How have public relations evolved in recent years?

Public Relations

Ivan Moreno

Share it

During the past 12 years that i have been working in Public Relations there has been a constant change and development, mainly due to the digital transformation and the arrival of the internet. Before this, everything was done on paper. I even had to send faxes on a regular basis!At that time everything was more complicated due to the lack of media. Information was focused on one or two important news agencies and there were no more ways to spread our ideas.

Additionally, internet was also key to expand the media base: today 80% of the work we do is published in online media, which has caused a big expansion of our work in public relations.

Regarding this issue, it is important to point out add that today we are not only dealing with media, but also with bloggers, vloggers, instagramers and influencers, who, although they are not journalists, they're considered opinion leaders, whose main channel is Internet; however, this strategy does not necessarily work for all companies.

MAIN CHALLENGES

The immediacy and its dangers

It seems that all of the above has eased our work, but the reality is that in today’s worlds, public relations professionals have important challenges. The main one has to do with immediacy: a client who is not prepared to deal with a crisis can let a seemingly small detail grow to unimaginable proportions in just a few minutes (viralization).

Remember that one of the most important facts that companies must take into account (and all of us as well) is that someone always has a camera in their pocket and may record any given situation and upload it to the internet, where millions of eyes will be watching up close and on repeat. Before, only immediate bystanders would have witnessed the events taking place. But now, we must be better prepared and create effective crisis management strategies that include digital behaviour. Remember, people are connected and watching 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Short attention threshold

Another challenge is that the audience's attention level today is very short: 15 years ago or more, when internet was just starting out, people said that the competition was "seven seconds away", because you could only keep someone’s attention for seven seconds before they moved to something else. Today, the attention span is even shorter. This represents another evolution of messages, since they have to be shorter, direct and conclusive.

Focus on the consumer instead of the brand

A more related challenge is how to speak to millennials. Before, most of the companies' communication consisted on talking about the brand, its virtues, its products, etc. Nowadays communication is focused on the consumer: it is about what the consumer is interested in, and that empathy is what usually draws millennials attention.

WHAT ABOUT THE INVESTMENT?

Regarding investment in marketing against investment in public relations, there isn’t much difference now versus previous years: companies still prefer to allocate more resources to marketing (70% vs. 30% respectively). I don't think this will change in the future; however, the best companies should not ignore any of these areas, they should know how to complement them, since they fulfill different and equally essential goals.

THE MEXICAN PANORAMA

Now, what has been the public relations development in Mexico and other countries in the region? I have worked all these years in companies that have transnational clients, and many of them consider that we are behind in this area.

Much of the criticism that our countries receive is based on the fact that we are still very focused on traditional public relations (press releases, media distribution, publications, etc.), while other countries are already focusing on sectors that have to do with 360 marketing or communication.

The main reason for this delay in innovation is due to the media, which often goes hand to hand with public relations, and is more developed in other countries.

With this we demonstrate that the evolution of PRs depends not only on the agencies, but also on the companies and the media.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN THE FUTURE

Many of the current trends are going to stabilize, for example, influencers or brand ambassadors won’t be as popular as now, because their credibility will gradually diminish.
Public relations will be integrated as a whole: 360 communication is vital and all the communication channels must be aligned.
Public relations is the area that should dictate how such communication should be handled, in such a way that there’s a single voice and a main message to which the consumers can relate the company or brand to.

In conclusion, public relations have always been and will continue to be vital for any company that wants to take the next step. However, we all know that it’s complicated to prove its ROI and effectiveness; rather, its benefits are in the company's image protection, in the communication’s care and in the relationships it generates with the press and its audiences, translating in which it is seen like an attribute of life and death in today’s and yesterday’s world: credibility.