[Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of 2025 PR predictions.]
As the year winds down, it pays to review the events of 2024 and assess their impact on the industry in the coming year. Friends within our audience of PR and comms professionals have provided predictions of what’s to come in 2025, which we’ve organized into a series to publish throughout the week. The following address the media relations space.
John McCartney, Principal, JmacPR
Globalization has long been a focus for PR teams, but in 2025, the pendulum will swing towards localization. In increasingly fragmented markets, one-size-fits-all campaigns will no longer suffice. Instead, brands will need to craft hyper-targeted strategies that resonate with specific regions, cultures and communities.
Localized PR involves more than translating a press release—it requires understanding local customs, values and social nuances. Brands that embrace this trend will collaborate with regional influencers, tailor messaging to address local concerns and leverage data analytics to track regional engagement. For instance, a global food brand might need to prioritize plant-based ingredients and sustainability messaging to align with local preferences.
Or consider a smartphone brand expanding into South America. A localized PR strategy might include partnerships with regional tech reviewers and launch events that reflect local culture, such as community tech fairs. Ignoring these nuances risks alienating audiences and losing market share to competitors who "speak their language."
The rise of regional influencers, or "micro-influencers," will further drive this trend. These individuals, with smaller but highly engaged audiences, can offer an authenticity that global influencers might lack. PR teams will need to invest time in building meaningful relationships with these local creators to ensure campaign success.
Linda Zebian, Senior Director, Communications, Muck Rack
Distinguishing real news sites and journalists from fake ones has become increasingly difficult as AI video and image tools improve and as the bar for creating content lowers. For PR pros, verifying the legitimacy of a journalist or news outlet will become more critical when doing media outreach. We'll need to lean even more on our technology tools and the quality of our media data more than ever before to ensure that who we are pitching are real people at verified outlets.
Julie Karbo, CEO and Founder, Karbo
In 2025, PR agencies must leave behind outdated notions like relying solely on personal connections to drive coverage in the same old outlets—it’s no longer just about who you know. Success comes from crafting narratives that leverage current trends, offer unique perspectives and are supported by quality data. A deep understanding of reporters, their beats and what drives coverage is essential, along with persistence and adaptability. And targets are continuing to grow beyond ‘traditional media’ to influencer-driven podcasts, blogs, and newsletters.
Bonnie McLaughlin, VP and Public Affairs Lead, RH Strategic Communications
The trend of an extremely crowded and chaotic news media landscape will continue in 2025. Ultimately, this will make it very difficult to plan for news of the day, announcements and press releases, and companies will need to invest more in their owned channels to share their news and messaging. This also means a bigger investment in promoting those owned channels, using tools like paid media or social media boosting.
Grace Williams, VP, Client Relations, PANBlast
Email isn’t going anywhere, but AI inundation abounds. As far as I can tell, most of the “new” AI tools claiming to disrupt and streamline the pitching process have done little but add noise to the already inundated inboxes of journalists. Pitches written by ChatGPT sent to media lists built by a robot will never cut it, but they are causing an issue for PR pros who have relied on email as a main channel for communication. Until AI gets smarter (or journalists are able to filter out the irrelevant), I think we’ll be leaning on other channels more often, like X, LinkedIn and QWOTED.
Matt Levison, EVP, Global Head of Consumer, KWT Global
Next year will bring a further narrowing of media outlets’ breadth and scope as they see value in a more tailored approach to content and the energized and active audience it brings. Paired with the growing polarization of the American audience, publications will hyperfocus on their core business and divest properties and franchises that step outside their right-to-win, authentic and ownable area of expertise.