2024 will be a demanding and extremely interesting year in the field of public communications. The first and most important will be a more dynamic merger of the three main elements of the public communications business – advertising, public relations, and digital. This merger has been ongoing for the past couple of years and undoubtedly it will create a completely new business, which will have a new name – maybe social relations and real-time relations. There are also thousands of different opinions in which one of those – at least – three elements will have a leading role in the future of business, and I am more than confident that it will be public relations. The arguments are very clear – everything in modern business these days is about earned content. Not paid, not artificially generated, and not digitally managed. Of course, the PR experts are nothing else than Masters of content, and their role these days in the world of communications is crucial and undoubtedly leading.

And… on the top – not to forget the “hot potato” Artificial Intelligence! Go back only a year ago – there was no one to predict that the magical abbreviation AI will spread throughout the globe with the speed of light. A lot of users are more than happy having AI in their everyday lives, but at that stage, the professionals who are concerned are the majority. And for all the questionable hesitations about AI usage all we must remember is that the most important are the ethical ones and it will be the same in the near future. First – all AI-generated information must be at least double, if not triple-checked. Secondly: there might be a huge issue with copyrights as it is not clear where this information comes from and what royalties belong to the prime sources. The third issue will be the trust in all our jobs, strategies and campaigns.

And very often in my offices I say to the team – my dear friends, if you think that we sell services, you are in a very deep mistake.

We sell trust in our professionalism, in our sources, in our ethical and transparent approach, and our understanding of the task of the client. Trust indeed is the very keyword that no one says loud and clear, but everyone has it in their mind.

Finally – the biggest challenge in the PR business in 2024 will be people’s management. And this is why I always say that I am not afraid of artificial intelligence, but I am afraid of human ignorance, not to say even stupidity. We all understand that in our business is coming completely different huge crowd of new people, some call them Gen Z, and some even do not call them with any characteristics, but the reality is that businesses never soon something like that – young, knowledgeable, and intelligent, truly independent and – often for my deep surprise – not caring about the power of brands and traditions. And when we have often disputed these matters in the company, my statement to the team is very clear – this is a generation of professionals, whatever we call them, which will not change, it is us, the managers to change our approach to the people and their demands and knowledge, it is us to change how we talk to them and how we transfer our experience. In any case, I will quote my favorite rule for decades when it concerns business management – the worst decision is better than no decision. And I still believe it is much more valid with every single day ahead.

And yes – the changes in PR business are revolutionary, my only concern is that mind changes are still in the evolution stage and only our hard work and a lot of knowledge can change it in the right direction.