I went to the recent National Public Relations (PR) Congress expecting to hear about where communications is going. I came away thinking more about what communicators are for.
This year’s theme was “Steward the Story: From Clout to Legacy.” The conversations ranged from artificial intelligence and authenticity to measurement, media literacy and trust. The organizers described the journey simply: from attention to belief to lasting impact.
It was timely because communications has never been easier to produce.
AI can draft a press release, speech, social post or presentation in seconds. It can summarize research, suggest headlines and generate more content than most communications teams could reasonably use.
That raises a harder question.
If everyone — and now every machine — can communicate, what is the professional communicator actually for?
For years, much of our work was defined by what we produced: releases, stories, events, interviews and, eventually, an expanding range of digital content.
We also became very good at measuring it: pick-ups, impressions, reach, engagement and media value.
One Congress session was titled “Beyond Vanity Metrics: Measuring the Real Impact of PR Storytelling.” It points to a larger problem.
Reach tells us how far something traveled. Impressions tell us how often it might have been seen. Neither tells us whether people understood it, believed it or thought differently because of it.
Being seen is not the same as having influence.
And as AI makes content easier and cheaper to produce, there will be much more of it competing for the same human attention.
Content will not be scarce.
Judgment will be.
What matters? What is true? Who needs to understand it? What should we say, and what should we leave unsaid?
And sometimes: Is communications even the solution?
One of the most valuable things a communications leader can say may not be, “How should we communicate this?” but “I don’t think communications will solve this.”
Good communications cannot rescue a poor decision indefinitely. It cannot manufacture trust when behavior undermines it. And it cannot build a reputation substantially different from the organization behind it.
Another idea at the Congress was that the profession increasingly requires more than writing and publicity. PRSP President Ana Pista pointed to critical thinking, ethical judgment, stakeholder understanding and the ability to connect communications with organizational goals and the public interest.
That sounds less like a communications technician and more like an adviser.
Writing still matters. Storytelling matters. Relationships matter. But our greater value may increasingly come from understanding the business, knowing what matters to stakeholders and having the judgment to advise leaders before the press release is written.
I have come to appreciate this more in my own work.
This month marks my third anniversary at SM. Working closer to the business has reinforced something I have come to believe: some of the most important communications work happens before anything is communicated.
It happens when we ask what a decision means, whom it affects, what questions it might raise and whether what we want to say is supported by what we actually do.
Too often, communications enters near the end. A decision has been made or an issue has emerged. Then comes the question:
How do we communicate this?
Perhaps we should have been there earlier to ask:
How will this decision be understood by the people who matter?
That does not mean communicators should make business decisions. It means reputation is shaped by those decisions long before anyone writes about them.
Which brings me back to clout and legacy.
Clout can be generated. Attention can be bought, earned or engineered.
Legacy is harder.
Organizations earn it through what they repeatedly do. Communications can help people understand those actions. It cannot substitute for them.
Perhaps being a steward of the story begins before there is a story to tell.
AI will get better. Content will become easier to make. Channels will come and go.
But judgment, understanding, relationships and trust will remain human work.
I think the future of communications may depend less on how well we communicate decisions and more on whether we are good enough to help shape them.
The author is vice president and head of corporate communications at SM Investments Corporation, the parent company of the SM Group. A father and advocate for sustainable and inclusive development, he writes the iTHINK column, which explores how technology and leadership shape the trust that enables long-term success.
