Getting back to the gym. Starting a meditation practice. Putting the iPhone down for a few minutes a day. (At least while sleeping?) What’s the New Year’s resolution I’m most focused on?

That would be a higher resolution image of our industry’s Big Picture for 2025.

And judging from my inbox these past couple of holidaze-ical weeks, I’m not alone on that score. Well, clear the dance floor. Cue up some Chappelle Roan.

Now it’s my turn to glide out on a limb — and glance expertly back at what 2024 brought and taught while wading waist-deep into that surging sea of 2025 PR World predictions (and dropping some Press Hook Callouts™).

Can you handle the…

Of course you can.

If you survived 2024, you can handle anything. There you go: prediction number one.

Predictions or pack animal planning?

Predictions are a funny thing.

Particularly where certain industries are concerned, they seem to be less crystal ball and more mirrored ball.

Take fashion. Like PR or Hollywood, the footprint is obviously massive at the street level, but atop the pyramid, where the most influential decision makers reign, it gets rather clubby.

Hence, if a set of influential fashion designers, creative directors, retail buyers, and editors all predict pink is going to be the color of 2025… well, is that really a prediction or a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Over in Hollywood, where Babygirl is the buzzy sensation de jour, everyone will tell you that the next big thing is ‘80s-style erotic thrillers. Studios tell producers and producers tell agents: we need ‘80s-style erotic thrillers! Agents ask writers: got any in the drawer? Writers ask themselves: how can I revise my family-friendly rom com into an ‘80s-style erotic thriller?

And so the money flows until lightning (or disaster) strikes elsewhere.

I found myself applying that inquisitive quality-control prediction or self-fulfilling prophecy filter to much of the conventional-prediction-wisdom circulating in the PR World. Even when it’s more power-player-polling than true prescience, what the hive mind decides will be impactful will have an impact, of course — at least in terms of tracking the herd.

But remembering all the precedent-crushing upsets that 2024 delivered, my sense remains that moving in rigid lockstep with the herd might just be the most essential move to avoid in 2025.

Money wants predictability. Always has, always will. But especially for the smaller, more nimble players competing against the biggest of the big out there, let’s not forget that the most impactful single element across our community here at Press Hook and beyond is storytelling.

And a good story is never predictable — Press Hook Callout™. 

Looking Back

In the final analysis (for now), what lessons did 2024 offer?

Selfishly, I appreciate this callout from Evan Bonnstetter, Tinder’s former Director of Communications, who contributed to a year-end CHERRY ON TOP piece compiling “24 lessons from 24 comms pros”:

Well, what do you know! 2024 was the year I officially became a newsletter person too — by launching this one.

Right out of the gate, the thoughtful responses, new connections, and surprisingly strong click rates (thank you, dear readers) made it a worthwhile addition to my duties. I’m even going to boast that we hit 10,000 subscribers last month!

But the best is yet to come, with numerous deep-diving, customer-empowering pieces already on deck.

And more importantly — returning to the keyboard now after having patted myself on the back — I think what the landscape of increasingly splintered media and audiences really means is don’t sleep on the power of putting yourself out there.

Yes, you.

Whether it’s a Substack or a podcast or a YouTube channel or a LinkedIn post or whatever, the means to independently create and contribute are accessible like never before, and using them to raise your voice (and/or build your brand) makes you more powerful than you probably realize — particularly when you tailor the medium(s) to tap authentically into you.

Even if that effort takes a while to connect, the keys are right there on the counter. Why not get out there for a spin?

Think AI is going to deliver precision and perfection? While waiting for that to happen, your competitors will use AI to experiment and explore, realizing that nurturing scrappy originality has better odds of attracting lightning than waiting for some tech nerd to bottle some lightning for you — Press Hook Callout™.

Don’t sleep on the power of authentically relatable. (We’ve seen that polished perfection doesn’t shine as bright anymore.)

Two other year-end CHERRY ON TOP comments dovetail accordingly:

And speaking of spiky (albeit in not such a favorable way), 2024 was teeming with unhappy disruptions across the media-communications landscape.

Particularly for our journalist friends, the layoffs got heavy. Many anticipate that more layoffs across the media ecosystem — and even in tech world — still lie ahead.

A few factors are worth exploring at length, which I plan to do in upcoming pieces. For now, one major culprit worth mentioning was Google. In an awesome but chilling demonstration of their power, by simply adding AI-generated summaries to search results, they subtracted millions in revenue from a slew of already bruised and bleeding publishers. Some think the final revenue losses will tally in the billions.

“The shift from search to AI summarization will be the biggest change in how people consume content since the rise of social media,” predicts Pete Pachal, author of The Media Copilot.

Maybe? The kids might decide Google is hopelessly boomer? It certainly seems clear that Google’s 2024 changes stemmed in no small part from the perceived threat posed by ChatGBT and other AI platforms encroaching on their search, um, monopoly. (Though competition is good, no?)

Either way, I like Pachal’s break from all the dire doomscrolling takes:

Content marketing maven Liz Willits is already consumer-converted:

Overall, 2024’s falling dominoes of media disruption can be traced back to the following macro factors (including AI):

1. “It’s the economy, stupid.” The ol’ Clinton line holds true when inflation is felt across households in an election year while so many companies are cutting costs, seemingly bracing for a downturn. (Or… self-fulfilling prophecy from the VC herd?)
   

2. Platform power. Legacy media companies can’t reach and capture consumers the way large digital platforms like Google, Amazon, Instagram, and TikTok have managed so comprehensively. New Godzillas battered old, but unleashed regular mortals underfoot.
   

3. AI everywhere (hopes, fears, and hype): Embracing artificial intelligence is deemed mandatory. Understanding it less so. But it’s got to be a chilly headwind on hiring when people believe that the technology, and what it can do, is growing more unthinkably powerful by the minute.

But 2024’s core takeaway concerning the larger, ostensibly “credible” legacy media institutions — and the broader media ecosystem they previously dominated — is as simple as it is stark.

Large has become a liability. In the longer lens of history, I suspect people will eventually look back at what we considered “normal” and instead see an unhealthy aberration.

Whatever you think of Joe Rogan or Alexandra Cooper, a media ecosystem that makes it possible for individual creators to initiate something relatively small and organic, then ultimately grow, compete, and outmaneuver deep-pocketed corporate players by virtue of serving up content that people value, is a win.

It’s a win for us as consumers and — Press Hook Callout™ — it’s especially a win for us as smaller brands and/or creators.

Do we need to be concerned about the new tech monopolies, Google, Meta, Amazon?

Of course. And so…

Looking Ahead

We can see that large money is hoping/betting that the forthcoming Trump Administration 2.0 will be ultra “business friendly” — allowing for an M&A frenzy. Case in point: Omnicom absorbing Interpublic Group, a plan announced after the election.

Now, a financial expert I am not. However, while Wall Street prodding big players to become even bigger as a way to compete with tech company disruption might be good for Wall Street in the short term, is it really good for those big players to become even bigger in the long term?

Especially if being so top-down large in a time of bottom-up agility is part of the problem? Hmmm…

Time will tell, but I tend to buy the prediction perspective that smaller creative shops, much like smaller media outlets, will continue to benefit as the Godzillas stomp (and shop) around. Some speculate that Omnicom and Interpublic clients will not appreciate all the complicated moving parts of consummating that proposed marriage distracting from their needs being serviced — nor the conflicts of interest that could arise in their competitive categories. Likewise, talented creatives at those large shops might not like waiting around to find out if they still have a job when the dust settles. (What’s that Bob Marley song? Exodus…)

Again, time will tell. I don’t have a strong prediction here. But it has been widely noted that the last time Omnicom got “engaged” (to Publicis in 2013) that “wedding” was called off.

Back to bottom-up agility, one of the safest predictions out there is that Substack — that inspired creator-empowering network of small media outlets — is poised to win 2025 as larger entities and brands realize the value of independent journalism platforms.

Notes Ashley Mann from The Colab:

Additionally, legacy or institutional media will increasingly spread their wings out onto other platforms and social media channels. I loved this salient summary from Adam Ritchie:

Not only is the PR World predicting the continued ascent of “microinfluencers” in 2025, there is even talk of the “nanoinfluencers” — tiny but punching well above their weight in terms of the insurgent authenticity and independent credibility.

And so I readily cosign this predictive insight from Melanie Doupé Gaiser, Group Vice President at Ruder Finn:

After all, facilitating those relationships is what Press Hook is all about. We were built for this moment. A moment that many across PR World predict will include greater emphasis on partnerships in 2025.

Meanwhile… AI. My prediction? Instilling trust in consumers. An industry expert who agrees with me there is Ashu Garg, from Foundation Capital, who predicts:

Another area where I will grant that AI can be useful for the PR World in 2025 is in surfacing better audience/consumer data to support creative insights, facilitate targeted campaigns, and deliver more effective results measuring.

However, here’s another Press Hook Callout™ for you: be wary of anyone selling the promise of data that reveals what your audience wants. If 2024 taught you nothing else, it should have underscored the folly of investing in or relying heavily on systems designed to tell you what an audience wants.

For one thing, the audience doesn’t know what it wants. The audience knows only what they think they want based on what they already know.

Think about it. Before 2015, where was the data that indicated: You know what people really want on Broadway? A hip-hop musical about the first U.S. secretary of the treasury!

That said, with approximately half of the S&P 500's market cap riding on AI ventures — whether predictions or pack animal planning, you decide — folks are not going to stop selling AI-does-it-all hype anytime soon. 

Meanwhile, I want to know what’s going to happen to TikTok? Seriously. Maybe they should have rapped more about the First Amendment in Hamilton? Certainly seems, at this moment, that many of 2024’s lessons about trying to enforce top-down control of information/narratives are still being missed.

Anyone with an informed prediction around what’s going to happen to TikTok, please drop me a line! I’m not kidding!

One downer of a Trump America prediction topic is the fate of DEI across the corporate and media landscape.

Well, my take on this is pretty simple.

What’s was the value of a brand’s “commitment” to social justice — or, for that matter, to anything — if it was only about reflexively following the aforementioned herd?

Strike-a-pose virtue-signaling posers weren’t doing the cause(s) any favors in the first place. It was a deceptive, unproductive dilution. Let those phonies who were faking the funk peel off and peace out. (Thank you, next.)

That will, I predict, be a big win for authenticity and integrity — a win for those who stand firm and tall behind what they believe in regardless of the trends.

Bring on the bottom-up authenticity and integrity. Farewell to corny, tedious, utterly fake and unrealizable perfection.

To that end, I predict no one watches Megan Markle’s neo-Martha Stewart show because… No, we don’t have time to plan the perfect tea party. To paraphrase Kat Williams — we have bills and shit!

Sorry, just needed to vent a little.

I predict more venting in 2025.

Another layup of a prediction: Sean Combs and Jay-Z’s troubles set the table, but the Blake Lively versus Justin Baldoni public relations war, featuring two deep-pocketed sides with a lot to lose, will be a crisis comms case study for the ages.

Has there ever been a more evenly-armed PR war where the behind-the-scenes maneuvers and machinations are increasingly transparent (in real-time) to the very public that each side seeks to influence?

It’s wild and unprecedented, no?

What else? Gratitude! I’m deeply grateful for what our Press Hook community accomplished in 2024, and I’m confidently predicting — and looking forward to — much, much more in 2025.

Keeping the gratitude going, here’s a final 2025 industry prediction — from PR consultant Michelle Grant: “With the era of AI-based search upon us, PR actually matters more than ever.”