New JOTW Survey Identifies the Hottest Trends in PR and Corporate Communications
The JOTW 2018 Communications Survey was conducted in partnership with Sword and Script Public Relations.
All subscribers we invited to participate, although we were looking for active communicators in the U.S. Most respondents are employed full time but many are open to a conversation about a new position. More than half or 55% said they’d be open to new opportunities.
We encouraged participation with a few gift cards that would be awarded by a random drawing of those who took the survey. We received about a three percent response rate. Most respondents were senior in-house or corporate communications professionals with extensive experience in the field.
Some of the key findings:
• Less budget to do more. Most respondents – 63% – cited budget as their top challenge, even as business and employers expected PR pros to do more and add to a growing list of duties. A majority (51%) said they expect their budget to remain the same over the next year.
• Hiring and firing agencies. When corporate communications hires an outside agency, most (54%) say they do it because they need an extra pair of hands. Another 50% noted that expertise or a specialty was a compelling reason to seek outside help. When communications agencies are fired, the top reasons can be traced to the a trio of cost (79%), service (50%) and results (40%).
• Hot PR trends and tactics. Respondents identified storytelling (79%), content marketing (71%) and thought leadership (67%) as the trends or tactics that would be more important in the next 12 months. While no trend or tactic earned 50% or more of the votes for “less important” or “much less important,” there are three that earned the most: press releases (34%), white papers (35%) and award programs (39%).
• Some communications tasks are getting harder. 51% said media relations is getting harder; 50% say organic social media is getting harder; views vary on whether or not PR measurement is getting harder – 38% say harder, while 20% say easier and still 37% say about the same. Sentiment analysis suggests while digital channels are easier to track there are more things to track, which requires time and consensus.
This survey demonstrates the value of the JOTW network, and suggests that the network would be a useful group for subsequent surveys. If you would like to partner, contact me at lundquist989@cs.com.
Frank Strong is the architect of this survey. You can read about the survey at Frank Strong’s blog:
The full report is available here:
You are welcome to use the data or slides, but please attribute the source of the survey as the Job of the Week Network and Sword and Script Public Relations.
Please let me know what you think about this survey and the results. You can contact me at lundquist989@cs.com.
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