Beyond the Em-Dash
What the near future holds for PR departments at large enterprises (if they get the integrations right)
I've been having versions of the same conversation with enterprise communications leaders for the past three months. They call wanting to understand what's coming, and frankly, what I see ahead should make every head of comms think deeply about the future of their function.
This isn't about incremental improvements to existing processes - we're looking at a complete reimagining of what communications departments can accomplish, how they operate, and whether they'll remain relevant in their current form.
What many of them acknowledge after I share what we have built and are building is just how much they see the fundamental infrastructure of communications changing based on tech that already exists now, and, occasionally, how much they fear that.
In my view, the companies that understand what's coming and position themselves accordingly will have unprecedented strategic advantages. Those that don't, risk finding themselves outmanoeuvred by competitors who've transformed how they think about communications infrastructure. These are some of the talking points of those conversations.
Transforming companies into a comms departments
Within the next 18 months, we'll see the first wave of major enterprises completely restructure how they think about communications workflows. The traditional model - where PR sits in a siloed team within marketing and sales - is about to become obsolete.
What's coming instead is an operating model where every department will become a node for communications. Your sales teams will automatically surface customer win opportunities the moment deals close. Product teams will trigger coordinated communications workflows when they push updates. Customer support will feed pain point insights directly into thought leadership development. The entire company infrastructure will be wired for communications, not as an afterthought, but as a core operational capability.
This transformation will happen faster than most marketing leaders expect because the enabling technology already exists - it's just not widely implemented yet. The enterprises that move first will create massive operational advantages while their competitors are still managing communications through email chains and manual coordination.
Companies that fail to make this shift will find themselves increasingly unable to compete on message velocity and market responsiveness. When your competitor can identify, develop, and execute communications opportunities in hours while you're still scheduling planning meetings, the strategic disadvantage becomes insurmountable.
PR leaders have said for decades that communications needs a seat in the boardroom, but what if that isn’t where comms belongs, instead it’s the tissue layer, connecting internal knowledge with external audiences. Not exactly glamorous, but absolutely essential.
Personalisation is going to be table stakes
The writing style fingerprint technology that seems impressive today will be standard operating procedure within two years. Every major enterprise communications team will be able to capture and authentically replicate their executives' voices across all content channels - not just broad messaging, but the subtle linguistic patterns that make communication distinctly personal.
This capability will fundamentally change executive communications expectations. CEOs will expect their authentic voice to be maintained across thought leadership, internal communications, and media interactions without requiring their direct involvement in every piece. Regional leaders will expect localised messaging that maintains brand consistency while speaking to specific market nuances.
But here's what most communications leaders aren't preparing for: this same technology will make pitch personalisation at enterprise scale not just possible, but expected. Media relations that doesn’t leverage data and journalist-specific personalisation will increasingly be ignored as recipients become accustomed to genuinely relevant, contextually appropriate outreach.
The communications teams that don't invest in these capabilities soon will find their outreach effectiveness plummeting as journalists and stakeholders adapt to higher personalisation standards from their interactions with more advanced competitors.
Workflow speed will be a differentiator
Voice-to-task automation will eliminate the coordination friction that currently slows most enterprise communications operations. Meeting conversations will automatically convert to actionable tasks with proper context and accountability tracking. Content approvals that currently take days will collapse to hours through shared inbox systems that maintain context across handoffs.
The operational tempo change will be dramatic. Communications teams operating with these workflow improvements will be able to capitalise on breaking news opportunities, respond to market developments, and coordinate complex campaigns with agility that makes traditional operations look glacial by comparison.
Integration capabilities will determine success here. The communications teams that successfully connect their existing tools - CRM systems, content management platforms, project coordination software - will see exponential productivity gains. Those that continue operating through disconnected systems will find themselves increasingly unable to match the operational speed of more integrated competitors.
Within 24 months, I expect we'll see clear market separation between communications teams that operate at this enhanced speed and those still managing workflows manually. The competitive disadvantage for slower-moving teams will become impossible to ignore.
Research capability will compound brand advantages
The transformation from 30-hour monthly journalist research to 3-second vector database queries isn't just about efficiency - it's about enabling entirely new strategic approaches. Communications teams with access to instant, comprehensive media intelligence will be able to test multiple story angles simultaneously, identify emerging narrative opportunities, and capitalise on journalist interest patterns that manual research could never uncover.
Embeddings will make it possible to match story concepts to journalist profiles with precision that reveals opportunities human researchers would miss. More importantly, these systems will learn continuously, incorporating response rates, coverage outcomes, and relationship dynamics to refine their recommendations in real-time.
This strategic advantage will compound quickly. Teams that can instantly identify the right journalists for any story angle, understand their niche interests and recent coverage patterns, and tailor personalised outreach at scale will outperform competitors still building media lists manually.
Strategic intelligence will replace simple frameworks
Analytics that surface unexpected story angles and identify patterns across vast data sets will become essential strategic infrastructure. More importantly, these systems will enable real-time campaign optimisation during execution rather than the traditional approach of launching campaigns and waiting for quarterly reviews. Communications teams will adjust messaging, pivot story angles, and reallocate resources based on live performance data while campaigns are still running, creating near-realtime strategic agility.
Integrations with CRM systems will provide the missing link that communications leaders have struggled with for decades - and make it possible for them to demonstrate the impact on prospect progression in sales funnels. Within MVPR we call this PR-led sales; go-to-market motions that incorporate PR as the starting point, and combining earned and paid media to make it attributable further down the sales funnel.
The elite team will beat a blended workforce
This operating approach prioritises senior strategic talent working in small teams. When AI handles routine tasks - media monitoring, list building, initial content creation, follow-up coordination - communications teams will reorganise around strategy, relationship building, and creative problem-solving. Junior team members will still be in the mix, but they'll be data analysts and business intelligent specialists.
This transformation will favor professionals who can think strategically, build meaningful stakeholder relationships, and leverage technology to exponentially expand their operational impact. They’ll mix senior PR know-how and the technical capabilities of marketing engineers. The traditional model of large teams handling high-volume manual tasks will become economically unsustainable as AI-augmented smaller teams demonstrate superior output and strategic value.
The result will be communications departments that operate with dramatically higher per-person impact. Instead of managing junior staff through routine tasks, senior professionals will focus on uniquely human communications challenges - understanding market psychology, building trust with key stakeholders, and crafting narratives that will genuinely resonate with target audiences.
Organisations that continue staffing communications teams for manual task execution will find themselves at severe cost disadvantages compared to competitors operating elite team models with AI augmentation.
Unified communications operating systems will be essential
The integrated communications operating system that connects all stakeholders - executives, department heads, external partners - in seamless workflow coordination will transition from competitive advantage to operational necessity. Real-time visibility and strategic control across traditional departmental silos will become table stakes for effective communications management.
Breaking down the barriers between Sales, Marketing, PR, and Executive Communications won't be an organisational improvement, but a survival requirement. Companies that can orchestrate these functions effectively will have overwhelming advantages in message consistency, market responsiveness, and strategic coordination, across geographies.
The communications teams that build these integrated capabilities first will establish operational advantages that become increasingly difficult for competitors to match. Those that continue operating through disconnected, siloed approaches will find themselves systematically outmaneuvered by more coordinated competitors.
The choice ahead and compounding returns
The technological capabilities I'm describing aren't theoretical - they exist now and are being implemented by forward-thinking organisations while their competitors remain focused on traditional operational challenges.
The companies that move decisively over the next 12-18 months will establish advantages that compound over time. Those that wait for these changes to become obvious will play catch-up to competitors who've fundamentally transformed how they approach company comms.