Creative ideas which penetrate the news cycle and travel organically at scale will be the new Holy Grail, says Taylor Herring's Pete Mountstevens

The new Holy Grail

2019 will be an incredibly exciting time to work in PR.

The divisions between traditional marketing disciplines will continue to dissipate as we find ourselves working within a professional landscape where all platforms are fair game, and paid is a staple element of what we do.

Advertising agencies will continue to reassess their model as the unstoppable rise of ad blocking technology makes opting out an easy option, and ideas which penetrate the news cycle and travel organically at scale will be the new Holy Grail.

This is all great news for the PR industry. As PROs we instinctively know what makes a good story and how to tell it.

The shifting media landscape offers a great opportunity to play to our strengths and double down on what we are good at – engaging consumers on an organic level, telling stories that cut through.

Entertaining as opposed to interrupting.

Ideas and integration

In 2019 I predict we will see more, big budget, integrated campaigns rooted in an ‘earned first approach’ – where PR leads the creative.

Agency/platform/neutral pitches will become increasingly popular as CEOs/CMOs realise they are less interested in the distinction between agencies or where the idea comes from, and far more interested in the idea, the messaging and how it will engage with their audience.

Similarly I believe we will start to see integrated campaigns actually become ‘integrated’ as the traditional infighting over budgets and platform specific roles gives way to inter-agency collaboration around a central core creative.

Creative PR leading the way

So, exciting times lie ahead as we move into multi-platform executions and creative lead roles.

The fact we have such little baggage as we upskill at speed is exciting for anyone in the business of creative PR.

We don’t have someone behind us telling us why an idea won’t work and that’s incredibly liberating from a creative point of view.

Thus our challenge as an industry as we move into 2019 is to embrace new ideas and techniques, to take more risks and to be willing to ‘fail forward’ - even if it sometimes means not succeeding in the first instance.