| 3 PRedictions for 2014 |
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By: Mike Bush |
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 Since every journalist, news outlet, blogger, and person with a keyboard is about to start their “predictions for next year” stories, I thought it made sense to add to the fray. Here are three things I think will happen next year.
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Someone will disrupt the wire services — PRNewswire, BusinessWire, etc. Now that Google is devaluing the backlinks provided by the wires, and the SEC has allowed corporate blogs to serve as formal disclosures…there really isn't a whole lot of value left in the wires. They’re the remnants of the world before the Internet as we know it now, and there’s very little reason why companies should spend hundreds (thousands?) of dollars distributing press releases this way.
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“Native Advertising” dominates the conversation, until it doesn’t. It seems like half the articles about PR/Media being written today deal with Native Advertising. And there are some real heavyweights in the industry (Edelman, Mashable, etc.) pushing this as a “new form of PR.” However...I think there’s one important rule that everyone is ignoring: People don’t like being advertised to. I think that, while the early and middle part of the year see Native Advertising take off, eventually, people start looking for new places to get their news (when you blur the line between content and advertising, you lose credibility… and I think consumers are smart enough to know that). So, I predict that, by November of next year, Native Advertising has gone the way of MySpace.
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A Sports League (or NCAA Conference) tries to break the Cable TV model. One of the biggest reasons that people give for not cutting the cable cord is “live sports.” While cable deals with sports teams have grown exponentially (The Dodgers have a broadcast agreement worth $7 Billion), eventually, some team or league is going to be left out in the cold. Whether it’s an NCAA conference or a sport that doesn’t quite qualify as “major,” I think a sports league will both launch a “streaming only subscription,” and be extremely successful in doing so.
Those are my thoughts for 2014. What about you?
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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Mike Bush is a PR and Marketing freelancer with more than a dozen years of experience in the field. Find him on and connect Twitter @mikebush or at www.mikebush.nyc.
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