Looking back in 2024 and forward to 2025

Sarah and Stephen Waddington review some of the big issues in management and public relations over the past 12 months and look forward to 2025.

They discuss:

• The Omnicom-Interpublic merger creates the largest marketing and public relations group. This will create opportunities for independent agencies as the merged entity focuses on cost efficiencies rather than innovation.
  
  
• AI in PR is overhyped. We need to see harder evidence of efficiency and effectiveness gains and better consideration of risk issues. There will be a back-to-basics focus on authentic communication and human relationships in 2025.
  
  
• Despite 2024's challenging economic climate, with many organisations still managing post-pandemic effects, there is greater certainty around areas of risk, and encouraging signs for the public relations sector moving forwards.
  
  
• Notable management and public relations failures in 2024 include the Grenfell Tower and Post Office crises. Reputation was prioritised over victims in both cases.
  
  
• Successful campaigns included the Northumberland National Park's response to the Sycamore Gap tree felling and Led by Donkeys’ activist work to highlight children’s deaths in Gaza.
  
  
• Looking ahead to 2025, key focus areas include employee wellbeing, organisational culture and the ongoing challenge of establishing public relations' value within management structures.

Presented by Sarah Waddington and Stephen Waddington

For more information visit https://www.wadds.co.uk/
With thanks to our production partners at What Goes On Media

Transcript

Stephen Waddington:
It’s the Better Business Podcast back for an end of year roundup. Hello Sarah, how are you doing?

Sarah Waddington:
I'm good, thanks. I'm going to apologise in advance for my festive croaky voice, but I've got the thing that everybody's got… that’s doing the rounds.

Stephen Waddington:
We're limping to the end of the year. We're here to look at some of the big issues of the year. We're going to look at some of the big campaigns of the year, some of the most successful campaigns, some that didn't quite hit, and give a forecast for 2025.

Where to start? Let's start with some recent news. Omnicom just acquired Interpublic, creating the biggest holding group for PR and marketing services, bigger than WPP, significantly. So a bit of willy-waving going on there. Clearly, this acquisition, well in my view, is all about integration and driving cost to make the merged entity more attractive for the financial markets. It creates an interesting energy, though, in the agency market, and I think one of the things to look out for next year is going to be innovation. Not amongst the holding groups - I don't think there's much going to come from their book cost efficiency -  but amongst the independent agency sector, and we've seen it this year, actually, haven't we? So, Sarah, what do you think?

Sarah Waddington:
I just think it's a really interesting move. I think most people kind of suck their cheeks in and purse their lips. It doesn't feel like there's going to be significant gains client-side in my opinion, this is obviously about scale as you said. As you've also noted it's a really great opportunity for the independent agency. I think they've been coming up anyway. We're in that funny point where it's been a very challenging market. Clients don't want to have the big spend. They want someone who's solid, but perhaps a challenger agency or a little bit more inventive and creative, more lateral in their thinking, and you find those independent mid-size agencies are very agile, and so it's quite an exciting time and I think actually it's put a pep in the industry step that we've not seen for quite a while, and I for one am here for here for it!

Stephen Waddington:
Yeah,  there's always going to be a requirement for big multi-market campaigns that can be delivered by the likes of Burson, Golan, Weber, Ketchum and so forth. But it has created a really interesting conversation and energy in the market around the inevitably the independent sector where clients are going to look because, however you look under the headlines of this Omnicom Interpublic, it is all about financial management and driving margin out of the merged entity.

Sarah Waddington:
It's whether you're run by accountants or not and how hard you're willing to sweat for it! But I also think you know it's good because it's making people be a bit more careful and more choosy when they're going out to procure. So, really looking at who is funding agencies? And I think actually that's not a bad thing anyway, that scrutiny is much needed. You know there's a few out there who I think people think are independents and they're not. They're funded by the big boys. So anything that makes us all just look a bit harder and think more closely about who we're choosing, why we're working with them, and values alignment crucially is a good thing.

Stephen Waddington:
One of the things that Omnicom and Interpublic have said is they are going to take some of the savings and invest in AI tools. AI the talk of the industry for the last two years. I think it's completely overhyped. There's a lot of talk, there's not actually a lot of action. There's also, I think, a very techno-optimistic perspective driven by vendors but also part of the industry, which I think is dangerous and ignores a lot of the risk issues - risk issues not only within practice, but also within wider society and actually, as practitioners, we should be stepping into the role - the governance role of advising organisations on many of these issues.

I'm going to go retro and say 2025, we're going to start to see a backlash against AI, especially within practice. People are going to start to scrutinize the gains and, and look actually for the hard cost efficiency. Everyone says you know there's a effectiveness and efficiency benefits from it. Linkedin is full of people hustling around it, but actually show me some hard numbers, show me where you're saving money, and where you're getting that efficiency gain. The retro trend from that is there's going to be a shift to away from automation, away from cluttered AI slop that you see all over the internet, towards more authentic relationships.

Do you know? I hired a car this week and I am fed up with the messages badgering me. I got two or three beforehand to onboard me to my hiring experience and then I've had two or three afterwards asking me to rate via email, via WhatsApp, via SMS.

Sarah Waddington:
That can go in the bin with website pop-ups.

Stephen Waddington:
This automated conversation, which is you know, it's a form of AI, is just bollocks.

Sarah Waddington:
But it's interesting that, though, isn't it when we talk about and I know this is your big area of focus in terms of how do we elevate PR with management, and actually the key area will be keeping it relationship-focused. It's like we come into our own when we're dealing with crises, when you're up against legals who take a very legal view and a very formal view and want to close things down. When actually, we recognise that you can't do that when dealing with humans and the public. You're not going to protect your reputation by closing down. You're going to protect your reputation by being authentic, by being honest and transparent about what's happened and talking about what steps you're going to take to rectify things. So it's interesting, isn't it? I'm certainly harking back for more human contact!

We went on a trip this week. I took my two kids away. It was absolutely fantastic. They the staff on the check-in desk for the airline were absolutely brilliant, and you realise how much different is compared to when you're fully automated and having to do it all yourself, and yeah, back to the good old days please!

Stephen Waddington:
One of my books of the year this year is about Jim McNamara, who talks about this perception that organisations are listening using these automated techniques, and really they're not.Yes, back to basics, please.

Tortoise Media's acquisition of the Observer is very controversial, but it feels significant as well. I mean, Tortoise has made a pivot from being this slow news organisation and it's maintaining some of those roots, but it's shifted more firmly into being an online podcast producer. But I think this is significant because of the model. The model’s still the values of the Tortoise - to take a slow perspective and I love this a reflective perspective.

Sarah Waddington:
We've talked about this for years, though, because I've been like critical of regional media for moving away from slow, from slow reporting, more detailed, in-depth, on the ground reporting to whatever the clickbait is, and we've seen that this is not… This long-term strategy of chasing clicks isn't working for them. It's not commercially viable. They're going to have to change strategy again, and actually I always thought that for regional media, there's a bit of both, isn't there?

The perfect scenario for me is getting the breaking news but then having people on the ground to go out and actually give you the real story told from the people involved themselves and we just don't see that anymore - moves too fast. Or it's the same story repeated ad infinitum over the 24-hour news cycle, so everybody's bored to death with it. Or it's celebs’ minor stories because they've broken a toenail, I mean where do you go?

News is so important and, like you know, it's interesting because I don't I'm not really on TikTok, but so many young people are getting their news from TikTok now. We've got to be across this and be thoughtful about it. But if we can get the younger generations engaged in kind of that slower, more in-depth news cycle, it's much more educative! And so, as communicators, we've got to keep this front of mind.

Stephen Waddington:
Yeah, so again a contrarian perspective, that news slowing down rather than speeding up, and the requirement for reflective. We're certainly going to need it with the change of administration in the US.

Stephen Waddington:
I think social media makes it so easy – I mean it’s democratised things hasn’t it – made it so easy for us to jump in with a fast opinion, but actually the ones that I appreciate the most in time when I am reflecting myself, are those who have been a bit more thoughtful, who have come at it - that maybe listened to different perspectives and are bringing a more considered, informed opinion, and again, that might not be what the masses are saying, but they that they bring that to the table. I think that -  I was gonna say The Observer, but Tortoise, sorry, Tortoise are well versed in doing this. So actually it's not a bad fit for me. I think it makes an awful lot of sense. I know that obviously Observer staff have been striking, but I think this might be more of an opportunity than they recognise right now. Nobody likes change and I've got to admit I wouldn't want to be on the team going through this because it's another difficult transition within the news media world.

Stephen Waddington:
Let's hear it for critical thinking and reflexivity!

You said it at the top, actually, that we've had another really tough year. So 2022, the PR and Comms industries were 2021 / 2022 the PR and Comms industries boomed because of the requirements of our skills and expertise during the COVID pandemic, but then the markets have contracted. Things have got tough. We've had the war in Ukraine, we've got the conflict in the Gulf, we've had the cost of living crisis.

Sarah Waddington:
Geopolitical turbulence, you name it, we've had it!

 Stephen Waddington:
We're running on fumes, right? You raised this interesting point that that we're still, we're very much still within the organisations we're working with, uh, dealing with the after effects of COVID.

Sarah Waddington:
I've spoken to so many different stakeholders from different businesses not just our own industry and sector, right across the board of different sizes, and we're talking private, public, third sector, some academia, and everybody has found this a real struggle.

I had a meeting with a Bank of England representative. I've spoken to numerous IOD people and the story is the same. It's been a very long, drawn out, arduous year, particularly this year, and it's because everybody has pulled all the levers they can. They're doing the right things, they've restructured, they've kept an eye on costs, they're marketing, and it's just tricky because the economic health of the nation isn't good enough to increase spend and where spend is happening, projects are being kicked out and it's just… There's a glacial place where it comes to procurement, so it's really tricky and cash flow has been more troublesome than ever before. But this isn't just our industry, it's across the boat.

I feel you know, anecdotally and from different bits of data that we've seen in terms of industry research, things are picked up a bit. You know we were a closed agency, found a group called Progress. The view in there is that definitely there's been an increase in work, even though some of that project work was kicked out from September perhaps to January, but there's definitely been an increase in tenders. That's a really good sign.

I kind of feel like there is more of an upbeat approach to the end of the year. I mean, everybody's tired, but I feel like I think everybody feels that maybe there's been a step change and we're going to go into 2025 and things are going to pick up a bit. I don't know whether that's because we've got the elections out the way or because there has been activity and it's feeling a bit better, but it's nice to see.

Stephen Waddington:
I think there’s less unknown. We know what the risk issues are. I do wish the and I completely understand the Labour government's perspective on presenting a pragmatic picture of the state of the economy, the state of public finances, but I wish it would start looking forward, to give us some sort of vision for the future so that we can look with optimism to the years to come.

Sarah Waddington:
Can you hear a dog in the background? Marjorie, I shut the door. I have to say to everybody who's listening we've got our stepdaughter staying. My two are right up in their bedrooms, but my stepdaughter's currently making bacon, so she was determined to go out of the office and go and see what was going on. But clearly the door is shut now so she wants back in. It's just tough. Marj is just gonna have to stay out there. Sorry, if you can hear her singing away, it's not howling, it's singing.

Stephen Waddington:
Whining for bacon I love it.

Sarah Waddington:
It's a bit like you. This is why you and her bond so well, Stephen.

What have we got next? What's next on the agenda?

Stephen Waddington:
Lovely day yesterday -  we announced the results of the latest Socially Mobile cohort, our ninth cohort in three years. It's incredible! We are literally building a small army of activists um who are driving forward practice, both to level up practice within management and practice at a management level, and it's wonderful to see.

Sarah Waddington:
Yeah, and huge thank you to everybody who's involved with socially mobile and keeps us sustainable. We completed our 25 for 2025 fundraising campaign, which we were a little concerned about, bearing on everything we've just spoken about the economic circumstances that everybody's facing. So you know, we're just thrilled to bits to be in a position where we're sustainable again for the next 12 to 24 months, and thank you to everybody who's contributed, everybody who supports us, gives us advocacy, trust us with their training and most of all, those who volunteer with us, because we couldn't do it without you. This is a big community effort and we're very grateful.

Stephen Waddington:
We have opened uh applications for the easter 2025 cohort. If you think, uh, you're at the stage of you your career where you will benefit from management training, and then please check out the website, there's a big button on the top right hand side that will take you to the further information and application, and do go and look at that.
Two things I wanted to do before I'm going to ask you for a trend for the end of the year. The first thing is campaigns that miss the mark this year, or organizations that miss the mark from a public relations perspective. I'm gonna go Post Office first!

 Sarah Waddington:
Yeah, I knew you'd say Post Office, I mean. And what a fantastic leader we have in Alan, Sir Alan Bates now. Very well deserved recognition for all his long years of campaigning and efforts and never stopping, even when every single door must have felt closed to him.

But what an amazing person and it's great to see his efforts now having come to fruition and this continuing to be front and centre of government and public attention and hopefully to get some justice for all those who were impacted and had their lives ruined effectively by their actions.

Stephen Waddington:
Also palpably through the inquiry not the inquest, sorry, the inquiry to see the failings both in leadership and management and within the communication function. There are researchers within public relations and management who advocate for the practitioner being the ethical voice and calling out bad practice. I think it's an exceptional individual that does that and it certainly hasn't happened in this case. And you've seen failing at every level within the management structure of the Post Office.

Sarah Waddington:
And we've seen that recently with Church of England as well, haven't we? In terms of where there's not been enough transparency or action, when someone really needed to stage an intervention to stop harms happening to people. Organisations really need to get ahead of this and understand that ignoring a story or putting a spin or a shine on it is not going to take you any further, any faster. In fact, it's going to put you back and it's going to do much more intensive damage when the truth comes out.

Stephen Waddington:
Yeah and Grenfell. Same. Sam issues - lack of transparency, lack of clear communication and organisations throughout the supply chain in Grenfell failing. And then, when they were called upon to be transparent, they obfuscated and put reputation before the organisation.

Let's talk about some of the best stuff from 2024. What's hot?

Sarah Waddington:
Well, we love Sycamore Gap, don't we? Hadrian's wall country, and it's been one of our destinations for a day out with the children many a time. We were in India when the news came out that it had been illegally felled and I was at the northeast marketing awards, um, just a couple of weeks ago and it was wonderful to see Northumberland National Park and the National Trust win an award for their work in managing the fallout since then and proactively engaging with the community to work out how best to move forward. Because this is such a…

I think it's very difficult for people who aren't familiar with it to understand what that tree means to this particular region. It's not just a marketing icon, it's part of folklore, it's part of everybody's lives, it's a destination, it feels very significant to people, it feels part of the family. So when it was felled, you know there was a palpable distress throughout the region and further afield. So that work in terms of the efforts that they've put in. They most recently had a campaign around 49 trees of hope, which are all cuttings taken from the original tree, and they have taken those out around the country to carry an important message of hope and an important message about the natural landscape, and I just think that's a fantastic way to continue its legacy and to ensure that people get to think about it and think about the importance of protecting our local environment.

Stephen Waddington:
I'm going to go with Led by Donkeys. I love that we got the book, a wonderful coffee table book of all its campaigns over the last five years or so. We visited the COVID Memorial Wall on the south side of the river opposite the Houses of Parliament. Campaign from this year in February it did this very dramatic thing where it set out 11,000 sets of children's clothing on the beach of Bournemouth in a protest, an activist process at the war in Gaza, highlighting how many children from both sides of the conflict had been killed since the 7th of October. And you couldn't fail to be moved by that and, like much of Led by Donkeys' work, it takes a very activist perspective and it makes you sit up and go ‘wow’. You can’t help but think about the issue.

Sarah Waddington:
Because we’re at the end of the year I think it would be remiss not to mention one of the strongest and most brave leaders we’ve seen in recent times in terms of Giselle Pelicot whose name will be familiar to people for fronting up a case in France which has shocked not just that nation but internationally in terms of this poor lady who was repeatedly raped by not just her husband but people he brought into their house and other places.
 
 And she has been incredible for waiving her anonymity to draw attention to this case and to women's rights, and I know there are many who will join me in thanking her for making that stand and being courageous enough to do that, because it has started this discussion about women's rights, about how people behave, about safety, about many, many things that I will will create a hugely beneficial legacy. So thank you very much, Giselle Pelicot.
 
 Stephen Waddington:
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for raising that.

What you focused on in 2025?

 Sarah Waddington:
Interestingly, obviously with our work or as non-exec directors. It's obviously very much about strategic and financial planning going into the new year, but particularly my interest is in after quite a challenging few years employee well-being, making sure that organisations have got the balance right, that they're putting staff at the front and centre of things, and just making sure that we're considering um organisational culture so we can maintain teams of motivated practitioners. Organisations have to change shape at different times. You always want to keep your your best employees. Sometimes you have to be really thoughtful and think a bit more laterally about how you do that and so so I'm really keen to be part of those conversations going forward and I would love to see that as a theme for everybody in 2025. How about yourself?

Stephen Waddington:
Same old, same old, I'm afraid. So I'm halfway through my PhD and one of the issues that's come up is that organisations and management recognise the relationship perspective of public relations. They recognise the value of public relations, but for some reason public relations fails to realise this or get the benefit from it.

I've had some brilliant conversations during this year. I've gone back, actually, to people who in the past have looked at this issue. So I had a wonderful conversation with James Grunewald, thanks to John White, who was instrumental in leading the excellence study back in the 80s and 90s. Anyone that studied PR will know about it. And then I met Peter Walker last week actually. Peter Walker in the 80s was a president of the CIPR who set the organisation on course for chartership 20 years later.

A question I've asked everyone is why have we failed to achieve this recognition? And I think the conclusion I've reached is we've celebrated success far too early! We've been satisfied in the past with the position we've arrived at, whether that's Grunew recognizing the characteristics of excellence or, similarly, Peter Walker setting itself on course for chartership. My own supervisor actually part of the team that does the European Communication Monitor has sort of reached the same conclusion. I think we need to be restless for change and driving our value and demonstrating it within organisations.

Sarah Waddington:
Maybe we can stop getting excited about shiny new things like AI, because we think that's where you know clients are talking about it and they think that's where the money is. I think just a little bit more thought wouldn't go amiss. There's opportunity there. Of course, we should lead in certain areas - tech is a key area, but I do think we over-index it, but not in the right way.

Before we close today and wish everybody happy holidays, however people celebrate, I just want to say a thank you, a final thank you, because people have supported us throughout the year commercially, but, as many people will know, we've had quite a challenging couple of years personally, and I just want to say that we would like to acknowledge all the people who've stood by us and been around and helped us during this time and just been on hand when needed. So I'm not going to give any names because there's too many to call out, but we see you, we thank you, we're very grateful for you and we're looking forward to being with you and working with you in the new year.

Stephen Waddington:
Thank you very much.