Filmmaker Karan Johar recently said something that the Bollywood industry needed to hear, even if the conversation it sparked deserves to go a few layers deeper. Speaking to The Week, Johar said, “I think Bollywood should stop doing PR. They should let their achievement speak for itself because, unfortunately, all of the PR is now paid PR.” He also acknowledged that the line between genuine popularity and manufactured buzz has become increasingly hard to read, adding, “Are people liking it or are they paid to like it? I don’t know, I can’t tell half the time.”
Johar’s observation that PR has gone into overdrive is not wrong. But the answer, says leading Bollywood publicist Dale Bhagwagar, is not less PR. It’s better PR.
“Karan Johar is absolutely right that paid, manufactured visibility is a problem,” says Bhagwagar, recognised as ‘India’s most trusted publicist’ with nearly three decades of experience in entertainment PR. “But paid buzz and real PR are two entirely different things. One builds lasting credibility. The other is just noise,” he adds.
The difference between noise and narrative
Bhagwagar makes this distinction that often gets lost in industry conversations. There is quite a lot of difference between flooding the internet with paid compliments and actually building a public narrative that has weight, authenticity and longevity.
Bhagwagar, who has handled more than 300 projects in entertainment PR over the course of his career, is clear about what the work has always meant to him. “Whether working with a seasoned film personality or someone just finding their footing in the industry, the job has never been to manufacture popularity. It is to position real talent in front of the right audience at the right time, in the right way. And if that really requires engineering the narrative, or a bit of exaggeration for the sake of more eyeballs, then yes, some spin can happen,” he explains. “That takes craft. That takes editorial thinking. That takes a deep understanding of how media works and what audiences respond to.”
The publicist points out that some of the most significant PR wins he has been part of held up precisely because they were built on ethics and substance, not fluff. A manufactured narrative crumbles under pressure. A real one holds.
PR done aesthetically v/s mindless aggressive PR
What Johar seems to be reacting to, Bhagwagar suggests, is the rise of what can be called aggressive, volume-based publicity, where visibility is measured in column inches and social media mentions regardless of context or quality.
“PR done aesthetically is something else entirely,” says Bhagwagar. “It is knowing when to speak and when to stay quiet. It is knowing which platform suits which artist and which story genuinely serves their long-term image. It is about elevating talent, not just amplifying it.”
He believes this distinction is especially critical for younger artists entering the industry today, many of whom are being pushed into relentless promotional cycles before they have had the chance to build a body of work that can sustain public interest on its own.
“New artists need PR more than anyone,” Bhagwagar says. “But they need it done intelligently, not desperately. There’s a significant difference between introducing talent to the world gracefully and overwhelming the audience with someone they haven’t had a reason to care about yet.”
The hybrid era changes everything
What makes this conversation even more relevant today is the emergence of what Bhagwagar calls hybrid PR, a model that goes well beyond traditional media outreach and represents a genuinely new way of thinking about public presence.
“Hybrid PR is an intelligent combination of branded content marketing and earned organic PR coverage,” he explains. “It brings together a unique mix of brand strategy and creative consultancy, and by catering to a carefully curated mix of media platforms including new-age websites, veteran websites and legacy websites, it can penetrate the ecosystem in a far more convincing and lasting way than either approach could achieve alone.”
This is not about being everywhere at once. It is about being seen in the right places, by the right people, for the right reasons. A star today is not judged solely by what a journalist writes on a website. They are judged by what comes up when you search their name, including AI answers, what tone dominates their online presence and whether that presence feels credible or constructed.
“Hybrid PR closes the gap between what an artist is and how the world perceives them,” says Bhagwagar. “It works for an established name trying to stay relevant and equally for a newcomer trying to make their first real impression, because it builds something that lasts rather than something that simply trends.”
Great PR needs something real to work with
Where Bhagwagar fully agrees with Johar is on the core principle: work must ultimately speak for itself. No amount of PR can save a bad film or manufacture lasting stardom for someone with nothing to back it up.
“I have always believed that PR works best when it has something real to work with,” he says. “Our job is to make sure great work gets seen, gets understood and gets remembered. We are not here to replace the work. We are here to make sure it does not get lost in the clutter.”
That, he argues, is the case for intelligent PR, not an argument against it. In an industry as competitive and cluttered as Bollywood, even genuine talent needs a smart, well-crafted public presence to be heard above the noise.
“Karan Johar said publicity and marketing are very important work categories and should be treated in that specific way,” Bhagwagar points out. “I could not agree more. The problem is not that PR exists. The problem is that it is too often being done without thought, without taste and without strategy. Fix that, and PR becomes one of the most powerful tools an artist can have.”