Tag: trends

  • The State of PR 2024 by Muck Rack

    The State of PR 2024 by Muck Rack

    About the paper

    Muck Rack’s State of PR 2024 is an original survey study examining PR professionals’ working conditions, priorities, media relations practices, social media use, budgets, measurement and expectations for the profession.

    It is based on 1,116 PR professionals surveyed online, primarily by email, between 4 April and 10 May 2024; 75% of respondents were based in the United States, with smaller groups from Europe, Canada and Asia.

    The report states a conservative margin of error of approximately 3%, but the sample is not geographically representative of the global PR profession.

    Length: 51 pages

    More information / download: https://media.muckrack.com/documents/Muck_Rack_-_State_of_PR_2024.pdf

    Core Insights

    1. What are the most pressing challenges facing PR professionals in 2024?

    The report presents PR as a profession caught between persistent operational pressure and growing expectations.

    The leading challenge is insufficient resources, selected by 49% of respondents. This includes both budget and staffing constraints. The problem is particularly pronounced among in-house practitioners: 58% of respondents at brands identified resources as a top concern, compared with 43% at agencies.

    The second major challenge is getting responses from journalists, cited by 46%. This challenge is more acute for agencies, where 54% selected it, compared with 42% of brand-side respondents. Other prominent concerns include managing stakeholder expectations, demonstrating the value of PR and finding relevant journalists.

    These pressures are reinforced by the findings on workload:

    • 51% worked more than 40 hours during the preceding week.
    • 76% had worked outside normal hours at least once.
    • 26% had worked after hours on three or more occasions during the week.

    The findings suggest that PR teams are expected to deliver across a widening range of responsibilities without a corresponding expansion in capacity. Although many respondents expect budgets to remain stable or rise, resource scarcity remains their most immediate practical concern. The difficulty may therefore concern not only total budget levels, but also the scale of expectations, staffing levels and the number of functions assigned to PR.

    2. How central is media relations to PR work, and how are pitching practices changing?

    Media relations remains the dominant activity in the profession. Seventy-nine per cent say it constitutes at least a quarter of their job, considerably ahead of content creation, thought leadership, measurement and corporate communications.

    However, the report also depicts earned media as increasingly difficult:

    • 72% expect securing earned coverage to become more difficult over the next five years.
    • 46% identify getting journalist responses as one of their organisation’s main PR challenges.
    • More than half of agency respondents pitch journalists at least three days per week.

    The findings strongly support relevance, research and personalisation as the foundations of successful pitching. Respondents consider subject relevance to the journalist the most important factor in securing coverage, followed by personalisation and an existing relationship. Eighty-five per cent say they always or usually research journalists before pitching them, while 75% say they personalise pitches always or usually.

    Yet the report also reveals a gap between stated best practice and actual behaviour. Although 83% regard individual email as the most effective pitching channel, only 38% typically pitch one journalist per email. Twenty-three per cent pitch 15 or more reporters in a single email. Similarly, nearly half of those who personalise pitches change only a few sentences, while only 7% personalise the entire pitch.

    The report therefore suggests that PR professionals broadly understand what effective media relations requires, but workload, volume targets or limited resources may prevent them from applying that standard consistently.

    3. What does the report reveal about PR’s value and standing within organisations?

    Most respondents believe that organisational leadership has at least some understanding of PR. Eighty-eight per cent say leadership understands their work at least somewhat well, and a majority feel that the function is valued.

    However, the results expose a considerable difference between agencies and brands. At agencies, 52% say they feel “very valued”, compared with only 22% among brand-side respondents. A further 40% of brand respondents feel “valued”, but the disparity at the highest level suggests that in-house PR teams may have greater difficulty demonstrating their strategic contribution.

    Respondents identify three principal ways of increasing PR’s value:

    1. Producing measurable results — 66%.
    2. Connecting PR activity with important business initiatives — 60%.
    3. Generating more media coverage or strengthening media relationships — 55%.

    This is an important combination. Respondents do not believe that coverage alone is sufficient. They see value as being created when communication activity produces evidence, aligns with organisational priorities and contributes to business-relevant outcomes.

    Nevertheless, the report’s own measurement findings show that practice remains relatively output-focused. The four metrics respondents rate most highly are:

    • number of stories placed;
    • reach or impressions;
    • key-message inclusion;
    • website impact.

    The first three are largely communication outputs or intermediate effects rather than evidence of organisational or stakeholder outcomes. The report therefore indicates a tension: practitioners recognise that PR must demonstrate measurable business value, but many still depend on conventional media metrics that may not establish that value convincingly.

    4. How are social platforms and digital priorities shifting?

    LinkedIn has become the dominant social platform for PR professionals.

    Half of respondents identify it as the most valuable social network for their work. It is also included in 84% of organisations’ social media and communication strategies, and 61% of respondents expect to use it more. This gives LinkedIn a considerably stronger position than any other platform in the survey.

    By contrast, X/Twitter is losing importance as an active communication and pitching platform:

    • Only 16% regard it as their most valuable platform.
    • Its inclusion in communication strategies fell by 15 percentage points from 2023.
    • More respondents plan to reduce their use of X than increase it.
    • It has declined markedly as a preferred pitching channel.

    The report contains some inconsistencies between chart labels and accompanying prose on individual percentages, but the direction is clear: LinkedIn is rising, while X is declining for active PR use.

    X nevertheless remains important for monitoring and listening. Forty-nine per cent still regard it as important for social listening, behind LinkedIn at 56% but ahead of most other platforms. This distinction suggests that a platform may remain valuable as an information environment even when it becomes less attractive for relationship-building or content distribution.

    TikTok and YouTube also show signs of growing strategic relevance, although from lower starting points. The broader implication is that PR social strategies are becoming less dependent on a single real-time public platform and more distributed across professional, visual and video-based channels.

    5. What does the report suggest about the future direction of PR?

    The report portrays a profession becoming more integrated with marketing, more technologically dependent and more analytically demanding, while still retaining media relations as a core capability.

    Seventy-two per cent believe the relationship between PR and marketing will become more important during the next five years. This indicates increasing organisational integration and potentially greater overlap in planning, content, digital channels, data and measurement.

    The most important future capability is strategic planning, selected by 46%. Integrating artificial-intelligence tools follows closely at 44%, rising from 31% in the previous year and narrowly exceeding media relations at 43%. Data and analytics ranks fourth at 37%.

    This does not mean media relations is disappearing. It remains the activity occupying the largest share of practitioners’ time, and respondents expect earned media to become harder rather than less relevant. Instead, the findings point towards a broader professional role in which practitioners must combine:

    • strategic judgement;
    • AI-enabled workflows;
    • media relations;
    • data and analytics;
    • multimedia communication;
    • influencer relations;
    • closer collaboration with marketing.

    The report’s underlying argument is that success will depend on adaptation rather than abandonment of traditional PR. Practitioners will still need media relationships and editorial relevance, but these must be combined with stronger strategic planning, technological competence and evidence of organisational value.

    A central limitation is that the report is produced by a PR technology company whose services include journalist discovery, pitching, monitoring and measurement. The survey data are useful, but some topic selection and interpretation naturally align with Muck Rack’s commercial field. The heavy US representation and differences in question wording between years also mean that global conclusions and year-on-year comparisons should be treated cautiously.

  • 2023 Future of Corporate Communications Study by Edelman

    2023 Future of Corporate Communications Study by Edelman

    About the paper

    The paper is a mixed-methods corporate communications study from Edelman, combining a quantitative survey with qualitative interviews to assess how the communications function is evolving after the pandemic.

    The report states that it surveyed 218 C-level communications leaders in June 2023 and conducted 20+ in-depth interviews in July and August 2023, with respondents drawn from U.S.-based Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 1000 organisations; the sample is therefore primarily U.S.-focused, even though many of the companies have national, multinational, or global reach.

    Length: 30 pages

    More information / download:
    https://www.edelman.com/2023-future-of-corporate-comms

    Core Insights

    1. How does the report argue that the role of corporate communications has changed in recent years?

    The report’s central argument is that corporate communications has moved from being a mainly executional support function to becoming a strategic leadership function. Edelman presents this as a post-pandemic shift: communications leaders are no longer merely helping to deliver decisions once taken, but are increasingly involved in shaping enterprise decisions before they are finalised.

    The report says this shift is visible both in perception and in practice. Half of CCOs now see themselves as strategic advisers to business leaders, up from just over a third in 2021, while only 10% still feel stuck in a cost-centre position, down from 30% two years earlier. It also says that 64% are brought into major business decisions when the decision path is still tentative, compared with only 9% who are consulted after decisions have already been made.

    In other words, the function is portrayed as operating at the intersection of value creation and risk mitigation. Communications is not just reacting to reputational threats; it is being expected to anticipate them, interpret stakeholder expectations, and influence strategy across the enterprise. That is the report’s strongest framing of the profession’s future.

    2. What evidence does the report provide that communications leaders are under growing pressure, even as their strategic status rises?

    A key tension in the report is that greater influence has come with greater pressure, but not necessarily with matching support. The report says nearly 80% of communications leaders feel their role is more demanding than it was 12 months earlier, and 77% say their CEO demands more of them than a year ago. It also notes that CCOs spend nearly one-fifth of their time counselling the CEO on non-communications matters, which underlines how far the remit has stretched.

    At the same time, resources are not keeping pace. The report says 44% of communications leaders do not believe their CEO understands the resources needed to shape enterprise decision-making or execute communications programmes successfully. Budget expectations have also softened: 40% expect their budgets to increase, compared with more than half in 2021, while 28% expect flat budgets and 30% expect moderate cuts.

    This matters because the report treats communications as a function being asked to do more with uncertain backing. It is expected to cover an expanding range of stakeholders, manage a broader mandate, and prove business value more clearly, yet it still struggles to secure stable investment. One of the report’s recurring assumptions is that communications still has not fully solved the challenge of linking its work to measurable business outcomes.

    3. Why does the report place so much emphasis on data, technology, and organisational structure?

    The report argues that modern communications can no longer rely mainly on instinct, media experience, or message craft. Instead, it says an advanced communications function must be built around actionable data: stakeholder signals, behavioural insights, monitoring, analytics, and social listening. This is presented as essential because senior leadership now expects communications to bring evidence-based insight into decision-making, not just narrative support.

    That logic also drives the report’s discussion of structure. Edelman says the proportion of leaders reporting a centralised communications structure has grown sharply since 2021, because centralisation helps organisations gather intelligence more holistically, reduce silos, and respond to risk more consistently. On that basis, the report implies that organisational design is not a side issue; it is part of how communications earns strategic credibility.

    Technology sits within the same argument. The report says 56% believe AI is already affecting their business, and 44% say they are investing more heavily in communications technology than the year before. But it does not present technology as a simple productivity win. It also highlights integration problems, rapid change, and ongoing concerns around privacy, policy, and ethics. The report’s perspective is quite clear here: tools matter, but their value depends on interpretation, application, and the ability of the function to use data intelligently.

    4. How does the report explain the growing importance of employees and corporate purpose in communications?

    One of the report’s most important arguments is that reputation now begins inside the organisation. Employees are presented as the most consequential stakeholder group because they are closest to value creation, can advocate for or against the company, and shape how external stakeholders perceive the business. On the chart on page 17, employees are shown as the stakeholder group putting the most pressure on organisations to act on social issues, ahead of investors, NGOs, regulators, media, and consumers.

    The report also stresses that “employees” are not a single, uniform audience. It points to a five-generation workforce, differing expectations about work, and rising tension between leadership and younger workers, especially Gen Z. As a result, communications is increasingly held accountable for outcomes such as employee engagement, employer brand, retention, and DEI. In fact, the report says 60% expect employee engagement to be the single most important outcome their function must deliver over the next two years.

    Corporate purpose is then positioned as the framework that helps organisations navigate this more complex internal environment. The report says communications teams are heavily involved in clearly communicating purpose, fostering meaning among employees, and, in some cases, ensuring purpose shapes strategy itself. So purpose is not treated here as branding language alone; it is framed as a practical decision-making compass and a guardrail for when companies should act on social or socioeconomic issues.

    5. What does the report suggest will define the future agenda for corporate communications?

    The future agenda, according to the report, will be defined by three overlapping pressures: technology and AI, ESG and sustainability politics, and geopolitical volatility. On AI, the report suggests communicators must help build the business case for adoption while understanding the operational and ethical risks. On ESG, it argues that despite political backlash, especially in the U.S., integration of ESG into communications strategy remains strong, with 76% saying ESG is mostly or fully integrated.

    On geopolitics, the report is especially forward-looking. It argues that elections, polarisation, disinformation, labour activism, and broader geopolitical instability will all have growing reputational and business consequences. That is why it repeatedly calls for stronger cross-functional working, especially with sustainability, investor relations, HR, legal, and government affairs.

    The broader conclusion is that tomorrow’s CCO will have to be a cross-enterprise integrator: someone who can read stakeholder dynamics, translate them into business implications, and help the organisation act with clarity and credibility. The report assumes that winning trust, internally and externally, will be the defining competitive task for communications. But it also implies that success will depend on whether the function can prove value, secure resources, and combine judgement with data more effectively than in the past.

  • Future of Professionals Report 2023 by Thomson Reuters

    Future of Professionals Report 2023 by Thomson Reuters

    About the paper

    Thomson Reuters’ Future of Professionals Report 2023 examines how AI, especially generative AI, is expected to transform professional work across legal, tax and accounting, risk, compliance, corporate and government settings.

    It is original survey research based on a web survey conducted in May–June 2023 among more than 1,200 professionals, with about half based in the US and most of the rest in the UK, Canada and Latin America.

    The report combines survey findings with Thomson Reuters’ own interpretive commentary, so it should be read as a research-based thought leadership report rather than a neutral academic study.

    Length: 36 pages

    More information / download:
    https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/technology/future-of-professionals-2023/

    Core Insights

    1. What is the central argument of the report?

    The report’s central argument is that AI will not merely make professional work faster; it will reshape the value proposition of professional services. Thomson Reuters presents AI as a catalyst for transformation across three linked dimensions: productivity, professional value, and responsible adoption.

    The productivity argument is the most immediate. Professionals expect AI to help with operational efficiency, research, document review, drafting, administrative work, risk identification, regulatory monitoring and client communication. The report repeatedly frames AI as a way to remove repetitive or low-value work so that professionals can spend more time on higher-value advisory tasks.

    The deeper argument is about the future role of professionals. The report suggests that “Professional 2.0” will be less defined by routine technical execution and more by judgement, strategic advice, client service, specialisation, and the ability to use AI effectively. It argues that AI will shift professionals from doing more work manually to orchestrating, checking, interpreting and adding value to AI-enabled work.

    The report is optimistic, but not naïvely so. It recognises fears around accuracy, job loss, ethics, data security, regulation, work-life balance and professional identity. However, Thomson Reuters’ overall position is clear: AI will not replace highly trained professionals wholesale, but professionals who use AI will outcompete those who do not.

    2. How do professionals expect AI to affect productivity, client service and business performance?

    Professionals in the report are broadly positive about AI’s operational potential. A key headline finding is that 67% expect AI or generative AI to have a transformational or high impact on their profession over the next five years. That makes AI the most significant trend tested in the study, ahead of economic recession and the cost-of-living crisis.

    The report identifies several productivity gains. In law firms, AI is expected to help with large-scale data analysis, non-billable administrative work, time recording, research and document-related tasks. In tax and accounting, respondents see potential in analysing deductions, income streams, tax scenarios and future tax results. In corporate and government departments, AI is expected to streamline internal processes, reduce external spend, improve research and speed up document review.

    Client service is another major theme. Respondents expect AI to improve the speed, clarity and consistency of communication. The report mentions AI helping draft and edit client communications, translate complex ideas into plain language, identify client needs arising from regulatory change, and support faster internal advice. For in-house teams, the report suggests that AI may strengthen their role as business partners by helping them provide more consultative, growth-oriented advice.

    However, the financial consequences are less clear. Firms may become more profitable if AI reduces costs and frees professionals for higher-value work. At the same time, clients may use AI as a reason to push fees down, move more work in-house, or turn to alternative legal service providers. The report does not claim certainty here; it explicitly notes that the “financial victor” remains uncertain.

    3. What evidence does the report provide that AI will change professional roles, skills and career paths?

    The report argues that AI will fundamentally alter who does professional work, what skills are valued, and how people enter and progress within the professions.

    One of the strongest findings is that 64% of professionals believe AI will make their professional skills more highly valued, while 33% fear that AI could contribute to the demise of their profession or reduce demand for their skills. This tension runs throughout the report: professionals see opportunity, but also existential risk.

    The report expects new career paths to emerge. It suggests that some work currently performed by credentialed professionals may shift to paralegals, junior professionals, enrolled agents, legal tech consultants, operations specialists or other non-traditional roles. It also anticipates more hybrid roles combining professional expertise with technology, data science, IT, security, regulatory and AI skills.

    Training is presented as one of the clearest areas of change. Almost 90% of respondents expect basic mandatory AI training for all professionals within five years, and 87% expect everyone to need training in new skills. The report also predicts changes in how junior professionals are trained and in the nature of university or college education.

    A particularly important nuance is that AI may reduce traditional entry-level work. More than half of respondents expect a decline in entry-level roles over the next five years, yet a majority also expect the total number of professionals in their firm or department to increase. In other words, the report does not predict simple job destruction. It predicts a reshaping of the professional labour market: fewer traditional junior tasks, more specialised or AI-enabled roles, and greater need for adaptability.

    4. What are the main concerns, risks and barriers identified in the report?

    The report identifies several overlapping concerns.

    The biggest fear is accuracy. A quarter of respondents cite compromised accuracy as their greatest concern. This is especially important because professionals work in fields where errors can have legal, financial, ethical or regulatory consequences. The report stresses that AI outputs must be checked by humans rather than accepted at face value.

    Job loss and professional displacement are also major concerns. Nineteen per cent cite widespread job loss as their biggest fear, while 17% cite the demise of the profession. Some respondents fear that AI may “dumb down” professional judgement if people rely on machine-generated answers without understanding the underlying reasoning.

    Ethics and data security are also prominent. Fifteen per cent cite data security as their biggest fear, and another 15% cite loss of ethics. The report connects these concerns to the need for transparency, explainability, trustworthy sources, professional standards and regulation.

    The biggest barrier to change is cultural rather than technical. The report says 83% of professionals cite risk aversion or fear of change as a top-three barrier within the professions. Lack of technology skills, lack of investment, partnership models, and lack of diversity of thought are also identified as obstacles.

    Finally, the report is ambivalent on wellbeing. AI could reduce long hours, lower the risk of errors, and remove mundane work. But some respondents fear it could increase pressure, reduce human connection, worsen engagement, or create anxiety about disposability. The report therefore treats wellbeing as both a potential benefit and a risk depending on how AI is implemented.

    5. What is Thomson Reuters’ perspective, and what are the implications of the report?

    Thomson Reuters’ perspective is strongly pro-adoption, but framed around responsible implementation. The company argues that AI should be embraced decisively, but with guardrails around trust, ethics, transparency, accuracy, regulation and human oversight.

    Its assumptions are visible throughout the report. Thomson Reuters assumes that AI adoption is inevitable, that productivity gains will be substantial, and that the professions will be reshaped rather than destroyed. It also assumes that the highest-value professional work will remain human-centred: advice, judgement, client relationships, ethics, interpretation and strategic thinking.

    The report’s implications are significant. For firms, it suggests a need to rethink pricing, services, staffing models, training and competitive advantage. For in-house departments, it suggests an opportunity to move from cost centres to growth enablers, particularly if AI helps them deliver more consultative advice and bring more work in-house. For individual professionals, the implication is that passive adaptation will not be enough. They will need to develop AI literacy, deepen expertise, understand their own value proposition, and learn how to work with AI rather than around it.

    The broader conclusion is that trust will be the decisive condition for AI adoption in professional work. Without confidence in accuracy, data security, ethics and explainability, the promised productivity gains may not materialise. With the right governance, however, the report argues that AI can improve productivity, increase professional value, create new roles, support better client service and potentially improve wellbeing.

  • The State of PR 2023 by Muck Rack

    The State of PR 2023 by Muck Rack

    About the paper

    Muck Rack’s State of PR 2023 is an original survey of 1,034 PR professionals, conducted online from 31 March to 25 April 2023 and distributed primarily by email.

    The sample is heavily US-based: 89% of respondents were in the United States, while Europe and Canada each accounted for 3% and Asia for 1%; 55% worked at agencies and 23% at brands.

    The stated margin of error is approximately 3%.

    Length: 54 pages

    More information / download: https://media.muckrack.com/documents/Muck_Rack_-_State_of_PR_2023.pdf

    Core Insights

    1. What does the report reveal about the main pressures facing PR professionals?

    The most immediate pressure is the increasing difficulty of media relations. More than half of respondents, 53%, selected getting responses from journalists as one of their three biggest current challenges. This concern was particularly pronounced among agency respondents, at 59%, compared with 46% among people working at brands.

    Resource pressure is nearly as significant. Some 48% identified insufficient budget or staffing as a leading challenge. Here the pattern was reversed: 55% of brand-side respondents were concerned about resources, compared with 42% at agencies.

    A third major challenge is demonstrating value. Forty per cent selected justifying or showcasing the PR team’s value to stakeholders, while 37% pointed to the difficulty of identifying relevant journalists. These figures suggest that PR teams are under pressure at both ends of the process: they struggle to secure media attention and must then prove internally that their activities have created meaningful value.

    The workload data reinforces this picture. Fifty-one per cent reported working 41–50 hours in the preceding week, while 6% worked more than 50 hours. Seventy-eight per cent had worked outside normal hours at least once during that week, and 26% had done so three or more times.

    At the same time, respondents were not generally alienated from senior management. Ninety per cent felt that leadership understood their work at least “somewhat well”, and most felt that the communications function was valued. The problem therefore appears less to be outright organisational rejection of PR than a combination of high expectations, constrained resources, difficult media conditions and persistent demands for evidence of impact.

    2. How is the role and scope of PR changing?

    The report presents PR as a profession that remains strongly centred on media relations but is becoming broader and more integrated with other organisational functions.

    Media relations still dominates practitioners’ work: 85% said it constituted at least a quarter of their job. However, thought leadership was cited by 51%, measurement and reporting by 47%, events by 34%, corporate communications by 27%, and both internal and executive communications by 23%.

    Internal communication appears to be expanding. Forty-four per cent said their teams were spending more time on it, while only 4% said the amount of time was decreasing. This is particularly noteworthy because brands also regard internal communications and counsel as highly unsuitable for outsourcing: 73% said they would be very unlikely to assign this work to an agency.

    The profession’s boundaries are also becoming less clear. Sixty-one per cent believed that the term “public relations” would need to be defined more broadly within five years, while another 15% thought it would need to be renamed. Only 22% expected the existing term to continue describing their work accurately.

    The relationship between PR and marketing is another sign of convergence. Seventy-one per cent expected this relationship to become more important during the following five years, although the report notes that this expectation had declined slightly from the previous year.

    Taken together, the findings suggest that PR is evolving from a relatively distinct media-relations discipline into a broader communications function encompassing internal communication, thought leadership, executive communication, measurement, digital channels and closer coordination with marketing.

    3. What does the study say about media relations and the future of earned media?

    The report portrays earned media as both central to PR and increasingly difficult to obtain.

    Seventy-one per cent expected securing earned media to become more difficult over the next five years: 44% anticipated that it would become somewhat more difficult, and 27% much more difficult. Only 8% expected it to become easier.

    Respondents nevertheless remained highly focused on traditional pitching. Eighty-nine per cent considered individual, one-to-one email the most effective channel for approaching journalists. No alternative came close: Twitter and mass email were each selected by 18%, while phone and LinkedIn were selected by 15%.

    Relevance was regarded as the most important ingredient in a successful pitch. Thirty-three per cent chose whether the subject was relevant to the journalist as the single most important factor. Existing relationships and personalised pitches were each chosen by 20%. Elements such as executive quotations, brevity, visual content and statistics in the headline were rated much lower.

    The report’s practical summary of pitching habits shows a fairly conventional workflow: almost 90% preferred one-to-one emails, 92% kept pitches below 300 words, 81% preferred pitching before noon, and Tuesday was the most popular day. Respondents were divided over whether one or two follow-ups were acceptable.

    The media mix itself is broadening. Ninety per cent commonly pitched online or digital media, 66% magazines, 63% printed newspapers, 52% television and 50% podcasts. This indicates that earned media is not disappearing, but the number of relevant formats and outlets is increasing while journalist responsiveness is declining.

    The underlying implication is that PR practitioners will need to combine better targeting, stronger relevance and broader media knowledge rather than relying on higher volumes of outreach.

    4. How are technology, AI and social platforms reshaping PR practice?

    Technology is becoming a strategic capability, although adoption remains uneven.

    Generative AI had already gained substantial attention when the survey was conducted in spring 2023. Twenty-eight per cent said they were already using tools such as ChatGPT or DALL-E, while 33% planned to explore them. A further 24% were unsure, and 15% had no plans to use them.

    AI also entered the list of important future skills. Thirty-one per cent said that integrating new AI tools into workflows would be one of the capabilities their organisation needed to develop over the following five years. It ranked below media relations, strategic planning and data and analytics, but roughly alongside social media, multimedia production, influencer marketing and diversity, equity and inclusion.

    Technology use was not universally sophisticated. Media lists were commonly stored in spreadsheets, cited by 68%, as well as dedicated PR software, cited by 64%. Only small minorities used sales CRM or marketing automation platforms for this purpose. Social-listening practices were also fragmented: 34% used such tools daily, but another 34% used them only case by case.

    Social-media priorities were shifting noticeably. LinkedIn had become the most widely used social network in communications strategies, selected by 84%, followed by Instagram at 75%, Twitter at 72% and Facebook at 71%. LinkedIn had risen by 11 percentage points from the previous year, while Twitter had fallen by five points.

    Looking forward, 53% planned to use LinkedIn more and 40% expected to increase their use of TikTok. Facebook was the only major platform where considerably more respondents expected to reduce rather than increase usage.

    The report therefore depicts a profession moving towards AI, analytics, LinkedIn and multimedia communication, but still relying extensively on spreadsheets, email and relatively conventional workflow systems.

    5. What are the report’s most important implications for PR leadership and measurement?

    The central leadership implication is that PR teams believe their value depends increasingly on demonstrating results linked to organisational priorities.

    When asked what would increase PR’s value among stakeholders, 66% chose producing measurable results and 62% selected connecting PR activities to key business initiatives. Fifty-seven per cent also cited securing more media coverage or relationships.

    There was, however, a tension between this aspiration and the metrics respondents considered most useful. The four highest-ranked measures were the number of stories placed, reach or impressions, key-message pull-through and website impact. These are largely outputs and intermediate outcomes rather than direct evidence of organisational or stakeholder impact.

    The report notes an important difference between agencies and brands. Agencies were more likely to prioritise the number of stories placed, whereas brand-side practitioners were more likely to rank revenue impact highly. Brand respondents were also more likely to say that connecting PR to business initiatives, improving internal reporting and mitigating reputational risk increased the function’s value.

    This points to a structural difference in how the two sides define success. Agencies appear more focused on deliverables and media performance, while in-house teams are somewhat more concerned with organisational consequences and business alignment.

    Leadership involvement remains strong. Forty-two per cent said the executive team was briefed about PR activities weekly, 16% monthly and 12% daily. CEOs were also the most commonly identified decision-makers for PR and earned-media spending, at 38%.

    The report’s broader implication is that PR’s future credibility will depend on closing the gap between the desire to demonstrate business value and the continued reliance on exposure-based metrics. As media coverage becomes harder to secure, counting placements and impressions alone is unlikely to be sufficient. PR teams will need stronger connections between communication activity, stakeholder response, reputation, digital behaviour and organisational outcomes.

  • Future of Jobs Report 2023 by World Economic Forum

    Future of Jobs Report 2023 by World Economic Forum

    About the paper

    The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 analyses how macro-trends, technology adoption, skills disruption and workforce strategies are expected to reshape labour markets from 2023 to 2027.

    It is a mixed-methods report built primarily on the fourth Future of Jobs Survey of 803 companies employing more than 11.3 million workers, across 27 industry clusters and 45 economies from all world regions, supplemented with data collaborations from Coursera, Indeed and LinkedIn.

    Length: 296 pages

    More information / download:
    https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023/

    Core Insights

    1. What is the central labour-market outlook presented in the report?

    The report’s central argument is that the global labour market is entering a period of significant structural churn rather than simple expansion or contraction. Employers expect major reconfiguration of roles, driven by technology, the green transition, economic pressure, supply-chain shifts and changing worker expectations.

    The headline estimate is that 23% of jobs will change structurally between 2023 and 2027. In the dataset covering 673 million jobs, employers expect 69 million jobs to be created and 83 million to be displaced, resulting in a net decrease of 14 million jobs, or about 2% of current employment.

    This is not presented as a uniform jobs crisis. The report’s more nuanced claim is that losses and gains will be unevenly distributed. Some roles, especially clerical, administrative and record-keeping jobs, are expected to decline sharply, while roles linked to technology, sustainability, education, agriculture and digital commerce are expected to grow.

    2. Which forces are expected to transform businesses and jobs most strongly?

    The report identifies technology adoption as the most widely expected driver of business transformation. More than 85% of surveyed organisations expect increased adoption of new and frontier technologies and broader digital access to transform their organisations.

    However, the report broadens the analysis beyond technology. It also highlights the green transition, ESG standards, climate adaptation, localisation of supply chains, slow economic growth, inflation, rising costs and geopolitical fragmentation.

    The strongest expected net job-creation effects come from green-transition investment, broader ESG adoption and more localised supply chains. By contrast, the strongest expected net job-destruction effects come from slower economic growth, supply shortages, rising input costs and the rising cost of living.

    So the report’s view is not “technology destroys jobs” or “technology creates jobs”. It argues that technology, climate, economics and geopolitics are interacting, producing both new demand and significant displacement.

    3. Which jobs are expected to grow, and which are expected to decline?

    The fastest-growing roles relative to their current size are mainly technology- and sustainability-related. AI and Machine Learning Specialists are at the top, followed by Sustainability Specialists, Business Intelligence Analysts, Information Security Analysts, Renewable Energy Engineers and related roles.

    Large-scale job growth is also expected in education, agriculture and digitally enabled commerce. The report projects growth in roles such as Vocational Education Teachers, University and Higher Education Teachers, Agricultural Equipment Operators, E-commerce Specialists, Digital Transformation Specialists and Digital Marketing and Strategy Specialists.

    The steepest declines are expected in clerical and administrative work. Bank Tellers, Postal Service Clerks, Cashiers and Ticket Clerks, Data Entry Clerks, Accounting and Payroll Clerks, and Administrative and Executive Secretaries are among the roles expected to decline most.

    The report estimates that 26 million fewer jobs may exist by 2027 in record-keeping and administrative roles alone. This makes administrative work one of the clearest areas of projected displacement.

    4. What does the report say about skills disruption and future skill needs?

    The report estimates that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted over the next five years. This is lower than the 57% disruption forecast in the 2020 edition, but still signals substantial pressure on workers and employers.

    Analytical thinking is identified as the most important core skill in 2023, followed by creative thinking. The report also places strong emphasis on resilience, flexibility, agility, motivation, self-awareness, curiosity, lifelong learning and technological literacy.

    The fastest-rising skills include creative thinking, analytical thinking, technological literacy, curiosity and lifelong learning, resilience, systems thinking, AI and big data, talent management and customer-service orientation.

    A key point is that companies’ training priorities do not simply mirror current skill importance. AI and big data rank only 15th as a current core skill, but third as a corporate training priority. This suggests that employers see AI capability as strategically urgent, even where it is not yet embedded across the workforce.

    5. What workforce strategies do companies expect to use, and what are the implications?

    The report finds that employers see skills gaps and difficulty attracting talent as the two biggest barriers to business transformation. Skills gaps in local labour markets are identified by 60% of surveyed companies, while 53% cite inability to attract talent.

    The most common workforce strategies are investing in learning and training on the job, and accelerating automation. Around four in five companies expect to use each of these strategies.

    The report estimates that six in 10 workers will need training before 2027, but only about half currently have access to adequate training opportunities. Companies expect much of this training to happen internally, through on-the-job training, coaching and internal training departments, rather than mainly through external providers.

    The implication is that the future of work will depend heavily on whether organisations can move from abstract concern about skills to practical, scaled workforce development. The report’s underlying assumption is that labour-market disruption is not fully predetermined: policy choices, business investment and talent strategies will shape whether the transition becomes exclusionary or opportunity-generating.

  • 2021 Future of Corporate Communications Study by Edelman

    2021 Future of Corporate Communications Study by Edelman

    About the paper

    The report examines how the corporate communications function is evolving from a transactional support role into a more strategic business partner, focusing on priorities, structures, capabilities, investment, and reporting lines.

    It is a mixed-methods original research report based on a quantitative survey of 200 participants fielded in December 2020 and January 2021, plus 35+ in-depth interviews with senior communications leaders from participating U.S.-based organisations.

    The dataset is globally distributed but heavily North America-led, with survey geographies reported as North America (85%), EMEA (7%), APAC (4%), and Latin America (4%); interview participants were drawn from U.S.-based organisations.

    Length: 76 pages

    More information / download:
    https://www.edelman.com/expertise/commstech/2021-Future-of-Corporate-Comms-Research

    Core Insights

    1. What is the central argument of the report about the future role of corporate communications?

    The report’s core argument is that corporate communications is moving up the strategic continuum, from being treated as a cost centre or executional service provider to becoming a value-generating business partner. Edelman argues that external disruption, especially the pandemic, social issues, business transformation, and a more complex stakeholder environment, has increased the strategic importance of communications inside organisations. The report presents this not as a marginal shift, but as a structural change in what senior communicators are expected to do.

    A major theme is that communications is no longer just about media relations, messaging, and storytelling. Instead, the function is increasingly expected to help shape decisions on risk, workforce issues, reputation, transformation, social purpose, and stakeholder trust. The report says this has brought communicators closer to CEOs, boards, and the C-suite, with 46% now reporting to the CEO versus 34% in 2014, and 77% saying perceptions of communications as a strategic business driver changed within their organisation during 2020.

    At the same time, the report is careful not to suggest that this evolution is complete. It repeatedly notes that progress is uneven. Some organisations still see communications in largely reactive or transactional terms, and maturity varies by industry, geography, and leadership culture. So the report’s argument is both optimistic and cautionary: the opportunity is real, but it has to be claimed and proved.

    2. What forces are driving this shift in corporate communications?

    The report identifies several forces pushing communications into a more strategic role. COVID-19 is presented as the immediate accelerator. It increased the visibility and relevance of communications, especially around employee engagement, business continuity, internal alignment, and executive decision-making. More than half of respondents said COVID-19 shifted the communications focus and demand on their function, with employee communications emerging as the most strongly affected area.

    Beyond the pandemic, the report highlights business transformation as the most important long-term driver, cited by 77% of respondents, followed by social issues at 73%, customer or consumer demand shifts at 56%, and talent at 38%. This matters because it frames communications not as a function reacting to one crisis, but as one increasingly embedded in permanent organisational change. Communicators are being pulled into transformation programmes, social issue response, workforce strategy, and stakeholder trust management.

    The report also stresses the importance of the changing media and information ecosystem. Social media, digital channels, and faster news cycles have altered how organisations reach stakeholders and how quickly reputational issues can escalate. That has expanded the role of communications into digital, content, creative, analytics, and more direct coordination with marketing. In other words, the environment has become too fast, fragmented, and high-stakes for communications to remain a back-end support function.

    3. How does the report say the communications function itself needs to change in order to meet these expectations?

    The report argues that strategic credibility starts inside the function. Communications teams need to change how they think about themselves, how they organise, and what capabilities they prioritise. The report contrasts an older model built around reactive storytelling and service delivery with a newer model based on strategic planning, business acumen, insights, measurable outcomes, and multidisciplinary collaboration.

    A recurring theme is that the modern function must be agile, multidisciplinary, and insights-driven. Teams can no longer rely only on classic PR strengths such as writing, media contacts, and message development. They now need broader capability across employee communications, risk and crisis, brand and corporate positioning, change communications, digital, creative, data, and analytics. The report explicitly describes the ideal talent profile as “T-shaped”: people with deep expertise in one area, but enough breadth to work across multiple strategic contexts.

    The report also argues that relationship-building with senior leadership is essential. Functions that are seen as more strategic have typically earned closer CEO and C-suite access, often by combining stronger counsel with better evidence of impact. It recommends integrated strategic planning, clearer governance, clearer roles, and more consultative team behaviour. The implication is that structural change alone is not enough. A communications team only becomes strategic when it shows business understanding, connects its work to organisational goals, and consistently executes at a high level.

    4. What does the report reveal about investment priorities, technology, and capability gaps?

    One of the clearest findings is that expectations are rising faster than resources. The report says communicators are being asked to do more, across more areas, with stronger proof of business value, but many are not receiving proportional budget increases. It notes that only 6% of CCOs expected a budget increase of 15% or more, while 45% anticipated a budget decrease or no change in the coming year. Later benchmarking pages show a similar tension, with 54% expecting some increase but 46% expecting budgets to stay flat or decline.

    Within that constrained environment, CommsTech emerges as the headline investment priority. The report defines this as the tools, technology, and data that allow communicators to target, measure, and shape perceptions and behaviour. Seventy percent said CommsTech was a top investment area, and the report positions it as central to proving ROI and connecting communications work to business results. But it also shows that adoption is still immature: 44% report baseline media-impression measurement, yet only 30% map revenue growth back to communications activity.

    The report is especially useful in showing why adoption is slow. Barriers include difficulty justifying large tech investments, weak support from CEOs or business leaders, IT ownership conflicts, poor collaboration with marketing and sales, and internal team struggles to adopt digital tools and analytics. So the report is not simply making a pro-technology argument. It is saying that technology only matters if organisations also invest in skills, processes, governance, and data fluency. Capability gaps in change communications, analytics, and ESG are also singled out as emerging needs.

    5. What are the main implications and conclusions for communications leaders and organisations?

    The report’s main conclusion is that this is a pivotal moment for the communications profession. The external environment has created an opening for communications leaders to claim a more central role in business strategy, but doing so requires deliberate change. Communicators must demonstrate business acumen, link activity to outcomes, invest in specialist capability, and speak the language of strategy, ROI, and performance. In the report’s framing, the opportunity will not convert automatically into influence. It has to be operationalised.

    For organisations and CEOs, the implication is equally strong. If they want communications to function as a true strategic partner, they need to bring it into decisions earlier, provide closer access to leadership, resource it properly, and recognise reputation, trust, employee engagement, and stakeholder alignment as business-critical issues rather than peripheral concerns. The report even suggests that some companies are beginning to elevate reputation into shared business goals and leadership accountability.

    The report’s final perspective is practical rather than theoretical. Across its “playbook” sections, it repeatedly returns to six or seven concrete ideas: have a clear vision for the function, align communications with business strategy, combine planning with insight, improve governance and process, build multidisciplinary teams, invest in people and specialist skills, and prove impact through measurement. That makes the report less a prediction document than a management guide for how communicators can turn heightened relevance into durable strategic authority.