This is part of a series of blog posts celebrating our 50th anniversary, all of which address the question: What does the future of the PR and communications industry look like?
As the great American Major League Baseball player Casey Stengel once said: “Never make predictions, especially about the future”.
So, given that, I’m aware that I could be setting myself up for a fall in predicating where the PR industry will be in fifty years’ time, and the journey it will take during that period.
For me, the two most striking developments in the past two years for Public Relations are what will significantly influence its development over the next fifty years.
I think we will see the PR practitioner move from what could be argued was a certain silo style thinking to a much broader, and therefore even more valuable discipline, for brands, companies and organisations alike.
The era of fake news and the lack of trust audiences have in the traditional media platforms has changed the landscape of PR almost imperceptibly. Today, the real third party endorsement is best summed up by the phrase “sharability”.
In future, the all powerful third party endorsement will not only come from the traditional media. It will come from people that we all believe in – people like us. People sharing a brand’s content amongst their own followers on social media channels will matter most - perhaps more than media coverage.
Therefore, PR practitioners will increasingly need to know non-traditional media influencers and have direct contact with the target audiences they are trying to communicate with or influence.
In short, I think the PR practitioner of the next fifty years will move from the field of public relations to the field of public relationships where communicating direct with the audience will be very much “the norm”.
And this broadening of our remit as PR practitioners will, for many, require new skill sets.
Instead of just focusing on earned media and press releases– the traditional seeking of third party endorsement through the media and influencers – we will need to have broader skill sets that take in media we may own, in effect being publishers; thinking more visually in terms of imagery to communicate our message quickly and efficiently, developing an understanding of SEO and pay per click and knowing how to get audiences to share our content amongst each other.
I think the future is bright for the Public Relations industry but it will look and feel different over the next fifty years and, for me, that is very exciting.
