The pressure’s on: value, not volume, will define the next era of communications
The Onclusive 2026 Outlook reports on a sector finally confronting uncomfortable truths - from ROI-shaped leadership expectations and an AI-fuelled evolution.
The next 12 months will be a cultural reckoning and period of transformation for the public relations industry, according to The Onclusive 2026 Outlook.
I’m quoted upfront in the report, suggesting that our industry must aim for the high ground and align with management to thrive. It’s the quote that’ll be on my gravestone.
Half of practitioners still can’t demonstrate return beyond vanity metrics. That statistic should make every communications practitioner deeply uncomfortable. If your work can’t show a link to organisational outcomes such as revenue, reputation or risk mitigation, it’s simply not credible.
I wrote about this issue in a recent edition of the newsletter.
The smart money? It’s on correlation modelling, joined-up attribution, and executive fluency. The takeaway: learn to speak the language of the boardroom, or you’ll be left outside.
Brand building is back, but it must be measured
Brand is the one thing that communications and marketing can agree on. More than half across both camps identify it as the top priority to cut through media, tackle misinformation, and show up in AI. But agreeing it’s important isn’t the same as proving its impact.
Here, the report does well to translate brand-building into commercial terms. Again, if you can’t connect brand metrics (trust, awareness, sentiment) to business metrics (leads, loyalty, conversion), you’re not building anything. You’re decorating.
Misinformation and media burnout
Agencies in the report flag fake news and AI-generated content as leading threats. In-house teams, oddly, don’t. That divide suggests many client organisations underestimate the speed and scale of information decay online.
Similarly, the shrinking journalism pool means traditional media relations is no longer a numbers game. This, combined with AI spam, influencer creep, and declining trust, means the quality of your stories will be the difference.
AI is bedding in
The biggest myth that the Onclusive report quietly challenges is that AI will “transform everything.” Two in five say it’ll just complement rather than transform the communications role. Agencies are more bullish about moving up the value chain, with a pivot to advisory work, but the AI revolution some predicted is shaping up to be more evolution than radical disruption.
Onclusive flags Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) as a fundamental shift. Visibility in AI depends on being cited, credible, and consistent across every touchpoint. This reframes media entirely and is an assertive opportunity for our industry. It is also highly contested. You have been warned.
Five provocations for practitioners
Stop reporting reach and start reporting outcomes. If your management still sees sentiment charts, you’re failing them.
Rebuild brand strategy around attribution. Make sure your “awareness” can be tracked to something that shifts behaviour.
Prepare for misinformation like it’s a pandemic. Prevention, detection and rapid response should be baked into your plan.
Invest in relationships. Shrinking newsrooms mean the old volume game is gone. Quality counts.
Don’t fear AI, out-think it. Use the time you save to think more creatively and act more strategically.
The report is a useful piece of empirical research. Onclusive balances numbers with narrative, and isn’t afraid to call out fault lines within practice.
Further reading
This essay was originally posted on my Substack. The newsletter is read by more than 5,000 communications and public relations practitioners twice a week. We take a slower, critical perspective to distilling news, research and industry developments into actionable briefings to help you at work.
