From doers to thinkers: How the Comms Week Advisory Board sees the profession changing

AI is changing the way we communicate with each other and our audiences, but also presenting vast new opportunities for both internal and external communicators. That’s the big takeaway as some of the biggest names in the communications industry gathered for the Communications Week Advisory Board ahead of the Future of Communications Conference, Nov. 11-13.

“The professionals and agencies who will win the future of communications will be the ones who aren’t afraid to reinvent themselves,” said Tiffany Guarnaccia, founder and CEO of Kite Hill PR and co-chair of the Communications Week advisory board. “I think that there’s so much power in creating that opportunity for us as an individual and as a team to embrace reinvention during a time of disruption.”

Read more to see predictions on the future of internal communications, PR and much more.

The future of PR

Alyssa Smith, senior director of event programming at Ragan Communications: What’s your boldest prediction for the future of PR in the next two to three years?

Kristie Vainikos Stegen, chief brand and communications officer at Cotality: I would say there’s never been a better time to be a communicator, and I know that might seem strange because at first everybody was thinking, “Oh, AI is just going to take our jobs.” I don’t see it that way at all. I see it as a time where we’re really able to demonstrate the value of the work that we’re doing, to show how the work that we do is a really powerful input for the AI tools that we’re all embracing and using as a part of our daily lives now. And so I feel really bullish about the profession. I’m certainly looking for ways to continue to expand the impact that my team is making, and where possible to grow my team, because we’re seeing a need for more resources rather than less.

How could AI change not just earned media, but reputation work?

Tiffany Guarnaccia, founder and CEO of Kite Hill PR and co-chair of the Communications Week advisory board: It’s a foundational shift in how we’re seeing audiences discover brands. A strong media placement now serves two purposes: where we’re looking at reaching the human reader and the influence and the brand perception there, but also how we’re training LLMs, which is a new path to discovery. That’s a foundational part of reputation.

It’s not only setting off what are the brand objectives and the north star we have, but then how do we pull that all the way down to think about the impact? There’s a lot of work that I know so many great players are doing across the industry from that perspective.

What about crisis playbooks? Do we think that they’re going to exist in five years in the same way that they exist now? And if not, then what replaces them?

Bret Werner, president of MikeWorldWide: I feel like five years is like 50 years right now. But there will always be a playbook. There’ll always be a method, an approach. You still need frameworks. I don’t think AI and innovation changes that. It makes it more efficient and speeds it up.

What about the CCO seat at the table? What does it look like? Bigger, smaller, different?

Vainikos Stegen: I think this is a real opportunity for a chief communications officer to expand the scope of the impact that they’re making. I see my job as the chief brand and communications officer here is being first, a business leader. So sitting in the room and thinking about what is in the best interest of the business, how am I going to help the business grow. That is always going to be the most important thing that any of us can do, having a seat at the table.

Nicole Neal, senior director of communications at WellMed Optum Florida: The more we align with the needs of our executive teams, the better for us overall. They’re going to be looking at the business, as Kristie just said, much more holistically. So us showing up as business leaders, not being afraid to switch lanes if necessary, and demonstrate our ability to understand our overall business objectives and how communications can help us achieve that. Just being consistent is extremely important as well. I’ve seen where some leaders just probably change the perception of the chief communications officer just by not being as effective as they could have been with the resources that they had. It takes the function back a few steps when someone operates like that. So how can we be the best business partners? And I don’t mean being order takers. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that being the best business partners and aligning with the needs of the business as closely as possible is what positions us in the right frame for future growth.

The future of internal communications

What is the future of internal comms? What will internal comms look like three to five years from now?

Stacie Barrett, director of corporate communications at AAA Life Insurance Co.: It’s really important that internal comms is playing a more strategic role because, as we’ve talked about, it’s about the pace of change. It’s also about making sure we are not only thoughtfully choosing the right channels and the right messaging, but also thinking about how we are delivering those messages and when, because we need people to do a lot of new things and get through a lot of new changes. You’re also helping to set the framework so that you are giving people this information and all this content and all this change in a way that they can digest and take action on it in a meaningful way before you move on to the next thing.

Werner: I’ll speak from the agency side. If I was betting on growth areas, and I think it’s been touched on a little bit: In times of change, our employees need better, more touchpoints, communications. That is a huge growth area for the PR sector. That’s where I see business advancing in that area.

And if we do the flash-forward five years, what do you think needs to be different about how comms does their work in order to galvanize workforce initiatives in a meaningful way, especially for this generation that’s expecting it?

Barrett: It is always important to tie all of your changes and ground everything in why, and I don’t think that’s ever going to change. As we start to get busier and faster, sometimes we skip that step, and that’s always going to be a mess. If you’re asking people to do anything or move through any kind of change, you still have to follow the change management process, even though we’re tightening up sometimes the timeline along that process.

Christina Furtado Holguin, director of global revenue operations communications at Dell Technologies: When I started my career, and I think for many of you, we were rewarded for being the doers. I will stay in the office. I will stay late. I will write a 10-page document. I’ll make the copies. I will do all the things. And I think we’re going to shift from a society or an industry that rewards the doers to one that rewards the thinkers. So the ones who are super strategic in their counsel, who don’t need to put in eight hours or 10 hours, or 20 hours to prove their worth. They’re the ones that are bringing curiosity to the table, that are asking really thoughtful questions, that are sitting right there when there is debate happening, and holding their ground and assuming good intent within that, and then collectively coming to a result that is so much better and bigger than it would be if we were back in our doer roles.

Will internal and external fully converge, and should they?

Guarnaccia: We continue to see the overlap because of the way that you discover and learn about a brand today. And I think one of the things that we’re seeing that’s encouraging is more big brands are leveraging their employees as storytellers. And that also converges with the fact that we think about creators as the future of media: our employees, creators in their own right, that we’re empowering to really tell that brand story. And we’ve always said that employees are your No. 1 brand advocates, and we’re seeing that really pick up as a bigger thread of opportunity there.

How do you predict trust between employees and leadership will change? And where’s comms’ role in that in the next couple of years?

Neal: So my view on that really is consistency. I think leaders have to be consistent in their behaviors, and that’s how you build trust with your employees. We can’t ping-pong. There’s a lot going on in our businesses. Having good rationale for why we’re doing something, having an anchor for why we’re doing something, being able to speak to those on a regular basis, helps people to understand what it is we’re trying to do and what we’re trying to build as an organization.

Furtado Holguin: Being in touch regularly, you’re showing your cards and that you’re in it together, and you care about building that trust, and that you are being as transparent as you possibly can. That goes a long way. And I always think of the adage: The actions speak louder than words. So, are the leaders actually modeling that in what they do and what they say? Are they seeing those actions across the company, and not just with a single leader and a single email or a town hall? And do you feel it in multiple channels, in multiple ways?

Opportunities for communicators

Where do you think the biggest opportunity is for communicators right now?

Guarnaccia: The importance of recognizing that storytelling is foundational to who we are, and there’s an art that’s not taken away from the fact that AI can create content. But AI slop is jargon and a warning signal, and I think that really pushes us to celebrate the foundational art that we have.

What skills should we be building this year that perhaps we were not as focused on in the previous years?

Furtado Holguin: Human judgment under ambiguity is one. The ability to engage across stakeholders, being able to explain the why behind the what, especially in a time where you can get a reasonably worded AI response to a question. Really being able to sit at the table and have that debate is super, super key.

Werner: I try and pause as AI does work for us constantly, and say, “What did I learn from that?” Because otherwise, I’m just taking in information constantly, and I want to make sure I’m learning and educating. And it’s something I try and communicate to staff too. That quick pause, even though the work took a limited amount of time, what do we take from it? So curiosity in the manner of, how are we learning from it? How are we getting smarter, broadening ourselves a little bit?

Be in the room for more smart conversations during the Future of Communications Conference.