
WHAT AWAITS PR AND COMMUNICATIONS IN 2025?
Predictions by Anna Parysz
Interview published at the PRoto editorial.
The year 2025 will bring further evolution of the PR market, moving towards greater professionalization and strategic consulting. Modern PR is increasingly moving away from traditional activities based solely on media relations and becoming a key component of integrated business communications, encompassing reputation management, crisis counseling or building sustainable stakeholder relationships, among others. Companies will increasingly demand comprehensive strategies that combine storytelling with technology and data analysis. They will expect agencies to provide strategic advice, not just implement tactical campaigns. The professionalization of the industry means that PR is becoming more integrated into business processes and embedded in an organization’s long-term goals, requiring professionals to have a broad knowledge not only of communications, but also an understanding of regulatory, financial or environmental issues.
We also predict that a kind of polarization of budgets will continue – on the one hand, companies and brands will invest in more comprehensive strategies including personalization solutions, new technologies, or based on qualitative storytelling, on the other hand, some sectors will look for savings and will be interested in cheaper, short-term activities. For some time now, we can also observe the interpenetration of PR activities with other areas of marketing and the need to develop competencies and resources in new fields, such as the increase in demand for specialists in new technologies and data analytics. New technology specialists will become an essential part of PR teams. Their role will include the use of artificial intelligence tools (e.g., in sentiment analysis, crisis forecasting, process automation) or the creation of innovative communication formats, such as interactive VR/AR content and personalized audience experiences in the digital environment.
One of the most important trends in 2025 will be ESG communications, especially in light of new anti-greenwashing regulations being introduced by the European Union. These directives will require companies to be fully transparent in communicating pro-environmental actions, which will force a change in the tone and content of the message. Brands will have to abandon general, unverified declarations in favor of specific data, reports and results of actions. This will increase the demand for ESG communication specialists. In an era of ubiquitous algorithms and growing audience skepticism, brands will have to bet on transparency, clearly define the social values that underpin their actions and base their communications on this. It will also become increasingly important to build long-term relationships with micro-communities, rather than simply basing their activities on mass outreach campaigns. Technologies such as artificial intelligence and augmented reality (AR) will be a component that will be more widely used in campaigns, but success will come to those efforts that are able to effectively use them to personalize messages and experiences to effectively target consumer needs and expectations.
One of the biggest challenges will be to maintain a balance between automating processes and preserving the “human” dimension of communication. Already today one can see a mass of content, whether in social media or on portals, created quite incompetently using AI tools. This has a number of consequences, such as the fact that there is a rapid decline in the quality of the content created and its uniqueness. AI tools are fantastic in terms of improving efficiency and productivity, but it will take a while before people learn to use them in such a way that a drastic decline in quality, not to mention originality, does not follow. We will have to find ways to effectively manage the growing volume of content and information, and that goes for everyone, not just PR and communications experts. As an agency specializing in crisis management, we’ve been observing for some time now a trend that will gain momentum in 2025, namely crisis management in the age of real-time – brands will not only have to react quickly, but also anticipate risks and build resilience to crises.
All the while, adapting to the changing media landscape will also remain a challenge. On the one hand, the popularity of social media platforms continues to grow, where information admittedly has a shorter life cycle, but is able to incur widespread coverage in a much faster time. With at least changes such as those announced by Zuckerberg, where users are to decide whether something is disinformation or hate, there is a risk of further polarization of opinion and escalation of disputes. This requires communications professionals to be more sensitive and able to moderate the dialogue. At the same time, PR professionals will have to learn to operate effectively in an environment where narratives can be easily manipulated, and building evidence-based credibility and transparency will become crucial. This requires not only proficiency in the technological aspects of platforms, but also a deeper understanding of the sociological mechanisms that govern online communities. In summary, the future of communications is the integration of technology with authentic, understandable and valuable messages. As an industry, we must not only adapt to change, but also strive to actively create it.
