ICCO World PR Report reveals optimism in the public relations market

PR agency bosses are optimistic about the growth of public relations in 2020 and beyond, according to findings from the International Communications Consultancy Organisation’s World PR Report published in partnership with Opinium.

The overview of the worldwide PR landscape uncovered profitability alongside optimism – on a 10-point scale, overall optimism about the growth of the public relations market hit 7 among surveyed PR leaders (as high as 7.7 in North America). Expectations for profit in 2020 scored 6.7 across all regions surveyed, with confidence in increased profits particularly high in Latin America (7.3) and Eastern Europe (7).

Drilling down further to see where market growth is being triggered and where potential challenges may be, the World PR Report also found that:

• Increases in investment from Asia Pacific consultancies is expected for the influencer marketing space
• Creativity skills will be most important for Western European leaders in PR
• The most popular B2B social media platform for Middle East and Africa is LinkedIn (followed by Twitter and Facebook)
• Retaining talent is a big industry challenge for agency heads, who cite high salaries as a difficulty for recruiting outside of the industry

ICCO chief executive Francis Ingham said: ‘The global PR industry faces the future in fine shape. However, we must not take our position of strength for granted. At every level of the industry and in every region of the world, we have a talent problem. We simply do not attract and retain enough of it.

‘That is because we do not pay enough. And we do not pay enough because we charge too little. At the heart of this is our failure to adequately measure the effect of our work. The global fall in AVE usage is a welcome sign of our progress on this issue. Along with AMEC, ICCO will continue to champion professional standards on measurement so that our industry can continue its growth with renewed confidence in its value to business and society’.