look good.”
We’re thinking about:
That’s the kind of PR we care about. The kind that bends reality toward your goals.
Because a headline that drives no action is just theater. But a headline that gets a deal done? That’s leverage.
Our job isn’t to get clients seen. It’s to get them taken seriously. And those are two very different things.
Vanity PR celebrates mentions. Leverage PR creates movement.
We’re not saying logos don’t matter. Of course they do. But if the story behind the logo doesn’t do any work—doesn’t advance a conversation, open a door, or build pressure toward a desired outcome—then what are we really doing here?
We want our clients to walk into investor meetings where the VC says, “I just read about you in The Journal.”
Or close a sales lead who says, “We saw you in that big industry piece. Let’s talk.”
Or get a call from a public agency saying, “We need you in this conversation.”
That’s leverage.
We’ve never done outbound sales. Never prospected. Never begged for a meeting.
Every client we’ve ever signed came through a referral—because the work worked. Not because it looked good. Because it moved something.
We don’t chase awards. We don’t lock people into long-term contracts. We don’t inflate meaningless metrics.
We focus on leverage. On momentum. On outcomes that compound.
Because in the end, the headline isn’t the win. It’s what happens after it runs that counts.
PR isn’t the goal.
It’s the lever.
