There have been many changes in the practice of public relations over the years, but one thing has remained consistent: Year after year, most PR practitioners and clients will be disappointed about their experiences—and 2025 will not be any different.
Here’s why:
- Experienced PR pros will be fired because recent inexperienced grads of communications schools are willing to work for less money.
- Meaningless titles will be given in lieu of salary increases.
- Some PR practitioners will come into the office early and stay late thinking it would impress management, but soon find out it doesn’t matter when they are passed over for promotion.
- A person will find out that a trusted colleague was the office spy, when what was told in confidence about a top agency manager resulted in the individual being dismissed.
- A person will be told “with talent like yours, you’ll always have a job here,” and be fired as soon as things turn sour.
- An individual will forfeit much vacation time, fearing that being away from the office too long will be frowned upon by management and find out it doesn’t matter.
- A supervisor will take credit for an underling’s good ideas. (Many times.)
- A supervisor will instruct an underling to do something, and when it doesn’t work out, blame the subordinate.
- The person most qualified for an assignment will be passed over because of top management’s dependence on supervisors’ reports.
- The employees of an agency that is acquired will be told that their jobs are secure, and soon find out that they aren’t.
- Newbie PR execs will find out that the route to promotions is not good work, but the profitability of the accounts they manage.
- New agencies will be formed.
- Old agencies will disappear.
- Independent agencies will be acquired.
- A new client contact will find an agency’s work insufficient, even though the person replaced found it sufficient.
- Account executives will complain that they are not given a chance to show what they can do—and when they are, they couldn’t do it.
- Creative outside of the box ideas will be squashed by a do it by the book supervisor.
- An account executive will be told that he is not a team player.
- Creative account executives will never get the credit for their ideas because of the team concept reports.
- An employee will be fired and be told “Your talent is going to waste here, and we don’t want to hold you back.”
- Supervisors who are not familiar with the content of various print pubs and TV shows will draw up a list of targets that do not cover a topic and then blame placement people for not delivering.
- Account execs who crafted a flawed program will blame placement people for its failure, even though the program was devoid of anything that would interest a journalist.
- Scapegoats will always be looked for.
- Supervisors with no journalistic experience will tell subordinates with no journalistic experience to think like a reporter.
- There will be many PR crises during the year and crises specialists will not be able to stem the flow of negative media.
Based on my long experience in the public relations business, I’ll end this essay with the following advice:
1) Always do what’s best for you, because in the final analysis, you’re nothing but an employee number.
2) Promises made to you by management should be taken with a grain of salt to lessen your disappointment when they are not kept.
And remember what Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in “The Prince.” “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”
