Themes Taking Shape for PR in 2025
Enough virtual ink has been (and will continue to be) spilled on the 2024 U.S. election results, so let’s examine macro trends from here and if we’re good, how this post election mood will inform 2025 marketing and communications planning instead.
Democrats Come Out Swinging?
Quoting Jessica Tarlov on the Raging Moderates podcast: “They [Republicans] take every swing, and if they miss so what?” Calls like this for a ‘stronger’ Democratic party are everywhere, and if you squint at Biden’s pardon of his son… that shift is starting.
Here in Raleigh, North Carolina Senate Democrats “ousted” longtime leader Dan Blue from power, signaling they want a new direction given Blue’s replacement happened suddenly and was “a surprise to many, including Blue himself”. Time for a tougher face on Jones St.? You bet.
Jon Snow Killed ESG/DE&I
If you’re not watching HBO’s show Industry, do yourself a favor!
The United States’ largest employer, Walmart, announced the rollback of its DEI policies earlier this week and more are surely to follow. You don’t have to look far to see that U.S. funds are flowing away/out of global sustainable investments. And I’ve seen first-hand how the C-Suite are caring less — actually, not caring at all — about their MSCI rating.
Linking this back to HBO’s Industry: Companies, their board of directors, and ultimately their funders view ESG as a fad they simply needed to invest in. Blackrock save us!
Who Is Theo Von?!
You’re not alone if it feels like you’re hearing a lot about the role podcasters like Joe Rogan and Theo Von played in this year’s election, and for good reason. The role traditional media had is continuing to rapidly decrease — goodbye Comcast and Disney and hello Spotify and YouTube!
Tech and culture journalist Taylor Lorenz put it beautifully in what she’s calling, “The First ‘Influencer Election’”
For the past two decades, the media landscape has been transforming. By nearly every metric, legacy media is in decline: average monthly unique visitors to websites for the country’s top 50 newspapers declined 20 percent to under 9 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to Comscore data, and the amount of time people are spending consuming legacy media content is getting shorter. The content creator industry, meanwhile, is ascendent. The influencer economy is set to surpass half a trillion dollars by 2027, according to a recent Goldman Sachs report, and 30 percent of consumers trust content creators more than they did six months ago, according to a 2023 report by Sprout Social, an analytics firm.
That quote was a lot…I’m kind of sorry for pasting it all, and all the links. Don’t feel like you have to read them (I didn’t!), let’s just hope they’re actual facts?
That’s (um) Great?? What are the Takeaways?!
Okay, the boxing is now bare knuckle, ESG initiatives have probably reached their peak, and this was the first ‘Influencer Election’. What should we know?
Companies will re-examine the frequency to which they respond to political events, despite increasing pressure from both internal and external stakeholders to do so. What used to be a carefully crafted email to all employees and then truncated / shared to social media, will no longer even get discussed.
Despite what could be a stall in DEI initiatives, companies will still have to pay attention here as consumers are now automatically tuning in to what a company actually looks like (demographically, culturally, and so on). Getting us to point #3…
Companies will deploy highly-targeted communications campaigns, sharing who they actually are. Their audiences are simply moving to more intimate news formats like Substack newsletters, podcast shows, and TikTok/YouTube video shorts.
Ultimately, brands will need to be much quicker and way more focused with their communications. Those that are trusting their instincts and exploring new avenues of reaching audiences, will be the winners.
