PR Agency Trends That Will Shape Communications In The Next 6 Months

In this final part of a six-part post, our communications experts take a look at PR Agency Trends which they predict will be affecting the communications environment in the next six months and beyond. Thank you to our Worldcom Partners from Medita Communication, Off Madison Ave, PRAM Consulting, and OptimoreGroup, for sharing their insightful predictions.

In addition to the trends below, you can view the PR Agency Trends video. 

PR Agency Trends

The Basics Of Communication Won’t Change but The Environment Will

The significance of the smart use of technology continues to grow. As digitalisation took a giant leap forward due to Covid-19, we have all got new tools in our toolbox. This means the ability to evaluate the need and benefit of each tool becomes all the more important.

Marketing automation is gradually becoming a seamless part of communication. So, re-building trust and confidence is imperative. We need to change the view from problems to solutions and from negative to positive outcomes.

This means that as professional communicators, we must be aware of the changes in the communication environment and adapt accordingly to be able to deliver customer experiences that exceed expectations.

The New Agency Model Will Be An Ongoing Experiment

Agencies will continue to experiment with their business model during the rest of 2021. While some companies will settle on an office centric environment — others will try to accommodate a flexible work from home staff in order to save money on office space. While many companies cannot provide a work from home and office combination, public relations agencies can. Ultimately, the most successful agency models will strike a balance with their staff where they will work from home a percentage of the time. The staff’s office hours will mainly be focused around client meetings, in person collaboration and a place of refuge from the home when being there makes it difficult to concentrate. (Parents, you know what I’m talking about.)

Campaign Metrics Will Change To Be Value Focused

The pandemic has encouraged companies to identify the value delivered by communications campaigns. As a result, there will be a shift in how clients now measure effectiveness. The number of articles and their placement, engagement rate or number of people attending a conference will no longer be the outcomes companies measure. Rather, they will ask for how many people bought their product, how the reputation of the company changed, have they attracted the right quality of talent etc.

Virtual Operations Will Drive International Collaboration

The immediate shift to virtual operations caused by the pandemic has enabled clients and agencies to take a very different view to where people need to be based to meet their needs. This means that solutions to communications challenges will increasingly be provided by experts who collaborate virtually rather than face-to-face. Organisations who collaborate to innovate, freed from the limitations of geography, will significantly outperform their competitors.

Other predictions from our Worldcom Experts:

• Communications Predictions post where our consultants take a look at communications trends
• Leadership/PR Strategy Predictions post where our experts predict leadership behavior and PR strategy trends
• Macro Trends post where our experts predict macro trends that will shape communications in the next 6 months
• Digital Trends where our consultants take a look at the digital trends that will shape communications in the coming months
• Workplace Trends where our consultants take a look at the future of work trends that will shape communications in the coming months.

If you want to re-visit the predictions our Worldcom Experts made at the start of the 2021 you can view these here:

1. Part 1: 2021 PR and Content Marketing Predictions
2. Part 2: 2021 PR and Internal Comms/Employee Wellbeing Predictions
3. Part 3: 2021 PR and Leadership/Strategy Predictions
4. Part 4: 2021 PR and Sector Trends Predictions