By Edward M. Bury, APR, MA (aka The PRDude)
Last week I took in a very informative and somewhat eye-opening webinar hosted by the Public Relations Society of America. The presentation, “Future Watch 2025: Key Trends Every PR Professional Should Have on Their Radar Screen in the Coming Year,” offered me a perspective on a wide range of topics, issues, and developments that are projected to be a significant part of the national dialogue in the year ahead.
And, of course, the hour I spent online provided greater insight on the profession and resulted in the poignant subject for this post.
Led by an engaging communicator and futurist named Stephen DuPont, APR, Fellow PRSA, the focus of the conversation centered on a broad scope of what will be making news from today through December 31. (Learn more about Mr. DuPont from his website.)
Early on, Mr. DuPont advised communicators to work on anticipating upcoming events and developments — a sound practice for sure– and noted that futurists need to be storytellers. An aside: As I noted in this 2022 post, I am still struggling with the “evolution” of the profession into storytelling. But let me continue.
I scribbled down notes during the talk, and in no particular order of importance, here are some topics addressed by Mr. DuPont:
- Divisive politics and an uncertain economy driven by the potential impact of tariffs.
- A possible resurgence of the pandemic and the stubborn bird flu.
- How to screen for threats following the brazen murder of a healthcare executive.
- Energy and climate change, technology, technology and more technology. And, of course the role of AI.
- The potential dismantling of diversity/equity/inclusion initiatives.
- The impact on the agriculture industry if undocumented immigrants are deported.
- Cyber wars, more robots, the emergence of the alpha generation, and the decline in the number of high school students.
- The dawn of the greatest transfer of money from Boomers to other generations.
- One more: The explosion of weight loss drugs that are now available!
There were other topics presented, but the above provides a solid perspective of what’s ahead. For communicators, these can be considered as highly specialized areas that I believe may require advanced education and solid practical experience should one be charged with managing strategic communications.
The question that arose following the webinar: Will the incoming generation of public relations professionals need specialized education and work experience to effectively serve clients or the companies or organizations who employ them? Or from another perspective, is the age of the public relations “generalist” truly over?
Reflecting back on my career, the vast majority of clients I served or organizations I worked for concentrated in commercial real estate and urban affairs; now, I manage communications for a university transportation research unit. My “experience” in real estate centered on living and working in Chicago for most of my life, and as for transportation, I was — and still am — an active rider on Chicago Transit Authority trains and buses.
When I served on the Universal Accreditation Board, an initiative was advanced to award a new accreditation to those charged with military public affairs. The result was the APR+M designation. And, if memory serves correctly, there were UAB discussions years ago regarding similar specialized accreditation programs for communicators in large-scale industries like healthcare and business.
Perhaps it’s time to hold that kind of discussion again with educators and on an industry-wide level. Now it’s your turn: Does the public relations profession need to cultivate communicators who have the specialized skills and knowledge needed to serve in this rapidly changing world?
The floor is yours.
Prdude's Blog 