In this episode, Kelly and Mary Beth discuss their PR Industry Predictions for 2022, including:
- How the PR agency business model's pandemic-driven shifts have impacted the industry
- Why the U.S. PR industry is on a particularly troublesome ethics track -- much of it self-inflicted and further exacerbated by apathy ... particularly in light of disappointing choices and lack of truth / transparency by the domestic PR association -- PRSA
- Ways that workforce recruitment strains between talent availability, rising payroll demands and follow-on COVID waves will impact budgets
- Implications of recent industry reports:
- Public Relations & Communications Association (PRCA-UK) (London):
- https://www.prca.org.uk/PR-industry-roars-back-2021-PRCA-UK-Census
- International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO) World Report:
- https://iccopr.com/services/world-reports/download-our-2020-2021-report/
- Whether the PR, media and journalism sectors will ever join forces to stave off systemic public-trust root-rot driving disinformation
- How the Diversity conversation will continue as a merry-go-round until the industry and respective associations set a definitive bar between two separate metrics: 1) Having the PR industry employment base represent all of society demographically, or 2) Having the sector mirror demographics of other professional-service sectors with which PR competes to recruit workforce
- Ways that politicization and partisanship in news rooms and across the industry drive the very divisiveness that the PR industry should be more competently taking in hand and mitigating (not exacerbating) to bring people and publics together in more positive solidarity around issues
- How the dearth of men in the PR industry workforce (minus the C-suite) is a far more complex and troubling problem than is adequately discussed ... and if the industry fails to address the gender imbalance in 2022, we can expect to slide more into "pink-collared ghetto" territory relative to compensation and share-of-voice.
Mary Beth also shares a glimpse of work-in-progress currently underway via the PRCA Ethics Council, in partnership with the Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI) in Washington, D.C., as part of its Global Business Ethics Survey to ascertain PR industry ethics issues.
