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TRANSCRIPT:

Doug Simon, CEO of D S Simon Media: This latest edition of “What to Watch for in 2025” has PR’s top pros talking about how to navigate the changes both in the PR industry and with media. Another hot topic that came up, AI and closing the gap between leaders at organizations wishing to push ahead with resistance from employees. Take a look. 

Sonia V. Diaz, President of the Hispanic Public Relations Association (HPRA) and Founder & President of Zaid Communications: Remember to always stay connected to the work, no matter how high you ascend in this profession. Everything in our industry is changing so quickly. It’s evolving from the media landscape to even the different platforms and the channels that we use to communicate. And understanding how to do that execution will not only make you a better professional and a better advisor to your clients, but it will certainly make you a better leader because it’ll allow you to properly guide your teams in times of need. 

Roger Bolton, Former CEO of the Arthur W. Page Society: My favorite quote from Arthur Page is, “Public relations is 90% doing and 10% talking about it.” What does that mean? That means that people judge you on your actions. And it’s the first responsibility of strategic communication leaders to help our organizations do the right thing. The messaging around it is critically important also, but if you authentically want to be trusted as an organization, it’s what you do, not what you say.  

Jen Dobrzelecki, SVP, Healthcare Group Lead at Padilla: The adoption of AI is something that leaders are really looking at as a priority. They’re optimistic about how AI can really transform their organizations, but we’re also finding that their employees are still a bit on the fence. So, what that means is that leaders really need to take this opportunity to paint that larger vision around AI and take the time to bring employees along for the ride. 

Sean Layton, Executive Vice President of Earned Media at Zeno Group: The lines between outlet, platform, journalist, influencer, and creator are more blurred than ever before, and that’s okay. The focus needs to be on integrating emerging platforms and people that speak to specific audiences into existing earned media strategy, and doing so using a data-forward approach.  

Mercy A. Quaye, Founder & President of The Narrative Project: Journalists have been the bridge from the public relations practitioner, or the organization, or the mission straight to the consumer. Without that bridge there anymore, it’s going to be direct to consumer. So, that means practitioners are going to need to get real used to social video where they’re putting their faces on screen for consumers to interact with. 

Jonathan Heit, Co-Founder and Global CEO of Allison: What is new is new again, and we’re seeing with Reddit conversations and the depth of podcasts if this election showed us anything in 2024, it’s the power of these forms of media to have real impact. And as communicators, we need to understand if a conversation is happening in a corridor of the internet, that it’s going to stay there and really not rise to the level of concern or is it going to ping pong out and have real impact? If you don’t have technology in place to peer around corners and what we like to call have the night vision goggles to allow you to really understand what is going to be an issue that can impact your business tomorrow, then you’re really falling behind. 

Rachel Neppes, Head of Public Relations for Targus + HYPER: When using an AI tool to elevate your brand voice, make sure that you’re choosing a professional business tool that’s designed to support that functionality. Make sure that the tool gives you the authentic output of content that you’re looking for, and always double-check the output to make sure that it is aligned with the key messages of your brand voice. 

Mike Rosich, CEO of Current Group: The absurdity is what’s going to break through, right? Things that seem a little off kilter. Saying things that may even seem unhinged to some is what’s going to break through. We see a little bit of that bubbling up at the end of last year, but those true surprises, I’ve never seen something like that before. I’ve never thought of that before moments I think are going to become more popular as we get through this year.  

Nicole Flowers, Vice President of Media Relations Services at Flowers Communications Group: Communicators should remember that authenticity is key. Consumers are savvier than ever, and we must be authentic in our approaches and our messaging. 

Ken Kerrigan, Senior Vice President and Co-Lead of the Business & Professional Services Practice at The Bliss Group: We’re really seeing a new dynamic when it comes to external communications and how brands are connecting with their external stakeholders. It’s driven by the collapse of local media and the so-called news deserts that have been happening every week now across America. And what we see, you know, leading brands doing is hiring former editors, former journalists to come in and be part of their content engine, create content that has the journalistic ethos. It’s not marketing driven, it’s driven by communications, but with that mindset of what would a reporter write to tell the story? That’s a new dynamic, and I don’t see it going away anytime soon.  

Taryn Parker, Vice President of Spool: Finding new ways to measure and validate the impact of PR is really going to be crucial in 2025 as we continue to fight for budget and buy-in from stakeholders. As PR pros, we really need to understand and prove the direct correlation of the important role PR is playing in the consumer journey, but also how it’s directly impacting the bottom line. So, when it comes to evaluating PR results this year, it can no longer just be a bundle of those one size fits all metrics. We really need to dig in, and truly understand, and prove that impact. 

David Fuscus, CEO of Xenophon Strategies and Founder & CEO of Précis AI: The integration of AI across entire companies, that hasn’t happened a lot yet. AI tends to be used on an ad hoc basis, but it’s important that you integrate it. It’s important you have the ability to share information, and to share documents, and to share outputs. So, everything needs connected. And the second tip, when you’re doing this and this is really for both enterprises and individual users, you are going to get vastly better outputs if you use context documents. So, anything you’re working on, if you’re writing a press release, you know, you’ve got notes, you’ve maybe have a white paper or a memo, whatever it is to upload those into the AI platform and that will give you vastly better outputs than just trying to do it, just based on the knowledge in the large language model.  

Anna Walsh, Principal of A-Corner Public Relations: We found it really important to stay on top of what’s new and what’s working and getting our clients in the most meaningful places. So, sometimes that’s a traditional outlet and sometimes it’s something new, but whatever it is, it needs to be something that’s meaningful for the client and ideally pushes sales or raises their profile with the right audience, not necessarily the biggest audience. 

Aquinas Early, Vice President of Integrated Marketing Services at Flowers Communications Group: So, in 2025, PR isn’t about spin, it’s about soul. Audiences crave stories with depth, grit, and lived truth, not curated polish. If your comms strategy doesn’t reflect culture at its core, you’re not just off brand, you’re going to be invisible. 

Doug Simon, CEO of D S Simon Media: Authenticity continues to be a crucial topic for PR professionals and media, that showed up in our 2025 TV Producers survey, where overwhelmingly, they prefer to interview someone from your organization rather than a third-party expert. Hope you enjoyed this series as we look to continue it throughout the year.