What can public relations and communication professionals look forward to in 2019? To find out, we sat down with PR powerhouse, published author and university lecturer, Ella Minty, to seek out her predictions about what will influence the public relations and communication professions in the next 12 months.
Here’s what she told us:
Although “digital” is still considered by many in the public relations and communication sectors worldwide as the “Holy Grail” of everything related to our activities, digital and conventional media relations are hardly “it”.
These are the main developments that, in my view, will take shape in 2019:
- A significant drift between the relevance of public relations in-house and agency work will occur. The former will see in-house activities to private and public businesses significantly bottom out their impact, while agencies will continue to pay an increased importance to automation and media relations.
- We’ll see a lot of smaller agencies going under due to a rise in digital tools that can be used by in-house teams, and we’ll also witness several takeovers of mid to large agencies – the relevance of the agency model is diminishing and click baits, stunts and headlines will have to be directly linked to organisational objectives.
The most successful agencies will be those who are there for the entire project journey, not just for a part of it. Demonstrating leadership and strategy skills will form part of the winning combination.
- For those specialised in issues management and crisis communication, there is a new form of expertise required for their teams: cyber security and deep fakes experts. These have a specialised skill set which, in my view, would be crucial to bring in early in the project.
- PR will find a new business line in social activism and will begin to tackle big issues in the search for a social and/or higher purpose. We may witness the creation of solely “ethical” agencies.
- Artificial intelligence and automation will cause significant impacts to the academic curricula across the world since the “jobs” junior practitioners are usually tasked to do are, pretty much, becoming automated. As such, the formal academic teaching will need to refocus its offering on the complexities of strategy, leadership, ethics, business acumen, international relations etc. of the public relations curriculum.
Download Ella’s predictions as an infographic and start planning today.
