2025: 22 predictions and risks for public sector comms & PR 

A curious thing happened when I sat down and thought of public sector comms predictions for 2025.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve jotted down ideas for predictions for the next 12-months.

One thing emerged. Like Japanese soldiers on a Pacific island who don’t know the war is over comms people are at serious risk of being left behind in 2025. 

A series of chasms are opening up. The good news is that with swift action over the course of the year they can be bridged. The bad news is that there are plenty of forces trying to stop you.  

But first last year

So before I alarm you, how were my predictions for public sector comms in 2024? 

They were 87.5 per cent accurate, 4.1 per cent were ‘hmmmm’ and 8.3 per cent I think I got wrong. 

What was right

• There was a need to retrench social media as algorithms changed. 
• X, formerly Twitter did get less relevant but didn’t fall over.
• No, there wasn’t a Twitter replacement. Threads and BlueSky stayed niche.
• Paid subscriptions on social media accounts did get more important.
• Fascism did get more of a part of normal conversation with a lurch to the right in USA.
• There was a need to communicate cuts and bankruptcy in the public sector.
• The most effective comms was done by using the native platform not a social media management platform.
• There was election turbulence.
• There was more misinformation and disinformation.
• There was more fake content created. 
• Comms did need to shape AI policy. 
• Many comms teams did struggle to accept the link is dead and found diminishing returns by persisting with this tactic. 
• Teams that didn’t educate the client to the changing comms landscape did struggle.
• Nicola Bulley-style TikTok detectives played a massive role in the Southport riots with online speculation leading to riot and disorder. 
• A cataclysmic event did point the way to how social media performs in a crisis. Murders in Southport led to a summer of riots in English towns left behind by decline.
• Local news did continue to be niche with jobs lost but the new trend of email news platforms slowly growing.
• Human comms and story telling did cut through. Analysis showed that human stories cut through the best. 
• Building a network of AI knowledge was useful.
• TikTok did become more important.
• The wider internet did become more beset by AI-made rubbish.
• A two speed AI adoption did happen with some comms teams experimenting and some ignoring it. 

Hmmm…

• Messaging apps like WhatsApp did become more important as a communications channel but the public sector didn’t use it well.

No…

• Fire and rescue did hope for a once in a generation chance to establish a College of Fire & Rescue and modernise but that’s not really happened.

• At the start of the year I argued for an AI advocate in your team to experiment as with social media. I’ve changed on this. That advocate needs to be an expert on process and government guidelines to steer the ship. Like Sherpa Tensing with a clipboard. A pioneer and adventurous but only on the trail marked out, thank you

Predictions for 2025

The media landscape continues to splinter. In the UK, there is already 60 million ways to consume media. Algorithms will continue to drive this. That’s an easy prediction but needs saying. 

Algorithms will continue to edge out Friends and family as the driver of traffic on social channels. The trend of AI-generated selections for your timeline rather than your networks will continue. This is obvious. This describes the weather you’ll see.

Good content rather than quantity. If you are posting 10 times a day to tick a box don’t. Instead, tthink about posting two pieces of gold standard content instead. Those two gems will soar while the sub-standard churn will sink. Data will be your friend here. Keep the insights for the good and the bad so you can explain to the ugly what you are trying to do. 

Make shaping an AI strategy for your organisation – and in turn comms – as number one strategic priority. Events will try and knock you of course. Fight it. If you set out how you will use AI and where you won’t you’ll stand a chance for future employment. I don’t wish to alarm you in saying this but I would like to flag up that this strategy is easily the best strategic thing you’ll do over the next decade. 

BlueSky will continue to be niche. Until journalists and politicians relocate X will retain its outsized influence amongst these two demographics. But the platform may struggle to combat greater attention from bad actors. Comms people can absolutely gain value from creating their own networks there. It just won’t be Nu Twitter.

Hiring a journalist as a the organisation’s chief storyteller will be a smart move. Cutting through the landscape of bad AI and poor artwork those authentic human stories and faces will cut through. Who better at this than a reporter? But make it one who can shoot video and post online.

Recruiting an army of advocates to share your content in their communities will be one of the best tactical things you can do in 2025. Modelled on the successful Labour Party strategy those advocates will be from your community and happy to share their experience and your content in their networks. So, a Polish speaker who is a member of a Polish WhatsApp group or a mother-of-two who is in a community Facebook group can be valuable advocates. They will reach parts your corporate communications simply won’t reach.

Staff face perma-crisis fatigue so invest in them. We’ve had banking crisis, recession, war in Ukraine, refugee crisis, winter crisis, cuts, change of Government, devolution, Brexit and council mergers. The fact your team turn up for work is a minor miracle. What can you do to help this? Encourage time to switch off and step away and invest in them. Allow people to move on if you need to. People not platforms will help you communicate well.

Vertical video explosion. Meta hoped to have all video on its platform vertical by late 2024 but this will now seep to 2025. It’s also on LinkedIn. The weather set by Meta will be felt elsewhere. This will increase so stop messing around. 

There will be an AI fluff up. Somebody somewhere in the public sector will use AI to communicate something and will drop an absolute clanger that will be harmful for trust in the entire sector. But it will remind us all to stick to the UK Government guidelines. 

Quality regional news will continue to shift to email first newsletters. As people fall out of love with traffic-chasing regional news sites, more quality local journalism will be found in cities and will be email first. But this will not on its own arrest wider sector decline.

Mass readership local news will look even less like what local newspapers used to be. I’m not sticking my neck out on this but its worth making the point. Today’s reporters need things served differently. Look at the last 100 posts of a title you are trying to reach for more on this. 

Argue for ad spend or fail to reach people. Without an army of advocates ad spend may be the only way to reach a community. This will get even more important. 

If AI cartoons continue to be part of the media landscape then how do you tap into that? You’ve seen them. The pro-farmer AI image of protesting tractors. If that works on the wider internet how can you make it work for you? But mark it as AI, obvs. 

AI swarms. You thought I’d forgotten about AI, didn’t you? AI swarms are groups of tools being used together in clever ways. As this technology starts to be used in 2025 its uses will become more apparent for public sector comms. But without the framework in place to use AI safely this is going to by-pass you by. It won’t be used widely in PR and comms. Yet. It will. See why I think sorting out an AI strategy is a good idea? 

Risks, oh the risks

Risk of being trapped in a Microsoft-shaped AI landscape. IT are at risk of locking down creativity again. While Microsoft tools may be an easy win the bright comms person will press for a degree of creativity outside the sheep fold. That’s if AI is being adopted at all.

Risk of being trapped in a legacy tech landscape. More computing power is needed to produce video and use AI effectively. Teams with patched-up make do and mend tech will fall behind.

Risk of being trapped in a Gen X landscape increases. Many leaders in organisations are born before 1980 and their Gen X preferences can guide the organisation. Yet, Millennials can be aged 43, Gen Z can be 27 and Gen A can be 14 and often demand a faster pace to communications on digital channels. How does that materialise? We don’t use TikTok because the chief exec doesn’t like it. 

Risk of not bringing the organisation along with you increases. While you may get the big picture you can only move as fast as your slowest chief executive. You need to manage up. Constantly. ‘Here’s why we’re evolving…’ should be the most common phrase in your Outlook Unwrapped in 2025.

Risk of being trapped in skills deficit increases. If you don’t have the skills in the team to identify the right channels, create the right content and know when to use just enough of AI safely you need to find them or develop them or be trapped going backwards.

Risk of being trapped with a middle aged comms team. If the average age of your team is 53.2 you have a problem. Without some new ideas and the perspective of youth your team risks not representing the audience you serve. Experience is valuable. Too much can be a care home. 

Risk of being outsourced or replaced increases. If the team doesn’t have the skills, hasn’t got the tech or has no strategy those gaps which are bridgeable now – just – will become too big to traverse. Like a typing pool that won’t use computers. If that’s the case, 

 then bringing in an off-the-shelf AI-savvy comms team to replace them suddenly becomes a really attractive business model for someone. Heads of comms need to wake up to the risk of being replaced. 

Welsh actor Richard Burton used to talk about seeing the arrogant strut of the miner down the street of his hometown as he grew up. They were the aristocracy of the working class, he recalled.

Once, heads of comms who could pull together A-Z guides or bring comms, marketing and PR under one roof had a similar strut. How we smile at those far off days. 

In 2026, if you can helping navigate your own change you’ll deserve to be strutting yourself.
I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.