She Did Not Rebrand Public Relations. She Replaced the Premise

What we talked about.

April White, founder and CEO of Trust Relations, joins Sunny Ray to argue that public relations does not need a rebrand, it needs a new premise. After years at large agencies including Weber Shandwick and Edelman, White grew frustrated watching junior staff carry the bulk of client work while senior leaders stayed removed, with little transparency about how retainers were actually spent. Having started her career as a journalist, she describes the discomfort of pitching client stories that lacked real proof points once reporters started asking hard questions. That experience shaped her belief that brands must operationally do the thing before they claim it publicly. She explains how Trust Relations is built around evidence rather than spin, sometimes turning away clients who are not ready for press and instead coaching them toward operational changes that make their stories credible. White also previews Trust Equations, an early framework translating philosophical logic into brand narrative, and discusses why credible earned media still matters as AI answer engines reshape search and distribution.

April White explains why PR needs a new premise built on proof, not spin, before brands can earn trust.

The questions, and the answers.

What are you building, and what problem is Trust Relations solving?

People are fed up with PR because it feels like spin, but earned media is the only marketing that is earned rather than paid for or self proclaimed. Trust Relations is about making sure companies are actually doing what they say before they say it, backing claims with proof points, and showing rather than telling, so the brand and the consumer build real, connected trust.

You spent years at agencies like Weber Shandwick and Edelman. Which standard operating procedures did you disagree with most, and why did nobody fix them?

Junior staff straight out of college did the bulk of the work for major accounts while senior executives were barely involved, yet clients paid huge retainers. There was also little transparency about whether the amount of work matched what companies were paying for. I later realized it is a services industry problem tied to overhead, like fancy offices, but it still felt like a poor use of client budgets.

When you went out on your own, you immediately had more clients than you could handle. Where were those first clients actually coming from?

Some were people I had worked with before, but many came from Upwork back when it was less crowded, and those relationships led to more. Having more clients than I could juggle pushed me to build the firm I wished had existed, so I made it fully remote and structured around the values I wanted to see in PR.

What did you watch happen that made proof points and honesty a non-negotiable rule for you?

I started my career as a journalist, so when I moved into PR and pitched a story without real proof points, a reporter's hard question would expose it instantly, and it felt sickening. That discomfort came from my own sense of morality, and it led me to only work with clients whose values and evidence actually matched the story we wanted to tell.

Have you ever told a potential client they were not ready for press yet, and what happened after you said it?

Yes, I usually tell them they are not quite there and suggest what would get them ready. One client sold couches and donated old ones every time they sold a new one, which was a great sustainability story, but nothing on their website mentioned it. I told them to make it a visible, central feature first, and then we would have a real story to pitch.

Can you explain the Trust Equations platform in plain terms? What are you trying to make measurable that nobody has managed to measure?

It is still a work in progress. I am inspired by how philosophy uses logic equations to verify whether an argument holds up, and I want to translate that into brand narrative, identifying the brand promise, the proof points behind it, and how it matches what the audience actually cares about. The challenge is making it feel simple and useful rather than too academic.

If AI answer engines take a quarter of search this year, is PR quietly becoming a distribution channel for machines rather than people?

Yes, in a sense. PR still feeds SEO, but it now also feeds AI responses, and primary sources like credible newspapers, magazines, and podcasts are prioritized in both search engines and AI search. So if your brand appears in outlets with real credibility, it increases how the brand is found and prioritized in both systems, which is why earned media still matters.