Brendan Hodgson of Hill & Knowlton Canada speculates what the firm will be like in 25 years. Some of his predictions look pretty good, but I can see them happening in two to five years, not 25.
And that’s okay. Any sort of planning exercise that makes you try to speculate on the world 25 years from now will be skewed by the continuation of trends we see today, rather than by trends that are going to emerge in 10 or 15 years. Knowing what those future trends might be is a grand pursuit, but difficult to pull off.
Hodgon’s View of PR Firm in 25 Years
(my estimate of the timeframe for an ideal agency is in brackets):
- Consumer-generated media relations services for clients (within two years)
- Increasingly specialized services by niche audience (within three years)
- Employees - and customers - become the H&K brand (five years)
- Accurate measurement of activities on bottom line (hmmm… five years, maybe more?)
- Non-financial drivers (brand, reputation) drive corporate value (hmmm … eight years, if ever?)
- Clients will increasingly be execs in new roles - chief marketing officer, chief communications officer (three years)
- Change communications will be the norm (today)
- Always-on global scanning and response (two years)
- Cultivate conversations, not one-way interactions (one year)
Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson picked up on Hodgson’s glimpse into the future on their For Immediate Release podcast (number 91). They had a similar take — that some of these trends are either already a part of the way we do business, or they’ll be mainstream within two to three years.