Top Five Predictions for 2025

We could not have predicted in 2015, when we first published our Top 5 Predictions for the coming year that a decade on, we’d still be predicting.

"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future,” said Danish physicist Niels Bohr.

However, our 2024 Top 5 Predictions mostly came to pass.

1. Corporate sustainability agendas and performance would become a political whipping post for allegedly distracting corporations from maximising returns to shareholders.

2. As well as working on how to harness AI to boost productivity in the corporate public affairs function, teams would work with Boards and the C-suite to integrate into reputation strategy how organisations use AI.

3. More heads of function would be appointed chief of staff to the CEO, either as a standalone role, or in addition to wearing their head of function hat.

4. Separate to AI, but more frequently an input, more heads of function would create data analytics units in their teams to inform strategy and the practice of issues management and stakeholder engagement.

5. Boards, and the C-suite/corporate public affairs function, would be especially focused on the US Presidential election and the impact a continuing or new Administration would have on geopolitics – including in the Indo Pacific – and on free trade and the global economy

Our Top 5 Predictions for 2025

Our predictions for the corporate public affairs function for 2025 traverse geopolitics, the misinformation crisis, the future of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusiveness policy and practices, AI, and data analytics getting serious.

They have been developed based on extensive discussions with heads of function and other leaders in your profession internationally and the Centre’s sibling entities in the US and Europe, and on our work in the consulting arm of our organisation.

Ignoring the sage words of Niels Bohr, our Top 5 Predictions for Corporate Public Affairs in 2025 start here.

1. Embedding geopolitical capability in the function

The economic shock accompanying Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought crashing home the need for corporations and industries to interpolate and understand the terrain of geopolitics and how it could not only have an impact on national security and diplomacy, but on the economy, business strategy and operations, and stakeholders.

This shock prompted many functions to initially seek geopolitical counsel from consultants. We predict this year more teams will appoint full-time geopolitical advisers, most managed in the government relations discipline.

Regardless of if a corporation is an exporter, the ‘tariffying’ economics of the Trump Administration’s trade policy on Australia, on our biggest export partner China, and on global economic settings, will be germane to most companies and governments.

Also on our front step is the fraying compact between China’s autocrats and its citizens that in exchange for their freedom, the Communist Party guarantees economic security. As is the fate of Taiwan in the hands of a Chinese President who may want to distract his 1.4 billion fellow citizens from a failing economy and potential economic-driven civil unrest.

As well, reverberations from how the war in Ukraine ends, closer cooperation between economically and militarily diminished Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and potential stagflation in Australia’s top export markets – China, Japan, South Korea, and the US – mean geopolitical bench strength in any corporate public affairs team will be well exercised in 2025.

2. Looking beyond all-of-enterprise AI applications

We predict that one of the big challenges for corporate public affairs teams as generative AI and its application in organisations canters apace, is what AI inputs the functions needs – or can imagine – beyond whole-of-enterprise AI menus or mandates.

Harnessing AI to generate likely questions journalists will ask at an annual results announcement, summarise complex draft legislation, and identify opportunities or business risks flowing from it, are examples of how corporate public affairs teams are applying AI regularly.

A big opportunity for the function in 2025 is how it uses opportunities offered by AI’s agentic capabilities – its ability to act autonomously, make decisions, and perform tasks in a way mimicking human agency.

AI agents will be able – once instructed – to organise events and functions, including making venue and catering bookings, generating and despatching invitations, managing RSVPs, generating run sheets, scripting, writing speeches, and evaluating event outputs.

Stakeholder mapping and identifying issues to be managed based on analysis of historical data and current socio-political sentiment and conditions can be performed by an AI agent also, as will predictive public policy analysis, and media and digital sentiment analysis, until now performed by external agencies.

Using AI for tasks of this nature – and others imagined by the corporate public affairs function in the realm of understanding and seeking to influence the socio-political environment – will be outside the remit of whole-of-enterprise AI agent availability and authorisation.

Teams that can best govern how they can get hold of and use AI’s agentic capabilities beyond whole-of-enterprise availability will reap the greatest productivity harvest.

3. Combating the Misinformation Crisis

Institutions including corporations and agencies of state have been combatting misinformation for eons. However, since 2013 when Facebook and Twitter introduced ‘share’ and ‘like’ functions to their platforms, these platforms have become places for polarisation, abuse, conspiracies, misinformation, and ubiquitous malignancy among the pet photos and happy holiday snaps.

Billions of people are now in the public square, exposed to a deluge of stolen truth, shared and promoted by hundreds of millions of them.

AI generation of visual and written fakes is adding to an erosion of trust in the news media, governments, corporations, and other institutions. We now live in the midst of a Misinformation Crisis.

The corporate public affairs management function is at the forefront of their organisations and industries combating this crisis as they work to steward corporate reputation.

Teams best able to steward corporate reputation during the Misinformation Crisis will be those that decide to innovate. Existing approaches and tools will not be adequate on their own.

The challenge will be to more effectively expose and report misinformation, collaborate with credible experts to debunk fallacies and half-truths, continuous fact checking, promoting credible sources, and consider their employer’s position and that of their industry on public policy settings requiring social media platforms to calibrate algorithms to reduce misinformation spreading.

The challenge for the function is to reduce reputation risk for the organisation and industry in which it operates, and at the same time strengthen the tone and quality of discourse and interaction in the public square.

4. DEI is not DOA

While corporate DEI policies and performance has become a political football in the US, a few nations in Europe and Argentina, prompting some corporations to dilute and/or become mute about DEI policy, we predict this DEI will not be DOA (Dead on Arrival) in Australian corporations in 2025.

The corporate public affairs function is at the forefront of communicating and positioning an organisation's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and performance to and with stakeholders, including employees, prospective employees, shareholders, policy makers, and civil society.

In Australia, and in Asia where multinational corporations and sovereign wealth fund-owned companies dominate the big end of town, DEI performance is embedded in the DNA of hundreds of corporate brands. Such policy is driven by Boards, the C-suite, employees, and shareholders.

In a Federal Election year and beyond, there will be public and political discussion about DEI and ‘wokeness’, including in the public sector over which elected officials can formally guide DEI policy.

However, the common view in most corporations is that good DEI policy and performance is good business.

We predict there will be no DEI wokelash in Australia in 2025.

5. AI will make data analytics de rigueur

Our number four prediction in 2024 was that more organisations would establish data analytic capability in their corporate public affairs teams.

Related to our 2025 prediction on agentic AI, we forecast this year will see the function secure and apply data analytics to strategy and its execution at a gallop, not as a nice to have, but as a must have.

Data analytics capability will be easier to embed in the function because it can be supplemented by the speed of AI machines to conduct initial analysis for practitioner consideration.

Existing data analysis as inputs to corporate public affairs strategy and decision making will be completed more rapidly and readily in the following spheres and be valuable for the listed disciplines and practice areas.

- Sentiment Analysis: government relations, corporate responsibility, internal communications, stakeholder engagement, media relations, community relations, issues management.

- Trend Analysis: government relations, corporate responsibility, internal communications, stakeholder engagement, media relations, community relations, issues management, geopolitical analysis.

- Stakeholder Analysis: government relations, corporate responsibility, stakeholder engagement, community relations.

- Predictive Analytics: government relations, corporate responsibility, internal communications, stakeholder engagement, issues management, geopolitical analysis.

- Real-Time Monitoring: government relations, internal communications, media relations, issues management, geopolitical analysis.

- Data Visualisation: corporate responsibility, internal communications, stakeholder engagement, media relations, community relations.

- Content Performance Analysis: corporate responsibility, stakeholder engagement, media relations, community relations.

- Risk Assessment: government relations, issues management, geopolitical analysis.

The Way We Were - Centre predictions in past years

The year that was: Centre Top Predictions for 2024

1. Sustainability as a scapegoat.

2. AI and corporate reputation.

3. Heads of function appointed chief of staff to the CEO.

4. Heads of function would create data analytics units in their teams.

5. Boards and the C-suite/corporate public affairs function would be especially focused on the US Presidential election.

The year that was: Centre Top Predictions for 2023

1. Sluggish New Year but no corporate public affairs contraction in 2023.

2. US-style hyper ‘woke’ corporate blowback not enroute to Australia and New Zealand.

3. International sustainability disclosure standards are coming.

4. News outlets will use AI to more closely scrutinise corporations and industries.

5. CEO remuneration in the spotlight – again!

The year that was: Centre Top Predictions for 2022

1. The function will be an important source of geopolitical analysis.

2. The future of work remains contested – is hybrid is here to stay.

3. Understanding and living with AI appear on corporate risk radars.

4. Reality check on ESG – a narrow window to influence market analysts’/news media view of what companies have been doing in ESG for decades.

5. Corporations get bolshie on their COVID-19 adaption public policy advocacy.

The year that was: Centre Top Predictions for 2021

1. Managing issues virtually is here to stay.

2. Mediocrity is not good enough – middling performance to be culled in the function.

3. Re-imagining stakeholder engagement.

4. Crisis planning to the fore.

5. More corporate public policy and employee activism.

The year that was: Centre Top Predictions for 2020

1. A shift from ‘cooperation’ between the corporate public affairs and marketing management functions to far more ‘collaboration’.

2. More Boards will approach and monitor corporate reputation as a material risk.

3. More community expectations of high-performance corporate responsibility.

4. The emergence of the campaign manager role.

5. More 2ICs will be appointed to the Head of Function.

The year that was: Centre Top Predictions for 2019

1. More companies will get involved with and engage with social issues.

2. The Investor Relations discipline will begin migrating back to the corporate public affairs management function.

3. Heads of Function will seek more diversity of thought in their teams.

4. Arms Race for advocates.

5. Campaigns and coalitions are back.

The year that was: Centre Top Predictions for 2018

1. More psychographic profiling using Big Data.

2. Boards want more frequent reputation research.

3. More demand for generalist practitioners.

4. Many public affairs teams will get bigger.

5. Corporate brand management will be back in the function.

The year that was: Centre Top Predictions for 2017

1. The evidence-base Arms Race.

2. The beginning of the end of the corporate Intranet.

3. The digital production-savvy corporate public affairs practitioner.

4. Infographic mania.

5. More women leading the management function.

The year that was: Centre Top Predictions for 2016

1. Stakeholders at the heart of corporate public affairs strategy.

2. Social Media Command Centres.

3. Public affairs night shifts will be introduced in some organisations to monitor issues, and provide rapid socio-political response.

4. Renaissance of the corporate narrative.

5. Corporate public affairs functions helping their organisation understand the Asian Century.

The year that was: Centre Top Predictions for 2015

1. Convergence of internal and external communications.

2. More cooperation between public affairs and marketing departments.

3. Application of heuristics to corporate stakeholder communications.

4. Stakeholder research becoming an essential input to public affairs strategy and planning.

5. Advent of a 'common market' for corporate public affairs skills across Australia and Asia.