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Every year, the PR and communications industry prepares for its annual ritual of bold forecasts: declarations of upcoming transformation, predictions of breakthrough technologies, and confident promises that the next twelve months will redefine the landscape of the profession.
The narratives are usually optimistic, forward-leaning, and generally assume that progress is linear.
Interestingly, Dr Karine Lohitnavy-Frick, founder of Midas PR and chair of PRCA Thailand, offers a different perspective on the year ahead.
Indeed, her outlook is significantly frank and honest: she expects a year of inertia rather than acceleration.
In the following piece, Lohitnavy-Frick explains her mindset and how different aspects of the sector may evolve throughout 2026.
Entering a plateau
I think that the coming year will not be defined by dramatic disruption or groundbreaking innovation.
Instead, we will enter an era of stagnation with a gradual settling of the industry into a plateau across almost every major dimension.
The most realistic prediction for 2026 is that professionals should better prepare for a landscape in which the absence of motion becomes the number one dominant trend.
The first and perhaps most visible form of stagnation is technological, seeing how artificial intelligence has been the centrepiece of industry conversations for a number of years.
But the hype cycle has peaked, and AI is getting routinely integrated into daily workflows. Its capabilities (as well as its limitations) are widely understood: AI excels at automating low-level tasks, accelerating drafting, summarising information and generating endless volumes of content.
Yet everyone working with AI by now realises that it has also contributed to a flood of derivative and superficial outputs also known as “PR slop.”
I would not expect AI to deliver exponential breakthroughs in 2026; the technology is entering a phase of small incremental refinement.
We will see fewer hallucinations and mistakes, but no revolutionary transformation.
Ethical debates and calls for human oversight will continue, but these function more as stabilisers than catalysts.
Arrested development
The media landscape reflects a similar pattern of arrested development: after years of contraction, traditional newsrooms have followed the footsteps of printed media and radio.
They have shrunk to what is likely their minimum sustainable size and cannot realistically cut more without risking structural collapse.
At the same time, social platforms, which once were the engines of cultural evolution, have reached saturation.
User growth has slowed, formats have homogenised across platforms, and behavioural patterns have stabilised.
No new disruptor has emerged capable of reshaping how audiences engage with information, as the last truly transformative shift (TikTok and short video format) occurred years ago, and since then the ecosystem has settled into a kind of monotony.
Practitioners will continue to rely on familiar playbooks not because of a lack of imagination, but because the environment itself is no longer offering new strategic ground.
Quo vadis, influencers?
Another space where stagnation is becoming obvious is the influencer economy.
Although the sector still grows in scale, it is not evolving in substance: influencers continue producing the same formats, using the same monetisation structures, and operating within the same behavioural patterns.
“Authenticity,” once the poster child of the creator economy, has become a formula to satisfy the algorithm.
Even the most successful influencers operate within an increasingly predictable rhythm of brand partnerships, affiliate promotions and curated personal narratives.
The ecosystem still functions effectively, but I do not see much innovation there either.
This connects directly to a broader stagnation shaping the communications field.
For all the tools and platforms available, the creative outputs of brands and agencies feel repurposed.
I see a lot of familiar story arcs, aesthetics, and narratives: content across industries increasingly echoes the same templates with empowerment journeys, authenticity confessions, and lots and lots of nostalgia.
Even campaigns positioned as bold or boundary-breaking tend to recycle earlier concepts.
This is not the problem of PR and corporate communication only: our culture is stagnating.
It has grown repetitive and risk-averse, shaped by rapid backlash cycles, politicised discourse and intense public scrutiny.
As a result, creative teams operate within narrower boundaries, and conceptual experimentation has been replaced by caution.
I do not remember when was the last time I saw a really bold campaign.
Where has the purpose gone?
The stagnation of brand purpose further reinforces this creative stagnation.
The purpose movement, once an important pillar, has lost its energy.
CSR, ESG and DEI narratives now feel tired and outdated, predictable and often insincere to audiences who have become more sceptical.
Brands that genuinely aspire to lead with purpose find themselves trapped in an environment where overuse has diluted the impact of meaningful commitments.
Of course, brands still need to have a purpose, but they also need a new storyline that has yet to emerge.
Audience behaviour has also plateaued: consumers are fatigued, they are over-targeted, overstimulated and overwhelmed by constant content.
They still scroll, but the process is not exciting any more, seeing how words like “doom-scrolling” and “brain-rot” have firmly entered our vocabulary.
There is no excitement about being on social media, it is more of a shameful guilty pleasure, and I do not see any emerging behaviour pattern that will revitalise content engagement.
Politics and economics have a part to play here
Economic conditions further entrench stagnation: as the global economy continues to operate in a state of sluggishness, there is literal stagnation with low growth and lingering inflation.
As a result, corporate decision-makers remain cautious, and funds are directed toward efficiency.
In PR, this translates into shrinking budgets, slower hiring, and a stronger emphasis on campaigns that deliver measurable returns.
The communications industry, like many others, is shifting into a logic of optimisation, designed to survive volatile conditions.
Political turbulence adds another layer of inertia.
The disruptions to globalisation from the past several years remain unresolved.
Regional tensions, trade constraints, election-driven volatility and supply chain fragilities created a fragmented global environment that makes cross-border communication difficult.
Campaigns that used to operate seamlessly across markets now require multiple layers of cultural, regulatory and political adaptation.
Even regulation, often viewed as a potential catalyst for change, remains stuck.
Governments continue debating AI governance, privacy protections, platform accountability, teenage access to social media, and digital ethics, yet substantial policy moves remain slow.
Mostly we see the results in the form of fines imposed by the EU on US tech companies.
The regulatory ambiguity leaves brands unsure of where innovation is safe and where it is not, and this also contributes to the overall industry stagnation.
Taken together, these forces create a communications environment in which the most realistic prediction for 2026 is that the industry will remain suspended in a plateau.; so, I expect a year of stagnation.
This is not to say that absolutely nothing will be happening; of course, things will happen, but I do not expect any major tidal waves.
However, I am a natural optimist, so I see it as an opportunity: in the absence of any big waves we can expect the sea to be calm…and calmer seas are easier to navigate.
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