We’ve officially entered 2019! Our President and founder, David Gerzof Richard is always keeping an eye on on the changing PR landscape so we can leverage these new trends and stay on top of things for our BIGclients. Take a look and see the top predictions on where PR is heading in 2019, and what PR pros should be doing to prepare.


 
Rise of Online Newsrooms – As local newsrooms continue to shut down, a new form of newsrooms, that publish through apps and email and reach targeted but distributed audiences, will continue to emerge. This will dampen storytelling opportunities in many suburban and rural areas, but will create opportunities to execute more niche and targeted storytelling digitally.
 
 

Radio 2.0 – By the end of 2018, it is expected that there will be over 250 million smart speakers in homes across the country. This spike in smart speaker penetration will continue to skyrocket throughout the new year. Outside of asking a smart speaker to turn off the lights, tell you the weather or read you a recipe, there is a massive opportunity for top-notch, radio production quality storytelling through smart speakers. The line between radio programs and podcasts will blur and smart speaker users will be able to mix and match the two based on their individual preferences. Good publicists should already be thinking about how to craft and pitch these new audio-exclusive stories.    
 

Cord Cutting – Cord cutting is expected to increase in 2019 and will drive online video to expand beyond the social feeds and video content delivery services consumers have already come to know and use. This means that more TVs will serve as the large in-home display while mobile devices will serve as mobile displays streaming content. Additionally, 5G will make its first major appearance in the US in 2019 with over 1 million 5G handsets expected to be sold. This should signal content distributors to create new opportunities for publicists to place video stories.
 
Data Analysis and AI – Highly sophisticated data analysis programs and possibly even true AI is expected to become much more useful and affordable in 2019. The use of data in more sophisticated ways will enable brands to better measure and prove ROI. PR agencies and publicists should keep a close eye on their KPIs and look to embrace the data management systems and analytics techniques that brands utilize to understand true ROI.
 
Politics – Taking a cue from brands that took big risks by jumping into politics in 2018, more brands in 2019 will follow suit and become more political. This will create situations where publicists, who normally shun mixing politics and brands, find themselves in the midst of unreally political debates that spill over into the untamed and untampered Internet.

 
Is there a PR trend you think will take over 2019? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter!