Ellun Kanat now has partners worldwide – Our colleague from Scandinavia shares the 3 big PR trends of 2024

We are happy to announce that Ellun Kanat has joined PRGN, an international network of finest local, independent communications agencies. Through the network, our services, such as PR, strategic public affairs and marketing campaigns can be smoothly extended to global audiences.

We asked one of our colleagues in the network, Christina Rytter, what she thinks are the biggest PR trends to look out for in 2024. Christina is a founder of a Danish communications agency Scandinavian communications and has recently been appointed as PRGN’s new Regional Vice President of EMEA.

Christina, let’s start by telling our readers who you are and what kind of an agency Scandinavian Communications is.

“I’m Christina Rytter, founder of Scandinavian Communications . I have been working with PR for 25 years and have been self-employed with different companies for the past 17 years.

Scandinavian Communication is a Danish agency offering international companies a single point of contact to the Nordic market. Many years ago I started to see a shift from international companies having offices in every Nordic country to just shifting to one Nordic hub. I founded Scandinavian Communication as a response to this shift, to be experts in the Nordic Market. Today we have over 80 percent of our clients coming from across the world, wanting to enter the Scandinavian market.

Our core work is strategic communications, PR leader training and crisis communications. On a more day-to-day basis we cover all types of content production, social media marketing, media relations, and so on.

I myself also have been an international advisor for quite some time now, working with clients all over the world. Besides being an agency owner, I also work as a business and marketing coach under the European Commission.”

Can you share some of the things you work with under the Commission?

“I help startups that are funded by the European Commission, mainly with strategy and entering the market. We at Scandinavian Communications ourselves participate in some funded projects. The last one was something called Monitio, that we just actually won a golden award within PRGN for.

We launched a media monitoring service of the future that was based on different types of the newest technology, such as AI-driven linguistic technology and fact-checking technology. So that has been very interesting also from our side, just to have a hands-on on the newest startup technology and see where things are going.”

Top 3 PR trends that Christina looks out for in 2024:

Trend 1: Battling fake news at the age AI

In 2024, one of the top PR trends I’m closely following is the evolution of fact-checking in the age of AI. At Scandinavian Communications, one of our main industries has always been technology. In that sense, it has been especially interesting to be a part of the Monitio project, where we collaborate with tech front-runners like Priberam from Portugal, Deutsche Welle, the German news broadcaster, and the fact-checking experts at Cambridge University.

This trend is a hot topic for us in the PR business because it addresses the issue of combating fake news and managing the flood of content in a tech-driven world. We’re increasingly confronted with new technologies like deep fakes. I’m looking forward to seeing how AI and other tools are harnessed to fight misinformation and ensure the accuracy of information in 2024.

What’s Christina’s take on the upcoming AI-wave?

While course AI lets us complete routine tasks, such as translations or blog posts, much more efficiently, we still very much need humans in the loop, to verify, to analyze, to think strategically and tactically.

During my career, I have seen the shift to new technologies several times. While people always tend to be both scared and excited at first, at the end of the day it’s always just a new tool or a new channel that you need to adapt to. And that I believe to be a skill that we need today – to be able to adapt to an ever-changing world at an ever faster pace. Each of us needs to learn to adapt individually, and and on a broader scale, companies need to be agile in response to the ever-changing business landscape.

Trend 2: Thought leadership and change in the way executives portray themselves professionally in social channels

Within social media, we are overwhelmed with data. We are craving for more personality, more authenticity. You can see people reacting much more enthusiastically to more personal content, sharing stories from your personal journey. For leaders, this means having to take a step forward and use your own voice. This is a challenge for many of today’s leaders, who come from a generation that is not used to being hands on on social media.

It seems like there’s a shift towards returning to some of the older, high-quality methods that we used to rely on. This means embracing a more journalistic approach, conducting in-depth research, and creating thought leadership programs with high-quality content.

In a world where technology can handle the basic day-to-day work efficiently, what sets us apart is our human touch. It’s our ability to think critically, be creative, and strategize. That is something that is not easily replaceable by AI-driven technologies.

A generational gap that needs to be acknowledged

Us that were born in the 60-70’s come from a point where we left our private life at home when we went out in our corporate life. This is a big challenge that we see for leaders of a certain age, that we need to go from a polished corporate image to sharing more of our private life or private personality.

Adapting to the social media landscape is indeed a challenge, especially when you look at how younger YouTubers and entrepreneurs effortlessly share their 24/7 lives. For leaders of the older generation, that can be a bit across the line, because we are not used to mixing our professional life with our private life.

How does Christina train her clients to adapt to this changing media environment?

It’s about striking a balance between being genuine and staying true to your personality while pushing your boundaries a bit.

Trend 3: Agencies should step out of isolation – Added value of international network and global reach

Many companies today operate on an international scale, collaborating daily across borders for clients. What sets us apart is the assurance we provide our clients—they can confidently navigate the global landscape with the support of our well-established network.

Key advantage in a global network is that we offer a single point of contact. Wherever our clients are, they can have one agency to rely on. And the agencies in other markets are able to work together seamlessly, because we know each other and each other’s ways of working so well – the network has been around for over 30 years.

In a sense, we’re more than business partners; we’re business friends. We not only know each other well but we also meet up in person. I’m confident that I can promise my clients the highest quality wherever they want to go. With a presence all over the world, we can cover pretty much all markets across the globe. And that is really amazing, actually.

Read more about PRGN network here.

Read how Ellun Kanat succeeded in PRGN 2023 Best Practice Awards.