Over the last two days I’ve had the pleasure of judging the industry’s best creative PR campaigns at The One Show in New York. After a few rounds of online judging where we were put to the task of scoring hundreds of campaigns, we came together in The Big Apple to review the best of the best, with each jury member bringing their own worldly perspective.
Reviewing a cross-section of work with a jury room full of unique opinions and own experiences, this has helped give me a great vantage point on the current state of the industry and the opportunities that lie ahead. Here are my top takeaways from the jury room:
The discipline blur is real
Everything communicates and there are barely any barriers between disciplines now. Fame is the goal and there’s lots of ways you can achieve fame, with earned media being a large contributor. The PR category had lots of different shapes of work from PR agencies, media agencies, advertising agencies and social media agencies. PR is no longer about how many billion pieces of reach you achieved. The best work had a central and simple (yet clever) idea, was distinctive to the brand, changed behaviour and drove business results. They didn’t chase column inches, they found a problem to solve and did it really well using an array of communication touchpoints.
It was obvious when an agency not set up to land a PR campaign had entered (relied on forcing a message versus allowing for two way communication between the brand and consumer). Conversely, there was also evidence of when a PR agency did not have a central thought or idea.
This was the biggest discussion in the room – “is this a PR campaign?”. It was one that led to us choosing the most impactful and unique campaigns, whilst ensuring we awarded the best work that would push the industry forward.
We need to measure what matters
Looking at the longer term impacts of earned media is an area ripe for growth, not just at award shows but industry-wide. We need a big shift away from measuring success purely by volume of coverage at one-off campaign moments, moving toward the impact of earned media over the long term including business impact, and consumer sentiment and behaviour. When we evaluate work through this broader lens, the value of earned media becomes undeniable.
This will only become even more true as we can start to see and measure how earned media is driving visibility for a brand’s product or services via LLMs.
The missing AI conversation
One noticeable theme was that AI or LLMs did not feature heavily in the award entries or in our general discussion. When it did come up, it was noted that the value of earned media and its contribution to LLMs, as well as how AI is being implemented to make campaign production or execution more efficient, simply came down to timing. Seeing how rapidly AI has exploded over the last six months, we believe that in next year’s award shows there will be more outlined in campaigns on how AI was utilised in new or effective ways, as well as LLM’s role in influencing or engaging with humans.
Overall, the calibre of work was fantastic. The PR category is evolving. PR isn’t just column inches, it’s everything a brand communicates. The agencies and brands that can drive fame by seamlessly blending creativity with earned attention, and rigorous long-term measurement, will be the ones that drive the industry forward and take home more metal.