Somehow, for the past 20 years, no matter how choppy things get in the media business, the water has been inviting, calm and warm, relatively speaking, in the PR business.
But it sure seems like 2025 is going to be the year when change is going to catch up to the PR business. There are just too many signs.
Even while the media business contracted and consolidated, starting with newspapers and then radio even prior to The Great Recession, driven by the boom of the Internet, PR remained on a growth trajectory with both agency employment and revenue and, in more recent years, an explosion of in-house, full-time jobs in corporate, education and government sectors.
We told you last year that local television is facing serious challenges starting in 2025, with viewers choosing streaming over programming that used to be news lead-ins at the same time as election year revenue evaporating. The economic challenges affecting radio and newspapers/online outlets, among others, will continue with a new threat for all forms of media we could not anticipate a year ago. That’s a literal threat, from the federal government, as the incoming administration has threatened regulatory, civil and even criminal action against news outlets and organizations that could contribute to an ongoing environment of challenging change.
And then there are business changes that are related to the media business differently, like the giant ad agency deal – one public company buying another, reportedly because of the high potential for cost savings with AI, imperative because of the way advertising is bought and sold now to reach fast-moving audience targets. Omnicom is planning to acquire IPG in a combination of ad giants that also own PR agencies. This deal includes some of the biggest names in Big PR, including Weber Shandwick, Golin, and Powell Tate from IPG and FleishmanHillard, Ketchum, Mercury and Porter Novelli from Omnicom. Without speculating on too far a limb, I think everyone in business PR has worked with enough of these deals to know that they typically don’t result in job growth. Even the privately-held behemoths are starting to feel it. A few weeks ago, Edelman announced layoffs amid falling revenues.
Of course, there’s more to PR than media relations. But some of the what were growth opportunities seem to be cooling, such as social media content creation and management and employment-drivers such as social media monitoring and some content creation, for which employee hours may be replaced with AI.
But the big changes could be driven by what’s happening in media. Sometimes the relationship between news organizations and PR professionals is referred to as “symbiotic.” That’s not right. If we are doing ours right, we help them do their jobs better but they don’t necessarily need us. The fact is, though, that many of us need them to do our jobs. If their jobs go away, how will yours survive?
The key, more than ever, in 2025 is for those of us on the PR side to be as nimble as possible, recognizing that the Fasten Seat Belts sign is on.