PR's tomorrow

“People do not have a full appreciation of public relations.”

Harold Burson, CEO of Burson-Marsteller, the largest PR firm in the world, stated the above quote during an interview about the future of public relations. This prominent, world-renown PR guru believes that tomorrow’s PR will not focus enough on the traditional history of business and that PR will no longer have a socially accepted definition.

So what does that all mean? Will people learn to not appreciate PR? What will the future of PR really hold?

Well, because I am a PR student and the PR industry’s future is essentially my future, I wanted to figure this out. I wanted to know what my future looks like and understand exactly what is in store for PR pros across the world. And, after some research I found some interesting opinions and facts that PR practitioners and students might want to know about PR’s tomorrow.

According to MarcomBlog, a well-known PR blog site, a blogger of the site recently attended the PRSA Northeast District Conference and found out some interesting facts about the future of PR. The first was that the PR profession will have more than 40,000 jobs by 2014 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Also, he mentioned that PRSSA has 9,000 student members and college chapters, like CSU PRSSA, are continuing to grow. Also, this blogger believes that blogging and social media is a true component in keeping PR and marketing alive.

In another blog titled Bernaise Source, the blogger and business pro discusses his view on the recent Communications 2.0 PR Conference. During this conference devoted to discussing the future of PR, the talk of blogging and social media came up, noting that these two trends will be essential tools to PR practitioners in the future.

Clearly, there is no easy answer as to where PR will be in the next 20 years. However, I think that while PR will eventually merge with marketing, and both will use the internet, social media, blogs and multimedia as communication tools.

Media kits will all be digital, press releases will be paperless and pitch letters will become videos.

No matter what the PR future will hold, I think that people will appreciate PR’s tomorrow.