Insights

There are five converging trends that are currently turning the communications market upside down. They are so disruptive that they are ushering in a new era of communication.

Five Trends That Are Changing Everything

1. The Decline of Traditional Media. The media landscape continues to undergo radical change. Traditional media are losing their relevance at an ever-faster pace as their revenue base crumbles beneath them. Advertising budgets are instead flowing to the internet and to countless podcasters and social media influencers, who are gaining massive influence. This applies to B2B as well.
2. Information overload and loss of trust. We are suffering from a veritable flood of information. Bad enough. But information is also increasingly saturated with fake news and worthless, simplistic drivel—and the use of AI isn’t making it any better. Information is also no longer reliable because reputable and investigative media are on the decline.
3. Agency services are becoming more uniform. AI is making the offerings of PR and communications agencies increasingly similar because they are increasingly relying on the same GenAI content. Differentiation is crumbling across all areas, whether in copywriting, developing creative ideas, graphic design, or even analysis.
   Companies are doing more themselves. With GenAI, companies will increasingly design their own communications. Whether that’s a good thing is another matter, but fees for external agencies will certainly decline—in part because companies know how much time and effort AI saves agencies.
4. Companies are taking more into their own hands. With GenAI, companies will increasingly design their own communications. Whether that’s a good thing is another matter, but fees for external agencies will certainly decline—partly because companies realize how much time and effort AI saves agencies.
5. Monetization plays a key role. The days of squandering budgets are long gone. The leeway for nice-to-have initiatives is shrinking; instead, companies are forced to monetize their communications much more effectively: the impact of initiatives, their measurability, and their rapid ROI are increasingly taking center stage.

There are two pieces of really good news

A bleak future? It depends. Because as much as the New Communications Era will take hold and affect us all, there is good news:

Companies’ need for communication will remain.

In fact, the foundation of the communications industry remains untouched, because, after all, companies cannot not communicate: Even in the future, they will need to promote their brand, products, and services to their target markets. It’s quite simple: no communication, no business. So communication professionals will continue to be needed in the future.

For us agencies, there’s even better news. Because in the future, companies will have to set themselves apart from their competitors even more than before if they don’t want to get lost in the swamp of rampant, cookie-cutter AI-generated communication. Bottom line: communication becomes essential for differentiation—sometimes even more important than the product itself.

Take a step back and rethink the box

And this is where the moment of truth arrives for those willing to embrace transformation. Those who continue to play by the old rules and engage in a scattergun approach to communication—whether or not they use GenAI—will be left behind.

Companies, on the other hand, that make the effort to take a step back to look at the bigger picture, that question their processes and the quality of their communication, and that may even be willing to throw previous communication tenets overboard—such companies have a good chance of excelling in the new era of communication. Transformation expert Maja Göbel calls this process: “Don’t think outside the box; rethink the box.”

That’s not easy. Transformation is never easy. In the end, only one thing matters: How can companies efficiently and measurably increase the impact of their communications in their target markets so that they effectively support their sales efforts and grow their business? And how can agencies help them become more visible and position themselves with pinpoint precision? The attention to detail required to achieve this has always been PR-COM’s hallmark: Excellence in Communications.

Impactification: the DNA of success

Of course, no one will be able to do without AI in the future, if only to automate processes. However, the point is not to uncritically adopt the uniform outputs of GenAI, but to use them as a tool to, as an “expert-in-the-loop,” produce better analyses, create better content, develop better ideas, and ensure better consulting. We call this approach “Impactification.”