Photo courtesy of Baden Bower
A frustrated CEO recently fired his PR agency after eight months of vague updates and missed deadlines. “They kept telling me to trust the process,” he said, “but I never knew what the process actually was.” His story is just one out of so many.
Across boardrooms from Silicon Valley to Singapore, entrepreneurs are abandoning traditional PR agencies that treat the PR process like a black box for more transparent firms. Based on current trends, this appears to be more than just a service preference and signals the death of an entire business model that has dominated public relations for decades.
Baden Bower, a digital PR firm, has turned transparency into a key differentiator against established players. This part of the business model has triggered the largest client migration in PR history.
Founded on the premise that clients deserve to see exactly how their media coverage gets secured, the company’s approach remains deceptively simple. Baden Bower has trained its editorial team to report every phase of the writing and editing process and used technology to automate communication.
Before Baden Bower, traditional agencies built their empires on information asymmetry. Clients paid premium fees while agencies controlled every aspect of the process from story development to media outreach behind closed doors. This inconspicuous process has been cloaked as proprietary information.
Unfortunately, this model worked for decades because businesses had limited alternatives and media relationships were scarce. Today, those assumptions have crumbled under Baden Bower’s business model. It is not surprising that clients have been receptive to the new process, as evidenced by Baden Bower’s 685% year-on-year revenue growth.
How Baden Bower’s Automation System Exposed Industry Secrets
AJ Ignacio, Baden Bower’s CEO, treats transparency without the help of technology as a marketing promise. The company’s proprietary client communication automation system is one of the first major advancements in PR visibility in decades.
The platform is designed to easily update clients on headline development, publication selection rationale, content drafting progress, revision cycles, submission timing, and acceptance rates by publication. The process has made traditional agencies’ secretive practices obsolete.
The system has made publication within 72 hours on tier one outlets such as Forbes, Business Insider, and Entrepreneur possible. Because of the automation they have in place, Ignacio and his team can communicate quickly and receive feedback within a day or two. It seems their clients are happy with the story development and communication process, as 89% stay with the firm month-on-month.
To date, Baden Bower has attracted more than 3,600 paying clients across five continents, and it does not seem to be stopping. “I’m an entrepreneur myself, so I know how valuable transparency can be, but I still get surprised by how many companies reach out to us. Coming into the year, we’ve had to hire ten additional writers and two more editors to meet the demand.”
Entrepreneurs seeking to understand how to get featured in Forbes and other premium publications now have clear alternatives to traditional agencies that promise vague outcomes.
Why Traditional Agencies Are Losing Clients Worldwide
The movement toward transparent PR shows changes in how businesses operate globally. Companies across multiple markets, from North America to APAC, demand visibility into their service providers’ processes. The traditional PR model, where agencies controlled information flow and client relationships, mirrors outdated business practices that modern organizations reject.
Baden Bower’s expansion plans into Germany, France, Canada, and Singapore over the next couple of months directly challenge traditional agencies’ global operations. The company’s strategy focuses on establishing transparency-first PR operations in markets where established agencies have operated with impunity for decades. Baden Bower’s expansion plans constitute a direct assault on the industry’s foundational assumptions.
The transparency revolution should not come as a surprise. Other professional services industries, like consulting and marketing, have faced similar pressures from their customers. People demand visibility into methodologies, progress tracking, and results measurement. The “trust us” model that defined professional services for generations is no longer viable.
As Ignacio has expected, traditional agencies have responded by defending their secretive practices while making superficial transparency gestures, which obviously do not work anymore.
The Death of “Trust Us” Professional Services
Though it might appear as a bold claim, Ignacio believes their success is the end of information asymmetry in professional services. The company’s automated communication system eliminates the opacity that traditional agencies used to justify premium pricing and unclear deliverables. Clients now expect real-time updates, detailed progress reports, and transparent methodologies across all service providers.
This change parallels developments in other industries where technology has democratized information access. Just as consumers can track package deliveries in real time or monitor investment portfolios continuously, businesses now demand similar visibility into their service providers’ work. The PR industry’s resistance to this trend has created the opportunity that Baden Bower has exploited so effectively.
Baden Bower’s emergence among the best PR firms for startups shows that companies that cannot afford to waste resources on unclear deliverables crave transparency and guaranteed results.
The broader implications extend to how businesses evaluate all professional service providers. The “trust us” model that dominated consulting, legal services, and marketing faces similar pressure. Companies that fail to adapt to transparency expectations risk experiencing their own client exodus.
