Even though predicting the future is as ridiculous as predicting which stock will make you rich, doing so has become a yearly tradition in our business, filled with egocentric individuals who believe they know everything. 

Below are my sure-to-happen public relations occurrences for 2024, and if they don’t occur I’ll do what higher-ups at agencies are certain to do: Put the blame on someone else.

• Public relations crises will happen.

• People will be promoted, not because of their ability but because of loyalty to their supervisors.

• Supervisors will tell an employee who is leaving for a new job not to say goodbye to a client.

• Employees will be rewarded with meaningless titles instead of pay increases.

• When an account blows up because of supervisor’s incompetence, innocent staffers will be blamed.

• Supervisors will take credit for the good work done by others.

• Fearful of losing their jobs, supervisors will camouflage the good work of others in “team” reports.

• Some employees will not use up their allotted vacation time because they are afraid that a long absence can show that they are not needed.

• Supervisors will find fault with someone’s work just because they can.

• Some employees will come to the office extra early and stay extra late, mistakenly thinking that it enhances their chances for promotion.

• Some employees will actually believe it when H.R. personnel tell them “we’re here to help you.”

• “Can’t miss” PR programs will turn out to be a dud.

• An employee fired at one agency will get a job at another and become a star.

An employee will jump ship and join another agency and regret doling so.

• An employee will turn down an offer from another agency and regret doing so.

• Ethnicity, race and gender will be a major consideration when promoting people, but management will deny that it is.

• During layoffs, agencies will not be truthful about the number of people terminated.

• An employee who is terminated will be told, “It’s for your own good.”

• Media contact placement staffers will be made the fall persons by account teams, when in actuality it was the account team’s faulty programs that didn’t contain anything new, anything different, anything original or anything newsworthy that was the problem.

• Supervisors who have never spoken to a journalist will advise staffers on how to deal with the media.

• Account supervisors who are not familiar with the content of various newspaper, magazines or TV shows will make a “hit” list and demand “results or else.” 

• An a.e will think that because he’s the drinking buddy of his supervisor, the supervisor will go to the wall for him when things go bad and learn differently.

During my lengthy PR career, one constant at agencies has been high turnover. Some years ago, when I was making a presentation at a major New York City agency, I asked an account executive how long he had been at the agency. “I’m a long timer,” he said. “I just began my fourth year here.” (Full disclosure: I was fortunate. The bulk of my career was at two agencies – Ten years at Arthur Cantor/Advance Public Relations, a national one that specialized in promoting theatrical shows and television programs, before being recruited by Burson-Marsteller, were I was one of the longest employed persons, toiling there for more than 23 years before starting my own consultancy. My first job in our business, after my journalism career was cut short because NYC dailies  that I worked for ceased publishing, was with Earle Associates, a political boutique firm, where I worked for a few years on the campaigns of local, statewide and presidential candidates. Both Earle Associates and Advance Public Relations ceased being when their owners died. But most people in our business are not so fortunate to have lengthy stays at an agency and studies show that the turnover rate at PR agencies is among the highest in the business world.

Because of the high employee turnover at public relations firms, I placed my last prediction, based on happenings at the PR agencies I toiled at last.

Here it is:

• Promises made to employees by management will not be kept. (And that I can promise you is the truth.)

That’s why I advise students at communication schools and newbies at PR agencies to read The Prince, the 16th-century book by Italian Niccolò Machiavelli, the diplomat and political theorist.

Britannica describes the book, written in 1513, as “A short treatise on how to acquire power, create a state, and keep it”… “based on the lessons of history and his own experience as a foreign secretary in Florence.”

“His belief that politics has its own rules so shocked his readers that the adjectival form of his surname, Machiavellian, came to be used as a synonym for political maneuvers marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith.” Any resemblance to the actions of the top brass at your agency or by the supervisors you report to as they attempt to climb the executive ladder is entirely not coincidental.

In particular, there is one quote from The Prince that people in our business should never forget: “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”