The Year of ???

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So if you’re like me you’ve consumed all of the “year-ender/year-beginninger” marketing guru roundups. You know the ones where marketing leaders are asked about the big trends of the year and they each proclaim it as “The Year of The (insert the cool marketing word here).”

I admit I’ve been guilty of doing that in the past inserting words like “social” or “content” or “personal” into the void as a way of simply describing what the coming year will be known for in public relations and marketing.

Next week, Sonali Shetty from Hodges Digital and I are hosting the first 2015 Hodges Starters event where we will look into our marketing Crystal Balls to talk about what to expect this year.

There are a limited number of seats available to our early morning event on Wednesday the 21st, please click here to register.

I will tell you in past years the answer to that question has come to me pretty easily.

This year, not so much.

Not that there’s nothing new or things aren’t trending in a certain direction, but because more than at any other time I think the practice of public relations has reached a true tipping point. Media relations as we knew it isn’t quite dead but it is quite different. Social is now content which is now also paid which sounds a lot like advertising but really isn’t.

We are seeing a maturation of PR, content, social and digital so maybe instead of this being the year we talk about this stuff and experiment, this is The Year of Implementation?

Maybe.

I can’t promise to have it all figured out by next Wednesday but Sonali and I will share our thoughts on our marketing disciplines and how technology continues to drive all these changes.

Again please join us on Wednesday the 21st at 7:30am.

Looking forward to seeing you.

Jon Newman

In 2002 Jon cofounded The Hodges Partnership and has helped to grow it into one of the country’s largest public relations firms (based on O’Dwyer’s annual rankings). Jon has taught communications as an adjunct professor at VCU, speaks regularly at conferences and meetings and blogs and tweets about public relations and marketing issues.

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