Gartner has been gazing into its crystal ball and has pubished its five major predictions for communications for this year and beyond in a world being rapidly shaken up by AI.
Its initial two prophecies warrant particular attention.
Gartner’s first is that media relations budgets will double by 2027, driven by the trend of web searches being fast replaced by AI queries.
The company points out that “more than 95% of links cited [in AI answers] are non-paid mentions and coverage, with 27% originating directly from earned media.”
And it says its research shows the areas most likely to see budget increases are “public relations (in which 36% of Chief Communication Officers anticipate an increase), corporate brand (34%), public website (26%), and external social media (23%).”
Doubling in two years is a daring forecast; I don’t know if that will happen. But amongst my clients and industry colleagues, there’s certainly a consensus that getting recommended by AI tools is vital – and strong recognition that positive media coverage plays a big role in that.
Gartner’s recommendations in the light of this prediction include to:
- make the business case to reallocate spending from paid to earned media, and
- commit to building a “responsive, proactive earned media function that meets the recency demands of AI search engines”
I can’t argue with those.
The company’s second prediction is that, by 2028, 75% of employees will rely on internal chatbots to find relevant information.
Gartner suggests this will turn internal communications on its head and displace traditional formats of employee engagement – including even communication from managers.
Assuming chatbots become much more effective, I can see this happening to great effect for basic ‘pull’ information – answering employee admin queries efficiently in what Gartner describes as a “self-service” working environment.
But I don’t share Gartner’s enthusiasm for how well it will facilitate ‘push’ information and replace most other means of employee engagement. How valued will people feel if their employers “shift the information cascade away from managers” and leave them largely in the hands of chatbots?
That strikes me as an awful, dystopian change I hope we don’t see happen.
If you’re wondering about Gartner’s other predictions … it’s third is that, by 2029, “45% of [Chief Communication Officers] will adopt narrative intelligence technologies to support reputation monitoring amid an intensifying disinformation landscape.”
This I can see happening as tools become increasingly sophisticated in not just finding mentions of companies but analysing tone, sentiment and nuance of exposure and detecting early warning signs of trouble ahead.
Its fourth prophecy is that, by 2029, “75% of communications teams will use analyses of employee digital footprints to deliver personalised communications.” Smart, tailored internal content or corporate stalking?
Its fifth is that, by 2029, “communications’ spending on data and analytics will double to 6% of the function’s budget.” Perhaps it will, and improved analytics can only be a good thing – as long as they provide truly meaningful insight into business impact and enable better decision making.
Gartner’s predictions are thought provoking and, to me, mostly seem to point in the right direction. Whether they’ll pan out quite as the company claims remains to be seen.
