Dear PR Matters,
Your column is a great resource for PR practitioners and those who are interested in the business. My friends and I who do some freelance work for a PR agency particularly like the way you seem to enlighten us about new developments—like fake news, the rise of social media and influencers—that both challenge and revitalize the industry.
With that, will it be possible for you to share with us some PR trends that we can look forward to until the rest of the year? That will be very helpful to us.
Sincerely,
Annie C.
Dear Annie,
Your letter to us comes at midyear, which is the perfect time for PR practitioners to reassess what we have been doing during the past months, and what we can do better.
This is particularly challenging at a time when everything moves so fast, and we are often shaken by outside trends we have no control over. In an article in PR News, blogger Seth Arenstein shares with us some “Key PR Trends to Watch During the Rest of 2017”.
In his “bit of perspicacious trendspotting for the next six months of 2017”, he was led to this thought: “Reality depends on the view from your desk.” In short, you have to know your company or your client, your market and the environment around you in assessing whether these trends will be applicable. But, nevertheless, these are well-researched thoughts and certainly can guide us as we navigate the next six months.
AVEs Will Take a Beating but Keep on Ticking. PR practitioners often get a lot of pressure about AVEs, or advertising value equivalents. There has been a lot of anti-AVE talks, and “social-media measurement proponents are urging communicators to resist quoting vanity metrics, such as the number of eyeballs that saw a brand’s tweets”, Arenstein aid.
Likewise, “AMEC, the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, as part of its recent plan of attack has vowed to ask organizers of various PR contests to disqualify entries that include AVEs.”
Arenstein believes that in the next six months, “the death of AVEs will progress only slightly. As for vanity metrics, they’re a problem of biblical proportion ‘vanity of all vanities is vanity’.”
Measurement Will Struggle. Arenstein says that, “despite the importance of measurement at conferences, many PR shops will continue to remain far down the priority list. In the next six months, measurement will be done only when it’s deemed important, when there’s excess time and budget, or as we say, a determined advocate.”
In PR, Spelling Will Count More than Before. While many can “credibly argue that social media has made spelling a quaint relic, there’s a priority on good writing and spelling,” Arenstein said. “Aren’t misspelled words one of the first tip-offs of Spam?”
With the prominence of #fakenews, “it’s even more important for PR pros to write and spell correctly”. Arenstein cites some good advice during a PR News boot camp in New York last year, and I think this should be the mantra of every professional PR practitioner—“Proofread everything to death.”
Video Will Keep Growing. Trending videos have done a lot in recent times to enhance a brand—think Jollibee and McDonald’s. Arenstein affirms the fact that “it’s hardly a secret that video has more room to grow, with live video being a strong component of that growth. Similarly, communicators will rely more on graphics to tell stories.”
Influencers will have to prove their worth. With the new trends in metrics, high priced influencers will have to show the brands they endorse and being associated with them are worth the price they are paid. While social influencers will remain important, microinfluencers with small but loyal followers will become more important. “This will mean smaller brands can and will employ influencers,” Arenstein said.
Brand Newsrooms, Healthcare and Cyber PR Will Grow. Arenstein sees more brands honing their control of their message and joining Coca Cola in creating newsrooms.
On the agency side, more firms will announce they’ve created units “devoted to healthcare PR and cyber security. On the horizon: firms will add business units devoted to AI and autonomous vehicles.”
Integrated Efforts Will Increase. PR has gone out of the box from being purely traditional media relations, into integrated campaigns, as social PR becomes de rigueur.
Arenstein believes that “there is and will be plenty of room for PR to create and manage social activities for brands.” After all, “plenty of social industries have only begun dipping their toes into social media’s waters. In addition, even experienced social media players are tweaking their formulas regularly”.
There’ll be More Room for PR Pros to Tell Stories. “Storytelling and thought leadership also will continue to rise, as will brands and executives insisting they’re telling stories and providing thought leadership,” Arenstein said. He warns, however, about “old habits creeping in, and having the resulting content selling, not telling stories that people care about”.
Reputation Management Will Continue to Gain Importance. Digital communications has helped raise the importance of reputation protection. As Warren Buffet would say, “Reputation takes 20 years to build and 5 minutes to destroy.”
There have been many crises during the past few months, and Arenstein says that if there is anything that we have learned from this, “knowing how to protect reputation and react to issues before they become crises will continue to be critical to brands. That’s authentically good news for communicators”.
PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the UK-based International Public Relations Association, the world’s premier association for senior professionals around the world. Millie Dizon, the senior vice president for Marketing and Communications of SM, is the former local chair.
We are devoting a special column each month to answer the reader’s questions about public relations. Please send your comments and questions to askipraphil@gmail.com.