CorpComms Magazine

The PR industry is braced for difficult times ahead, according to the Public Relations Consultants Association's (PRCA) quarterly agency trends Economic Barometer report released today. 

More than half of those surveyed believed that the condition of the PR industry will worsen over the next year.

Just 12 per cent of survey participants said that they believe the condition of the PR industry will improve over the same period, and the rest believed that it would stay the same.

Respondents to the survey were asked what their clients had done with budgets in October. Seven per cent said that their clients' budgets had decreased significantly and just two per cent said that their budget had increased significantly. Almost half said that the budget had stayed the same.

When asked how they would describe the level of new business over the same period, more than half said that it was busy, while more than a quarter said that it had been quiet.

Respondents were asked whether the last quarter had made them feel more or less optimistic for their consultancy, and just 30 per cent said that they were more optimistic. More than a quarter said that they felt less optimistic about the future of their consultancy.

Almost a third of those polled felt less optimistic about the industry as a whole.

On a more positive note, just seven per cent believed that staff numbers will dwindle over the next quarter, and almost a quarter thought that numbers would actually increase. Over the same period, 28 per cent of respondents said that they expect the number of freelancers to decrease, while 30 per cent think the number will rise.

One participant said: ' Eurozone turbulence makes the first half of 2012 very difficult to predict. A speedy resolution - however that comes to pass - will be crucial in order to provide for the market. Even a disorderly break-up would mean that business can begin to plan with some certainty on what the future looks like.'

Francis Ingham, chief executive of the PRCA, commented: 'The final quarter of 2011 was a difficult one for many consultancies. Optimism about the country's economic prospects is at an all time low for recent PRCA Barometers. That pessimism is inevitably affecting how consultancy heads view their own businesses' future. The decline in MD optimism for their own prospects has been marked over the past three quarters. This decline mirrors falling client spend, which has moved from plus 42 to minus 17 between quarters two and four.

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