Tag Archive for: thought leadership

The Regulatory Narrative: Why Brands Should Shape the Conversation Before Regulators Do

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Key Takeaways

  • Every regulated industry has a public conversation running whether or not a company joins it, and the regulatory narrative gets shaped by whoever shows up.
  • Staying silent doesn’t protect a regulated brand. It hands the narrative to a competitor, a critic, or a regulator instead.
  • Credibility for a regulated brand comes from repeated, visible participation in front of investors, regulators, journalists, and customers, not a single press release.
  • Commentary builds trust that lobbying can’t, because it informs an audience instead of asking something of them.
  • Every voice a regulated brand puts into the conversation eventually shows up in capital, valuation, and competitive position.
  • Regulated brands that shape their narrative early set the terms of the conversation; the ones that wait respond to terms someone else already set.

The Conversation Is Already Happening

Every regulated industry has a public conversation running in the background, one reporters are covering, regulators are debating, and investors are already pricing in.

That conversation moves with or without a company’s participation. Now it’s just a matter of who is shaping it.

For regulated brands, public narratives can affect how regulators understand an industry, what questions journalists ask, what investors see as risk, and what stakeholders consider responsible behavior. The companies that help shape those conversations early have more opportunity to define their category before someone else does.

Silence Is Not Neutral

Some executives treat staying quiet as the safe, controlled move. But silence doesn’t pause the conversation, it just hands the microphone to someone else. Avoiding that starts with treating narrative strategy as its own discipline, before regulators or competitors force the issue.

A reporter covering biotech pricing will find a source somewhere. So will a regulator drafting new guidance, and a retail buyer deciding which brands to stock.

If that source isn’t your company, it becomes a competitor. That competitor now has an opportunity to influence how the issue is framed, which questions get asked, and what responsible behavior in the category looks like. Left unattended long enough, that’s how narrative leakage starts, from a company simply not being in the room when its own story gets written by someone else.

Credibility Is Built in Public

Trust builds through repeated, visible participation in front of the audiences a company depends on, not a single press release. Journalists call back a source who explains things clearly and responds fast, not one who was just quotable once, and policymakers, working to understand an industry from the outside, look to the companies that keep giving them an accurate picture, the ones that end up shaping the outcome.

Investors watch for something similar: a story that holds up the same way in a filing as it does in a press interview, since that consistency is what actually builds credibility, more than any single spokesperson. That kind of consistency is also what gives credibility measurable value once a company reaches a raise or a deal. Retailers and consumers respond to the same pattern from a different angle. A name that keeps showing up in coverage and expert quotes lowers the risk of a shelf placement or a purchase in a way plain familiarity never could.

Commentary Is Not Lobbying

Confusing lobbying, advocacy, and thought leadership costs companies credibility. While lobbying pushes for an outcome and advocacy asks people to take a side, thoughtful commentary simply explains how an industry works. By following the evidence instead of an agenda, it earns trust that self-serving messaging can’t.

A fintech executive explaining how interchange fees affect small merchants is commentary. The same executive demanding a specific rate cap is lobbying. Both can be legitimate parts of a company’s public presence, but only one builds credibility with the reporters, regulators, and skeptics who aren’t already on the company’s side.

Balancing both roles is part of why regulated brands often need two communications tracks running at the same time. This is especially true in regulated industries, where credibility is often the starting point for earning trust at all.

Every Voice Has a Business Outcome

Participation shows up in the numbers a board actually tracks, not just in reputation.

A founder who can explain their industry’s risk and upside in plain, confident language gives investors a clearer basis for their own judgment. That kind of explanation is squarely PR for capital, talking to investors rather than customers. If the investor story and the product story ever pull apart, that gap becomes  the kind of inconsistency that costs a company credibility. That’s why PR for product and PR for capital need to work together rather than run as two disconnected efforts. That coordination is what keeps the two working together instead of pulling apart.

Visibility boosts valuation by smoothing the path to key milestones like funding or acquisitions. By owning the industry narrative, a recognizable company forces competitors onto the defensive.

Consistent, value-driven messaging builds the credibility regulated companies need to influence major strategic outcomes.

Two Paths, One Choice

Every regulated company eventually enters the public conversation. The only variable is timing, and who’s driving it when that happens.

Early movers define the terms reporters use, the questions regulators ask, and the assumptions investors make. Ahead of its merger, one regulated cannabis brand proved this by using six months of targeted earned media to boost its competitive share of voice by 291% and close the deal on schedule.

Delaying proactive communication leaves you defending your reputation during a crisis. Regulated businesses face a simple choice: build credibility early to shape the conversation, or let others shape it for you.

Partner With An Agency That Shapes The Conversation

Before the next assessment conversation, ask yourself two questions: if a reporter needed a source on the biggest issue facing your category right now, would they already have you on f

ile? And if a regulator opened a comment period tomorrow, would your company already have a position on record, or would it be starting from zero?

Avaans Media has done this since 2008, with a 100% executive-level team guiding regulated industries through funding rounds, IPOs, and high-stakes moments.

If you’re ready to shape the conversation instead of reacting to it, an assessment from Avaans Media shows you where you stand and what it would take to lead it.

Explore our insights and special reports on regulated industries at avaansmedia.com/category/resources.

The Invisible Asset, written by Avaans Media founder Tara Coomans, is the PR ROI framework that builds brand equity, drives valuation, attracts capital, and wins high-stakes moments. It’s built for CMOs defending budgets, CEOs preparing for a capital event, and operators in regulated categories. Get the book →

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How to Build Brand Authority in a Regulated Industry

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Compliance controls what a company can say. It has no power over how well-known that company is, how often it shows up, or how consistent it stays over time. That’s the ground regulated brands actually compete on: since traditional marketing can’t differentiate them, recognition has to come from expertise, credible spokespeople, and a steady presence in the industry conversation.

Key Takeaways

  •     Compliance limits what a regulated brand can claim. It has no limit on how much brand authority that brand can build.
  •     Owning one subject consistently is how a regulated brand becomes the name reporters call first.
  •     Putting an executive in front of regulators, reporters, and investors builds authority faster than any logo can.
  •     Third-party validation carries more weight for regulated brands than anything the company says about itself.
  •     Consistency across every audience, investors, regulators, and customers, protects a regulated brand against narrative leakage.
  •     Brand authority built through consistency shows up in investor confidence, acquisition value, and AI visibility.

The opportunity lives in everything compliance doesn’t touch.

Own One Subject

Every regulated brand has one subject it understands better than any competitor. Most never decide what that subject is, so they end up sounding like an expert on everything and a known name on nothing.

The subject doesn’t have to be the product. It can be the science, the regulation, or the pattern behind it: a cannabis brand might own dosing education, a fintech company might become the name reporters call about fraud prevention for small merchants, a health tech company might become known for care access in underserved regions. None of these require a product claim. They’re insight a company can share freely, on a subject compliance never touches.

That’s how ownership builds over time, and it matters more here because a regulated brand can’t buy its way to that reflex with a louder ad campaign. The first time a reporter calls a company for that subject, it’s a mention. The tenth time, it’s a reflex, because the company becomes the default source, and other outlets start citing that association without needing to be pitched at all.

Picking one subject and speaking on it consistently, long before anyone asks, is how a brand earns that reflex.

Put A Person in Front

A brand needs more than a logo to earn trust; credible experts give stakeholders a person whose knowledge and judgment they can evaluate.

Compliance governs what a company can claim about its own product. It has far less to say about what a person, speaking as an expert, can say about the industry, a policy question, or where things are headed. That gap is where personal authority lives: an executive can offer a perspective or push back on a bad assumption in ways a pre-cleared company statement never could.

Regulators, reporters, and investors remember the person who shows up consistently more than the company name behind them. An executive who appears in interviews, panels, and hearings, becomes the face people associate with the industry, and eventually the person those groups call directly instead of going through a press process at all.

A company that never puts anyone forward stays anonymous in a category that already reads as opaque, and there’s no person left for any of them to actually trust.

Explain, Don’t Predict

In a regulated industry, a bold prediction is a bet the company doesn’t get to walk back. If it’s wrong, it stays on the public record where regulators, investors, and reporters can all find it later. A clear explanation is usually easier to ground in present evidence, while forward-looking commentary needs tighter discipline, particularly when public-company disclosure rules may be implicated.

That’s why an executive who breaks down a policy shift in plain terms earns more credibility than one who forecasts where the industry is headed. The forecast might turn out right. But the explanation can be checked against reality the moment it’s published, and it holds up.

The strongest public commentary answers a question someone else in the room was struggling to explain. That’s a lower bar to clear than being right about the future, and a much harder one to get wrong.

Let Others Vouch for You

In low-trust environments, independent validation can carry credibility that a company’s own messaging can’t create on its own.

In a regulated industry, that gap is even wider. Legal review scrubs a company’s own language before it goes out, so people discount it, true or not. A reporter or outside expert isn’t running their words through that same filter. That’s the difference between evidence and a claim.

A single outside mention is one data point. A pattern of them, across different publications and different voices, starts to read like a fact instead of an opinion, which is exactly the kind of proof a company can’t produce for itself no matter how carefully it’s worded.

A company that only ever talks about itself ends up sounding like every other regulated competitor’s cleared language: safe, generic, and impossible to tell apart from the rest of the category. The brands that pull ahead don’t wait for that kind of proof to show up. They go get it, through awards, analyst mentions, association memberships, and citations in independent reports. 

Say The Same Thing Everywhere

Trust breaks when a company tells investors one story and regulators another. Eventually, someone notices the difference. This kind of inconsistency is often the first sign of narrative leakage. The version told to investors stops matching the version told to regulators, which stops matching what’s on the website, until nobody inside the company can say what its actual position is anymore.

That’s what happens when no one is doing the strategic work of building one core narrative and figuring out how it needs to flex for each audience.  Investor relations, regulatory affairs, and marketing each end up describing a different company. 

Talk To Regulators Early

Some brands treat regulators as an obstacle to manage. Others treat them as an audience to inform.

Most companies only talk to regulators when forced to: an application, an audit, a violation response. That’s the worst possible moment to be a stranger. Submitting comments during a rulemaking period, joining an industry working group, or briefing a regulator ahead of a policy shift builds the same familiarity a reporter relationship builds with the press, so by the time something is actually at stake, the company is already a known voice instead of a stranger asking for the benefit of the doubt. That’s the same shift from reactive to proactive that shapes the broader regulatory narrative a company controls or doesn’t.

This is also why regulated brands often need two communications tracks running side by side. The message that earns trust with a regulator takes a different shape than the message that earns trust with a customer or an investor, even though both draw from the same underlying narrative.

The Return on Brand Authority in Regulated Industries

In a regulated industry, trust can’t come from what a company claims about its own product. It comes from how consistently the company shows up: the same subject, the same executive, the same position, held in public through changing news cycles and changing leadership. That’s the same discipline behind a strong narrative strategy, and it’s a slower kind of trust to build than a bold marketing claim, which is exactly why it’s harder for a competitor to copy.

What This Builds Over Time

Held long enough, that discipline pays out across every relationship that depends on trust. Consumer trust follows recognition, since buyers choose the name they already know, especially in categories like cannabis, health, and finance where the decision already carries more perceived risk. Investor confidence follows a public track record of explaining the business honestly, which matters more when investors are already weighing regulatory risk on top of the usual financial diligence, and it’s why PR for product and PR for capital need to work together.

Visibility raises acquisition value too: a company regulators and reporters already understand is easier for buyers to evaluate. One regulated brand Avaans worked with saw its stock rise 300% at IPO, the payoff of years of earned visibility rather than a single campaign. And it shows up in AI visibility as well, the same consistency that builds human trust becomes the record AI systems draw from when someone asks who the trusted names in an industry are.

Partner With An Agency That Understands Regulatory Limits

Before you invest more in visibility, it’s worth checking what you actually have. Can you name the one subject your company owns, the topic a reporter would call you for first? Can you name the executive who’d take that call? And could you list five outside mentions from the last year that didn’t come from a press release you wrote?

If any of those answers come up empty, that’s the gap. It’s also the starting point for a real assessment, not a bigger media list.

The right communications partner builds authority without crossing a compliance line.

Avaans Media has done this since 2008, with a 100% executive-level team helping regulated brands earn trust through consistency.

If you’re ready to become the name regulators, reporters, and investors already trust, an assessment from Avaans Media shows you where your current authority position stands and what it would take to close the gap.

Explore our insights and special reports on regulated industries at avaansmedia.com/category/resources.

The Invisible Asset, written by Avaans Media founder Tara Coomans, is the PR ROI framework that builds brand equity, drives valuation, attracts capital, and wins high-stakes moments. It’s built for CMOs defending budgets, CEOs preparing for a capital event, and operators in regulated categories. Get the book →

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The Difference Between PR for Product and PR for Capital

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When companies begin raising capital, PR takes on a second responsibility.

 Most consumer brands build their PR playbook around a single goal: earning the trust and attention of customers. Coverage drives awareness trust, marketing efficiency and revenue. For many companies, that is enough for years. But once capital is involved, PR starts influencing valuation.

When capital enters the picture, the company itself becomes the product being evaluated. Investors, analysts, lenders, and future acquirers aren’t evaluating whether customers will buy. They’re evaluating whether the business itself is worth backing.

That shift changes the role of communications. Before a company raises capital, PR is largely measured by its ability to influence demand. As the audience expands beyond customers, communications begin influencing perceived company value. Reputation, authority, leadership visibility, and credibility all become part of the valuation story.

This is where PR for Product and PR for Capital begin to diverge: one helps people decide whether to buy, and the other helps investors decide what the company may be worth.

The difference between PR for product and PR for capital becomes increasingly important as new stakeholders enter the picture. If you’re at that inflection point now, an assessment tells you whether your current PR infrastructure is built for both audiences or just one.

Two Audiences, Two Different Jobs

Understanding the distinction between PR for product and PR for capital helps companies build credibility with both customers and investors:

Product PR is built to move customers. Its proof points are customer-facing: what the product does, how it’s different, what it feels like to use. The storytelling can be emotional and aspirational. Success is measured through awareness, sentiment, and sales impact.

Capital PR is designed to influence investors, analysts, and financial media. These audiences are not asking whether they like the product. They are evaluating whether the market opportunity is real, whether the business can scale, and whether leadership can execute against the growth story.

The two audiences drive different outcomes. Customer perception affects revenue. Investor perception affects access to capital, financing terms, strategic opportunities, and ultimately, valuation.

The proof points shift accordingly. Investors want evidence that future valuation is supported by underlying business fundamentals, such as market size, defensibility, revenue growth, retention, and a credible path to scale as well as reputation and category dominance.

The timeline shifts as well. Investor confidence develops over quarters, not campaign cycles. 

Companies that consistently engage financial audiences through executive positioning, financial media, and thought leadership arrive at capital events with greater credibility than those that only begin communicating when they need funding. This is why investor-facing visibility during the hold period becomes a strategic advantage rather than a last-minute communications exercise. The same logic applies in fintech, where IPO and M&A processes bring their own investor-facing requirements.

For regulated consumer brands, the stakes of getting this wrong are higher than most. Here’s why regulated brands specifically need both tracks running simultaneously.

Where the Two Tracks Diverge 

Once a company is running both, the differences become practical:

The language changes. Consumer storytelling can afford to be loose and evocative. Investor communications must be precise and, in regulated industries, compliant. A founder interview that works perfectly in a lifestyle publication may require significant recalibration before appearing in financial media.

The proof points change. Customers want evidence that a product works. Investors want evidence that the business has depth AND scalability. In healthtech specifically, that evidence has to be measured and shown before a raise, not assembled after one.

The spokespeople may change. A founder who excels at telling the brand story is not always the best person to discuss capital allocation, market structure, or exit strategy. Developing the right voice for each audience often produces stronger outcomes than expecting one executive to fill every role.

The consequences of mistakes are different. A product PR misstep damages brand perception. But a capital communications misstep can affect financing terms, complicate a transaction, or create regulatory exposure.

The Transition Happens Earlier Than Most Founders Expect

Many companies wait until a raise is underway before thinking seriously about investor communications, but by then they are already behind.

By the time a company is in serious Series B conversations or beginning any kind of pre-IPO process,investors have often already formed impressions based on what they can find publicly. 

Coverage, executive visibility, thought leadership, and third-party validation collectively become part of the valuation narrative long before a term sheet appears.

The most common mistake is assuming existing PR infrastructure can absorb capital communications without structural changes. The result is often investor materials that read like marketing collateral,or financial communications that lose the distinctive story behind the business.

When the two streams drift apart without anyone managing the connection, important parts of the company’s narrative begin appearing in places that they were never intended to live. That’s narrative leakage, and it’s one of the most common challenges brands face when capital conversations become serious. Regulated brands face a sharper version of this problem, where the two narratives have to hold together under more scrutiny.

What Getting It Right Looks Like

The strongest companies run both tracks simultaneously. Consumer PR builds market visibility and trust. Capital PR builds credibility with investors and financial stakeholders. The messaging isn’t identical, but it is connected. 

Both audiences should encounter the same underlying market thesis, values, and strategic direction adopted for the decisions they are making. Building that shared foundation before execution begins is exactly what the Avaans Media Fingerprint Strategy is designed to do. That shared foundation is also what gives reputation measurable value as an asset, not just a perception.

Case Study: A consumer wellness brand in a regulated category started building both tracks three years before its IPO window. The consumer track built market credibility. The capital track built the independent editorial record investors would find during due diligence. By the time the raise began, neither audience was starting from scratch. The IPO was oversubscribed. The stock increased 300% at close. See the full case study

Companies that handle this well tend to start earlier than feels necessary because the audience they need to persuade takes longer to move than consumers do. 

Capital PR depends on credibility that accumulates over time. Valuation is rarely determined by a single quarter, a single pitch deck, or a single news cycle; it’s shaped by the narrative record a company builds over years. 

The companies that perform best during capital events are usually the ones that started building that record years before the raise began.

 If you’re not sure where your narrative stands with either audience right now, an assessment is the right starting point.

 Ready to go deeper on how the two tracks work together in practice? See how consumer PR and investor PR reinforce each other and why most agencies only do one.


The Invisible Asset, written by Avaans Media founder Tara Coomans, is the PR ROI framework that builds brand equity, drives valuation, attracts capital, and wins high-stakes moments. It’s built for CMOs defending budgets, CEOs preparing for a capital event, and operators in regulated categories. Get the book →

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How Consumer PR and Investor PR Work Together

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Most regulated consumer brands aren’t running one communications strategy. They’re running two, and most of the time, those two strategies have never actually met.

The consumer team is focused on product launches, retail placements, and lifestyle media. The investor or financial communications function, whether that’s inside or outsourced, is focused on business press, capital credibility, and executive positioning. Both are doing their job, but neither is thinking about what the other is saying.

That separation feels like operational efficiency. In practice, it’s one of the most common reasons regulated consumer brands underperform on brand authority, the kind that compounds over time and shows up in both market demand and valuation. That compounding effect is what makes narrative strategy a valuation lever, not just a communications exercise.

When these two functions operate from the same strategic foundation, every piece of work does more. A well-placed story in trade press serves the consumer audience and lands in investor due diligence. Executive visibility built for credibility with capital audiences also signals category authority to buyers. The same underlying narrative, translated appropriately for each audience, creates reinforcing proof across both rooms.

That’s brand authority strategy. Not two tracks running in parallel. One narrative, well-architected, executed across two communications streams that make each other stronger.

If you’re a regulated consumer brand managing both a consumer audience and a capital audience right now, an assessment will show you where the two streams align and where the gaps are creating risk

The Structural Reason These Functions Drift Apart

Consumer PR and Investor PR evolved separately because they serve different audiences with different priorities.

Consumer communications are built around product stories, editorial calendars, lifestyle and trade media relationships, and the metrics that matter to marketing: awareness, share of voice, purchase consideration, sentiment. The work is outward-facing and audience-building.

Investor and financial communications are built around business performance, growth narrative, market opportunity, and leadership credibility. The audiences are smaller, the scrutiny is higher, and for regulated brands, the disclosure rules are real. Material information can’t appear in a founder’s Instagram story. PE-backed brands face this same discipline continuously through the hold period, not just at a single fundraising or exit moment. A product narrative that overpromises in a capital context creates regulatory risk that no amount of positive coverage can fix. 

These structural differences mean that agencies on each side have different skills, different editorial relationships, and different definitions of a good outcome. Most consumer PR firms have never placed a story in Bloomberg. Most financial communications firms don’t have relationships with the editors who cover CPG or health and wellness. Both are good at what they do. Neither was designed to do the other’s job.

The problem starts when no one in the organization owns the space between them.

What Happens When the Two Tracks Align

Brand authority is built when multiple audiences encounter evidence that supports the same underlying story. The goal isn’t for every audience to consume the same content. In fact, they usually don’t.

A consumer reads about your product in Allure. An investor reads executive commentary in business media. An analyst encounters your perspective at a conference. Each audience sees a different angle. Authority emerges when those angles point toward the same conclusion.

A consumer should come away believing the brand is credible and relevant. An investor should come away believing the company understands its market and has a defensible position within it. A strategic buyer should encounter evidence of both.

Case Study: A publicly traded global consumer brand entering the U.S. market needed to reach consumers, industry stakeholders, and financial audiences without creating narrative drift. Avaans Media built a unified messaging architecture that supported consumer, executive, and industry communications simultaneously. Eight months later, the company held 93% share of voice and had become the leading online destination in its category. See the full case study.

What Integration Looks Like 

An integrated communications strategy for a regulated consumer brand isn’t about using the same press release for two audiences. It’s about a single messaging architecture that can serve both, with appropriate translation depending on the room.

In practice, that starts with a unified positioning statement that holds under pressure. The core narrative, what the company is, why it matters, what problem it solves, has to be consistent whether a journalist is writing for Allure or for the Financial Times. The emphasis shifts, but the facts don’t change, and the story doesn’t contradict itself.

It means executive visibility built to work in both directions. A CEO who appears in credible trade press as a category expert is more compelling to investors than one who only appears in investor announcements. The trade coverage functions as third-party validation. It’s proof that the brand has earned authority in its own market, from sources that have no stake in the financing outcome.

It also means timeline coordination. Consumer PR has its own cadence: product launches, seasonal campaigns, retail windows. Capital communications has its own cadence: fundraising milestones, strategic announcements, exit preparation. When those timelines are managed together, they amplify each other. A strong run of consumer coverage before a Series B close isn’t an accident, it’s a planned part of the narrative strategy.

And it means a coordinated response plan for when something goes wrong. Regulated brands face specific regulatory exposure. A response designed to protect consumer trust can inadvertently create investor relations problems if the two functions aren’t coordinated. The reverse is just as true. Managing investor perception by going quiet during a consumer-facing crisis often compounds the damage on both sides.

Case Study: A privately owned consumer electronics company needed PR that could move product with consumers and build investor-grade credibility at the same time. One narrative served both. In eight months: 1 billion+ earned media impressions, a Today Show segment that drove the brand’s highest single-day sales since founding, a 25% share of voice gain against major household competitors, and international growth capital secured. See the full case study.

What Happens When They Don’t Align

Narrative Leakage happens when a company’s communications don’t tell a consistent story.  Communications activity accumulates, but a clear authority position does not. 

In regulated industries, this gets more complicated. A cannabis brand heading toward an acquisition may have spent years building a sophisticated consumer brand. But if the investor narrative doesn’t match, if the category framing, the growth thesis, and the risk management story don’t align with what the consumer press has been saying, sophisticated counterparties notice. They don’t ask about it directly, they just underwrite more conservatively.

A healthtech company preparing for an IPO faces the same tension. The consumer narrative may emphasize accessibility and patient experience. The investor narrative may emphasize reimbursement positioning, regulatory clearances, and retention metrics. Both are true. But if no one is managing the relationship between those two stories, the company presents differently in different rooms, and that inconsistency becomes a narrative risk that’s harder to price away than a bad quarter. That risk is exactly what shows up when narrative strategy isn’t treated as its own discipline in regulated categories.

Why Most Agencies Only Do One

Consumer PR agencies are built for product and lifestyle media. Their relationships are with editors who cover CPG, health, beauty, food, and retail. Their pitch rhythms are seasonal, and their metrics are awareness-based. They’re good at what they do, and what they do is genuinely different from financial communications.

Investor and financial PR practitioners think in terms of shareholder messaging, earnings narratives, regulatory windows, and the investor relations function. Their relationships are with the business and financial press. The skill set doesn’t transfer easily in either direction, and most practitioners in both areas will tell you that honestly.

Agencies specialize because the two disciplines require different expertise. The problem is that regulated consumer brands in capital-intensive growth stages often lack an internal function that owns the connection between them. They hire two agencies that never talk to each other, or hire one and assume the other will sort itself out. Without someone at the CEO or CMO level owning that integration point, neither approach works.

Case Study: A venture-funded CPG brand needed visibility with consumers, retail buyers, and investors at the same time. Avaans Media integrated lifestyle media, retail trade coverage, and executive thought leadership into a single communications strategy, helping the company expand into 10 new states and an international market. See the full case study

The Question To Ask an Agency

If you’re evaluating PR agencies as a regulated consumer brand with capital ambitions, one question cuts through the deck faster than anything else.

Ask them: Can you show me an example where your work served both a consumer audience and an investor or business press audience from the same campaign, and walk me through how the strategy was designed to do both?

Not two separate case studies. One example where both were intentional

Most agencies will pivot to a case study of one or the other. Some will talk about coordination with a partner agency, which is worth understanding in more detail if the coordination is real and structured. But if the answer is a blank stare, or a reassurance that the two functions don’t need to talk to each other, you know what you’re buying.

Building Authority Before You Need It

The Fingerprint PR Strategy starts with the questions: What does each of your audiences need to hear? Where does your current narrative serve both? Where is leakage already happening?

If your consumer and investor communications are operating on separate tracks that have never been formally connected, that’s a solvable problem. But it’s better solved before a raise, an exit conversation, or a regulatory moment, not during one.

If you’d like to evaluate where your current brand authority strategy stands and what it would take to build something that compounds across both audiences, that’s exactly what an assessment surfaces.

 

The Invisible Asset, written by Avaans Media founder Tara Coomans, is the PR ROI framework that builds brand equity, drives valuation, attracts capital, and wins high-stakes moments. It’s built for CMOs defending budgets, CEOs preparing for a capital event, and operators in regulated categories. Get the book →

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Why Regulated Consumer Brand PR Requires Two Communications Tracks Running at the Same Time

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Most brands think of PR as a single channel, with one voice, one strategy, and one team managing the message. That works well when your only audience is consumers.

But regulated consumer brand strategy rarely serves just one audience. If you’re operating in healthcare, pharma, cannabis, alcohol, fintech, energy, or another regulated sector, and you’re raising capital, preparing for an IPO, pursuing an acquisition, or already publicly traded, your communications strategy serves two very different groups: customers and investors.

Consumers are deciding whether to buy. Investors are deciding what the company may be worth. Early on, PR primarily influences awareness, trust, and demand. Once capital enters the picture, communications begin influencing credibility, investor confidence, and ultimately valuation. 

For regulated brands, where disclosure obligations and compliance requirements add another layer of complexity, treating those audiences as a single communication stream can create real risk.

The solution isn’t two different stories, it’s two coordinated communications tracks built from the same strategic foundation.

If you’re a regulated consumer brand navigating both audiences right now, an assessment  will tell you which stream is working and where the gaps are.

Why Regulated Consumer Brand Strategy Requires Two Tracks

Consumer PR is built to drive awareness, trust, and preference. Investor communications are built to communicate business performance, growth strategy, market opportunity, risk management, and leadership credibility. These are not stylistic differences: these are structural ones.

Consumer communications influence purchasing decisions. Investor communications influence confidence in the business. One affects revenue, and the other affects access to capital, strategic opportunities, and valuation.

For regulated brands, the distinction becomes even more important because financial communications are governed by disclosure requirements that don’t apply to most consumer marketing efforts. Material information can’t simply appear in a founder’s social media post, a brand campaign, or a company blog.

Selective disclosure can create regulatory scrutiny, legal exposure, and investor relations problems that no amount of positive coverage can fix.

When a Second Communications Track Becomes Necessary

Many private companies assume these concerns begin at IPO, but in reality, the need for a second communications track often starts years earlier.

The first trigger is fundraising. Once institutional investors begin evaluating the company, public-facing communications become part of the diligence process.

The second trigger is IPO preparation. Quiet period restrictions and gun jumping concerns mean that seemingly routine public statements can create complications if they’re not coordinated with financial communications.

The third trigger is strategic transactions: M&A conversations, secondary transactions, and late-stage rounds increasingly involve sophisticated financial counterparties who are reading your public narrative alongside your financial materials. That’s especially true for PE-backed brands managing this coordination through an entire hold period, not just at the moment of a deal.

Why Regulated Consumer Brands Face Even Higher Stakes

Regulated industries carry an additional layer of complexity because the product itself is subject to oversight, and that oversight doesn’t stop caring about how you communicate just because a message was intended for consumers.

Consider a healthtech company preparing for an IPO. Its consumer narrative may focus on accessibility, patient outcomes, and the experience of care. Its investor narrative may focus on reimbursement positioning, revenue growth, regulatory clearances, retention metrics, and market expansion. The underlying story is the same, the company is the same, the strategic thesis is the same, but what changes is how that story is translated for each audience and the rules governing how it can be communicated.

Regulated brands can absolutely have vibrant, compelling consumer communications, and they should. The requirement is that someone be thinking about both sets of rules simultaneously, with those conversations happening before content goes out, not after.

Consumer PR and Investor PR Serve Different Jobs

Consumer PR leads with product, brand, and story. Success is measured through awareness, reputation, engagement, and customer acquisition.

Investor communications lead with business performance, strategy, and market opportunity. Success is measured through credibility, confidence, and valuation support. 

The two tracks rely on different proof points, approval processes, timelines, and often different spokespeople. Yet both should reinforce the same underlying narrative about where the company is headed and why it matters.

Where Consumer PR and Investor PR Break Down

Most brands struggle with this because the two functions are not aligned. These are coordination failures:

  1. A product launch uses aggressive language about category disruption while the company is preparing for a financing event.
  2. A founder comments publicly on a regulatory development without consulting legal or investor relations.
  3. The consumer communications team is unaware of upcoming financial disclosures.

Over time, these disconnects create gaps between the consumer narrative and the investor narrative. Avaans Media calls this narrative leakage, and for regulated brands engaged in capital conversations, it’s one of the most common and costly communications challenges. The discipline required to prevent it is its own strategic problem, worth solving before the two tracks ever launch.

The Avaans Media Fingerprint Strategy is designed to identify what each audience needs to hear, where narrative leverage exists, and which elements belong in each communications track while keeping the underlying story aligned.

Case Study:  A publicly traded global brand entering the U.S. market needed to reach consumers, industry stakeholders, and investors without creating regulatory or reputational risk. Avaans Media built coordinated consumer, executive, and industry communications that helped the company achieve 93% share of voice and become the leading online destination in its category.

The Bottom Line

Regulated consumer brands that are raising capital, preparing for an exit, or operating in public markets are communicating with two audiences that operate under very different rules. The strongest regulated consumer brand strategy builds one strategic narrative and execute it through two coordinated communications tracks. 

Done well, consumer communications build trust in the product, while investor communication builds confidence in the business. Together, they create the kind of authority that supports both market demand and long-term valuation.

If your two communications tracks aren’t coordinated yet, reach out to Avaans Media for an assessment. It maps where each one stands today and what it takes to run them in sync.



The Invisible Asset, written by Avaans Media founder Tara Coomans, is the PR ROI framework that builds brand equity, drives valuation, attracts capital, and wins high-stakes moments. It’s built for CMOs defending budgets, CEOs preparing for a capital event, and operators in regulated categories. Get the book →

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You’re More Ready for Press Than You Think

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The hardest part of PR isn’t getting the interview. It’s the forty-eight hours between “yes, we’d love to talk to you” and actually sitting down for the conversation.

That’s when the spiral starts. What if I say something stupid? What if they ask me something I don’t know? What if I come across as arrogant? What if I come across as boring? What if I’m just… not ready?

Founders will land a great opportunity — a podcast they actually listen to, a reporter at a publication they’ve wanted to be in for years — and instead of being excited, they’re quietly panicking. Some of them ghost the reporter. Some show up so over-rehearsed they sound like they’re reading from a script. Some actually ARE reading from a script (yep, I’ve seen it happen).

Some turn the opportunity down entirely, telling themselves they’ll “do it when they’re ready.”

Here’s the thing: you’re already ready. You’re a founder who’s earned the attention of a reporter. You’ve done the hard part: founding a company, probably a round of fundraising or two, hiring a team, and building a product.

The only difference between doing all of those things and doing a media interview is that you had some guidance for those things. You had a mentor or a coach. You read some books. You felt like there was a process, and you followed it.

This post is the process for media interviews. It’s how I prep my clients so they walk in knowing what to expect, what they want to say, and, maybe most importantly, walk out feeling proud of how they showed up.

How to Prepare for a Media Interview

First, a reframe

You are the expert in this conversation.

Not the reporter. Not the producer. Not the host. You. They’re calling you because you know something they don’t, and their job is to translate it to their audience.

Reporters aren’t trying to trip you up (most of them, anyway — more on the exceptions later). They’re trying to get a clear, useful story out of you before their deadline. When you stop thinking of an interview as a test you might fail, and start thinking of it as a conversation where you’re the one with the information, the whole thing gets easier.

Okay. Now the tactical stuff.

Before you even say yes

When a reporter reaches out, the worst thing you can do is immediately say yes and panic later. The second worst thing is to say no out of fear. The right move is to ask a few questions first — and I mean this literally, as in: questions you ask the reporter before you agree to the interview.

Here’s what to ask:

What outlet is this for? For some reporters, it might be obvious, but in a world where every reporter has a Substack and every TV journalist is an influencer, it’s worth making sure.

What’s the format? Again, when every newspaper also has a TikTok and every TV station has podcasts, is this interview for print, audio, video, or all three? Is it live, live-to-tape, or edited? Is this a quick quote for a roundup, or an in-depth profile? How long will it run? These answers shape everything about how you prepare.

What’s the story? Keep it open-ended. Let them talk. The more they say, the more you learn about what they actually need from you. Don’t interrupt. Don’t pitch. Just listen.

Is there anything I should prepare? Don’t ask them for questions in advance. I’m going to repeat this: Do not ask them for questions in advance. It’s bad form. At the very least, it will earn you an eye roll from the reporter, but at worst, they will call off the interview entirely. However, it is entirely fair to ask them if they’re hoping you’ll bring a certain data set with you, or have something ready to present.

You’re not being difficult by asking these questions. You’re being a good source. Reporters appreciate it — it tells them you take the conversation seriously.

What to expect from each type of interview

Different mediums have different rules. A podcast is not a TV hit. A print interview is not a radio spot. Here’s what I tell clients about each one.

Print / Online

This is where most founder PR happens, and it’s usually the lowest-stakes format to start with. A print journalist is writing a story; they need quotes, context, and facts. They may talk to you for forty-five minutes and use two sentences.

What to expect: An interview that feels more like a conversation than a performance. They’ll take notes, likely record the call, and ask follow-up questions. Expect them to push on specifics — numbers, dates, examples — because that’s what makes their story credible.

How to prep: Write out three things you want to make sure you say. Know them cold. Have specific examples and numbers at the ready. Be prepared for them to use anything you say — including the casual aside at the end of the call. There is no such thing as off the record unless you’ve established it explicitly, in advance, and even then, I wouldn’t bet on it. An interview starts the moment the reporter says hello and ends when you hang up. Act accordingly.

Podcasts (Audio Only)

Podcasts are usually the friendliest format, which is exactly why founders get into trouble on them. They’re long, conversational, and the host often wants you to succeed. That’s great. It’s also how you end up thirty minutes in, feeling relaxed, saying something you didn’t mean to say.

What to expect: Anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours. The host has probably done some research on you, but may not be a deep expert in your space. They’ll want stories, not press-release language. They’ll want you to be a real person.

How to prep: Listen to at least two or three recent episodes before you record. Get a feel for the host’s cadence, what kinds of questions they ask, and how long their tangents run. Prepare three to five stories you can tell — founders often underestimate how much of podcast prep is just having good stories ready. Have your key messages, but don’t force them in unnaturally. Podcast audiences can smell rehearsed talking points.

One warning: the longer the conversation goes, the more comfortable you’ll feel, and the more tempted you’ll be to drop your guard. Despite the friendly demeanor, podcast hosts are not your friends (this goes for any member of the media). Stay warm, stay engaged, but remember the microphone is still on.

Radio

Radio is weird because it’s fast. It’s also becoming less and less likely you’ll ever get a radio interview. But just in case, know that you might get ten minutes, you might get three, and the host is almost always working within a tight format with breaks and transitions.

What to expect: Short segments. Crisp questions. A host who needs you to answer in tight, quotable chunks. If it’s live, there’s no editing, so what you say is what airs.

How to prep: Practice giving your key messages in fifteen to thirty seconds. Seriously, out loud, with a timer. Short answers feel abrupt when you’re not used to them, but on radio they sound confident and clear.

Video

Video is the format that makes founders the most nervous, and fair enough. It’s visual, it’s usually live or lightly edited, and you have roughly zero room for a false start. But video is also the format where preparation makes the biggest visible difference.

What to expect: A short segment — usually three to five minutes for a morning or local news spot, maybe seven to ten for something more in-depth. But it could be as long as a few hours if the podcast you’re booked on also posts on YouTube. Usually, there will be a pre-interview call to make sure you’re a real person, can show up on time, and have the appropriate setting (no distractions, decent audio, etc.)

How to prep: Watch the show. Multiple episodes. Get familiar with the set, the hosts, the pacing. Know whether it’s a friendly vibe or a more serious tone.

Practice your key messages out loud until you can deliver them in fifteen-second chunks.

Dress for the camera. This means: pastel colors (blue works well), no white, no black, no bright red, no busy patterns (checks, herringbone, and small stripes all “wave” on camera). No big jewelry. No tinted glasses. If you wear glasses, get the glare-proof kind. Keep your hair off your face. If you’re shiny-foreheaded, powder it. All this will keep you from getting distracted just as much as the audience.

Drink water beforehand so you don’t lick your lips on camera (it reads weird).

If you’re on Zoom at home, make sure your background is professional and distraction-free. If you don’t have an external microphone, make sure you have headphones. If you’re planning on doing more than one podcast, it’s time to invest in a $100 mic that will seriously up your game. Make sure you’re in a quiet space and you won’t be interrupted. During the pandemic, it was cute when small children and pets showed up unexpectedly on screen. Now, it’s just kind of annoying.

If you do happen to be in a studio with a live interviewer, look at them, not the camera. Always. Unless you’re specifically told to address the camera, your eye line should be on the person asking you questions.

The three things that matter in every interview, regardless of medium

Okay, this is the part I’d tattoo on every founder’s forearm if I could.

1. Know your must-airs. Before any interview, write down the three things you absolutely want the audience to walk away knowing. Not ten. Three. These are your key messages, and your job in the interview is to communicate the central idea of at least one of them in every answer you give.

I’m not going to tell you this is easy. It’s not. If you need some inspiration, go watch the last few interviews of your favorite (or least favorite) politician. You’ll notice that no matter what question the reporter asks, they always return to a few key issues.

If the interview ends and you didn’t get your points across, that’s on you, not the reporter.

2. Bridge from their question to your message. This is how the politicians do it, and you can do it too. You will absolutely get asked things that don’t line up neatly with what you want to say. So you bridge back to your message. Useful phrases:

“The most important thing to remember is…”
“What we’re actually seeing in our industry is…”
“That’s part of a bigger shift, which is…”
“Let me tell you a quick story about that…”

You’re not dodging. You’re translating their question into territory where you can give a useful answer.

3. Don’t bury your lead. When you answer a question, start with the most interesting part of your answer. Then add the context, the background, the nuance. Most founders do it backwards — they set up the context first and then get to the point, and the reporter cuts them off before they land it. Start with the punchline. You can always fill in the rest.

A quick word on tough questions

You will eventually get a question you don’t love. A question with a negative framing, a false premise, or just something you’re not prepared to answer. Here’s what to do:

Don’t repeat negative language. If a reporter asks, “Isn’t it true that your industry is failing to innovate?” do not start your answer with “Well, our industry isn’t failing to innovate…” Now that phrase is in the story. Instead, reframe it: “The innovation I’m seeing is…”

Don’t say “no comment.” It sounds like you’re hiding something, because usually you are. Better options: “I’m not in a position to speak to that, but what I can tell you is…” or “That’s outside my expertise — what I do know is…”

Don’t answer hypotheticals. If a reporter asks, “What would you do if X happened?” — don’t. Just pivot. “I can’t speculate, but here’s what we’re actually doing right now…”

Don’t guess. If you don’t know the answer, say, “I don’t know, but I can get back to you with that.” Then actually get back to them. This is not a weakness — it’s a mark of a credible source.

Don’t fill the silence. Reporters will sometimes go quiet after your answer, hoping you’ll fill the space with something unplanned. You don’t have to. Let the silence sit. Your key message can stand on its own.

How to walk out proud

Here’s my actual test for whether an interview went well:

Did you communicate your key messages?
Did you avoid saying things you didn’t want to?
Did you stay true to who you are?
Did you treat the reporter with respect and professionalism?

That’s the scorecard.

You cannot control what quote they pull. You cannot control the headline. You cannot control whether the piece runs at all. What you can control is whether you showed up prepared, stayed on-message, and acted like yourself. If you did those things, the interview was a success — even if the final piece doesn’t turn out the way you hoped.

The founders I work with who end up loving press are the ones who stop thinking of interviews as tests they might fail and start thinking of them as conversations they’ve been preparing for their whole career. Because you have been. You know your company. You know your industry. You know the problem you’re solving. Nobody is going to ask you a question about your own work that you can’t handle — and if they do, “I don’t know, let me get back to you” is a perfectly respectable answer.

The insecurity is real. I’m not going to tell you it isn’t. But the insecurity is about the unknown, and everything I just walked you through is the known. Prep the knowns, and the unknowns get a lot smaller.

You’re ready. Go do the interview.

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