This piece of research is corroborated by another one which covers Asia. According to a recent IABC/Oglivy PR Survey, 76% of our industry believes that by 2021, the term PR will cease to be used. Therefore, our industry wants or is already identifying a shift towards a default term that reflects the broad range of disciplines we provide for clients every day. A caveat to what I have just said is that the media will continue to use “PR” as a pejorative term of abuse for what they regard as propaganda, spin or evasion of the truth.
Everything we know, everything we do, everywhere we are – as dispersed as it all sounds, our profession, our job, will integrate even more.
Increasingly, integration of communications (Prediction No. 6) and marketing disciplines will be more embedded and more professionals will have substantial experience in both paid and earned communications. This won’t only be driven by the fact that digital media will dominate as a source of all information. More companies and products will have communications and marketing leaders who have grown up or worked in business environments like Russia and China and other developing markets, where there is less differentiating among service providers. Even in my own company I see migration of employees as they move around offices as they go on to expand their professional and cultural boundaries. My own son Colin has been working in China for almost six years, and his reference points are so utterly different.
A July 2011 article in McKinsey Quarterly states “we’re all marketers now” by which it means that marketing is inherent in everything a company does these days. Maintaining a consistent brand and consistent quality throughout the myriad touch points will require a change in structure, outlook and coupling of many disciplines our profession possesses.
In the future, one of the underpinnings of the new approach to integrated communications will be a function that most organisations don’t have now – that of a content manager. A content manager will be someone who functions in a corporate or brand setting as an editor does in a media outlet. He or she will have a role of curating and generating a stream of information for a particular audience.
Public relations will work hand‐in‐glove with all the elements of a business to present a coordinated message and experience. For those of us, who already work in large holding companies, we have been hearing the mantra of integration for quite some time. For those of you who have yet to embrace this notion, I urge you to consider alliances and partnerships with other disciplines.
One of the overall themes of the future for communications and marketing will be the ability of teams and organisations to collaborate. No one, not a single company or individual, will survive let alone thrive without partners (Prediction No. 7).
If you take the view of a client looking for a one‐shop‐one‐stop solution, they will expect representatives of different providers to work together comfortably, productively, seamlessly and invisibly. This goes on to some degree now, but in future, integration of freelancers and other highly specialised personnel will be common. It is possible that more relationships between clients and outside resources will look like the relationship between movie studios and production teams for a specific film. Instead of hiring a company with a fixed team, the client will hire an outside communications services leader, who will then put together a team from many disciplines and agencies. This will be a management challenge for traditional agencies, and for employees who have to operate more like freelancers. However, clients will get the purpose built, best‐of‐class teams that they increasingly want.
At Fleishman Hillard, we have purpose‐built, dedicated teams serving major clients, often incorporating teams from other firms, specialised outside consultants, and inside our own offices. Each of these teams is custom built, and no two are really alike.
In a development that is highly unusual in our industry, two years ago, Fleishman Hillard formed a partnership with a highly respected but fierce competitor – Ketchum. Admittedly, we are owned by the same holding group but it was nonetheless a major departure when we created a new, one‐off, joint entity called “One Voice” so that we could work together, seamlessly, on behalf of a client, Philips, throughout the world. So, in ten years time, partnerships between brands will be common, if they share an audience, deepening a trend that is just beginning.
Seismic changes taking place in the ways people communicate are irrevocably altering the media world. Print media, trying to keep pace with the rapid growth of online news, is experimenting with subscription “pay walls” and advertising‐supported platforms, while broadcast newsrooms are shrinking and relying more on network feeds and citizen journalists. This will continue to have a profound effect on the future of our industry. What we knew as media is now moved beyond its own definition. It now encompasses social activity, networks of groups that share a single thought or idea, that together create new economic value, without offering any rewards to the platform that facilitated the interaction. All that said, I personally believe that by 2020 there will be an even greater role for the respected, truly independent, professional journalist and media outlet (Prediction No.8). All that remains is to determine exactly how this will be funded.
