PR in 2018 – What Will it Mean?

In 2018, there were big shifts in public relations and marketing communications — some fast, some slow. Looking back at what was predicted then reveals what actually came true and what got superseded by forces no one anticipated.

Shifting for the Good

For decades the public relations profession took hits because of those who used it in less than honest ways. In 2017, the PRCA ousted Bell Pottinger from its ranks for scandalous behavior — a signal that the industry was willing to enforce its own standards. The International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO) presented 10 principles of ethical behavior for professionals to incorporate. Various other leaders and organizations were equally involved in moving toward higher standards.

The trends identified at the time — more diversity, gender identity acceptance, fighting against misinformation — became permanent agenda items across the industry. They were also leading indicators of the pressure that would eventually produce purpose-driven campaigns like Gillette's 2019 "The Best Men Can Be."

Changes and Challenges That Actually Came True

The explosion of social media data accelerated exactly as predicted. One unanswered tweet can turn into a movement within hours — that remained true through 2018, 2019, 2020, and every year since. The need for 24/7 vigilance only intensified.

What the 2018 predictions missed: the structural shift from social media as the dominant discovery layer to AI engines as the new discovery layer. The challenge of 2017–2018 was speed — responding to social media crises in real time. The challenge of 2025–2026 is permanence — AI engines synthesize everything that was ever said about a brand and return it as a single authoritative paragraph, indefinitely. The "fake news" problem of 2018 became the "AI hallucination" and "citation accuracy" problem of 2025.

Related: Key Trends Shaping Digital PR in 2025 · AI Communications & GEO: The Practitioner's Guide