The PR Net’s Future Focus returned for its fourth edition in New York City, convening 300 senior leaders from across media, marketing, and communications for a day of insight and exchange. This year’s summit explored the forces shaping brand growth, reputation, and influence—from the evolving media landscape to AI, experiential strategy, and the rise of performance-driven PR. Below, key takeaways from each of the nine sessions capture the ideas and priorities defining what’s next.

Who Owns Influence Now? The New Media Power Structure

With Gabrielle Del Prete, Senior Communications Manager, Reddit; Erika Veurink, Substack Editor & Freelance Writer, Long Live; Caroline Tell, Founder, Tell & Co.; David Kang, Global Product Marketing Lead, Global Strategic Accounts, TikTok. Moderated by Erica Mayyasi, President, Small Girls PR (an Orchestra company).

Key insights:

• Influence is distributed—but must be orchestrated. Legacy media builds credibility, creators drive conversion, and communities validate decisions; high-performing strategies assign each a distinct role rather than treating channels equally.
• Trust now lives closest to the consumer. Audiences increasingly rely on creators and peer communities over brands, with social platforms doubling as search engines where discovery happens—but validation ultimately comes from real voices and shared experience.
• Control less, show up with intent. Relevance, transparency, and consistency matter more than ubiquity—brands that empower creators, participate authentically, and sustain a clear narrative over time build stronger credibility than those chasing one-off moments.

Content Commerce & Performance PR: Where Influence Meets Revenue

With Kayla Lee, Vice President of Growth Marketing, Autumn Communications; Sophie Toporoff, Senior Director, North America Partnerships, Linkby; Kristin Flohr, Performance PR Director, eAccountable. Moderated by Serena Wong, Director of Commerce, The New York Times Wirecutter.

Key insights:

• PR and performance are no longer separate functions. The strongest brands are integrating earned, affiliate, and content strategies into a single ecosystem where storytelling is directly tied to measurable conversion and full-funnel impact.
• Editorial has become a performance channel. Coverage is increasingly evaluated through clicks, SEO impact, traffic lift, and downstream conversion—while also shaping discovery in AI-driven environments and influencing how brands surface in LLMs.
• Siloed measurement is limiting growth. The “last-click” model is outdated, and teams that separate PR, affiliate, and paid miss the full picture—integrated, multi-touch attribution and shared ownership are now essential to optimizing both influence and revenue.

From Social Listening to Cultural Intelligence (Presented by Edelman)

With Andrew Dawson, Vice President, AI Solutions Consultant, Edelman.

Key insights:

• Cultural intelligence is replacing traditional social listening. The value is no longer in tracking volume or sentiment, but in understanding the underlying behaviors, tensions, and cultural truths that explain why something is happening.
• Relevance comes from interpretation, not prediction. Brands shouldn’t chase every trend—instead, they should operate just behind culture, using real-time signals and higher-quality inputs to identify what actually matters and act with context.
• AI strengthens insight, but human judgment drives action. While AI improves synthesis and expands access to diverse cultural signals, the real bottleneck remains decision-making—turning intelligence into confident, timely strategy.

The Future of Brand Reputation (Presented by Citizen Relations)

With Suran Ravi, SVP of Applied Intelligence, Citizen Relations; Beth Miller, Head of Communications, STV; Abby Hodes, Vice President, Corporate & Internal Communications, Hasbro. Moderated by Aly Sturm, SVP & Reputation+ Practice Lead, Citizen Relations.

Key insights:

• Crisis response is shifting from rigid playbooks to real-time systems. Organizations need flexible, clearly defined escalation frameworks that operate at “social speed,” with shared understanding of who decides what and when.
• Reputation management is becoming more audience-centric and distributed. Effective teams actively adopt the perspective of impacted communities, align across comms, marketing, and brand functions, and define clear thresholds for when to respond—or deliberately not respond.
• Data is only valuable when it becomes intelligence. Beyond monitoring sentiment or mentions, brands must interpret narrative context, document institutional learnings, and prepare for an environment where AI accelerates both risk detection and misinformation, requiring stronger human judgment at the center.

From Experience to Impact: The New Rules of Experiential Marketing

With Maneesh Goyal, President & Executive Chairman, Interluxe Group; Austin Connor, Head of Experiential Marketing, Autumn Communications; Dasha Zhivaykina, Director of Events, Polar Black. Moderated by Brian Feit, Founding Partner, BMF.

Key insights:

• Experiential marketing is fundamentally about human connection, not content generation. The most effective activations prioritize presence, emotional resonance, and sensorial brand worlds over creating “shareable moments” as the primary objective.
• Strong experiences are intentionally designed and multi-dimensional. From timing and cultural context to format and audience behavior, the best activations function as immersive brand environments where every detail reinforces the story and drives meaningful engagement. 
• Experiential success now depends on longevity and community, not one-off impact. The most effective strategies extend beyond a single event, building continuity, belonging, and repeated touchpoints that strengthen how audiences relate to a brand over time.

The State of PR in 2026 (Presented by Meltwater)

With Aya Elamroussi, Communications Director, Hachette Book Group; Anne de Graaf, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Heineken USA; Lesley Sillaman, Managing Director, Havas Red North America. Moderated by TJ Kiely, Director, Brand and Partner Marketing, Meltwater.

Key insights:

• PR is operating in a constant state of change, requiring teams to move away from static planning toward continuous recalibration of audiences, messaging, and channels in response to shifting cultural and media dynamics.
• The function is moving from an attention economy to an intention economy. Success now depends on understanding what audiences are trying to do or feel—and shaping communications to meaningfully influence those decisions across an increasingly complex ecosystem of media, creators, and owned channels.
• AI and data are reshaping how PR teams work, but human judgment remains central. The most effective organizations treat AI as a support tool for research, monitoring, and ideation, while prioritizing clear governance, intentional measurement design, and strategic interpretation of insights over raw data volume.

AI in MarComms: What to Automate, What to Protect, and What Leaders Must Decide Now

With Erica Vlahinos Anstine, Director, OpenAI; Nick Loui, Co-founder & CEO, PeakMetrics; Mark Anderson, Director of Creative Intelligence, Dolphin; Nick Lafferty, Head of Growth Marketing, Profound. Moderated by Samyutha Reddy, Principal, Samyutha Reddy Advisory.

Key insights:

• AI has moved from experimentation to infrastructure, with adoption accelerating at a scale that is fundamentally reshaping how people consume information, create content, and interact with brands across every channel.
• As AI-generated content and automated discourse rapidly expand, earned media and credible third-party sources are becoming even more critical—directly influencing how brands appear in AI-driven search, summaries, and discovery environments.
• The most immediate value from AI lies in rethinking work itself. Organizations are increasingly automating repetitive, low-creativity tasks while redefining roles, workflows, and new hybrid skill sets—requiring both operational upskilling and a stronger emphasis on voice, judgment, and strategic oversight.

Influence, Evolved: From Creator Partnerships to Business Impact

With Jamie Cooper, Global Vice President of Brand PR & Influence, Bacardi; Lara Highfill, Vice President, Influencer, Bobbie, a Stagwell Agency; Charlie Hart, Chief Growth Officer, Trend Companies; Molly Soloff, Head of Creator, Influencer, and Celebrity, Orchestra. Moderated by Coltrane Curtis, Founder and Managing Partner, Team Epiphany.

Key insights:

• Influence is shifting from transactional partnerships to long-term ecosystem building. The most effective strategies prioritize shared values, authentic alignment, and sustained relationships over one-off campaigns or purely follower-driven selection.
• Creators are increasingly central to both cultural relevance and business intelligence. Beyond distribution, they function as strategic partners—offering audience insight, shaping messaging, and influencing brand decisions when engaged early and consistently.
• Successful influencer programs are moving toward structured value exchange and full-funnel integration. Brands are designing more intentional systems that combine niche credibility, creator autonomy, and clear business outcomes, while balancing AI-enabled efficiency with human-led relationship building.

How MarComms Leaders Are Deciding & Prioritizing Right Now

With Jordan Saxemard, Chief Marketing & Digital Officer, Sol de Janeiro; Tamika Young, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Hinge; Carina Ertl, Chief Marketing Officer, Tourneau | Bucherer USA; Kelly Mason, Vice President of Communications, Americas, Volvo Cars. Moderated by Michael Houston, President, US, WPP.

Key insights:

• Modern brand building is increasingly defined by disciplined prioritization. The most effective marketing organizations are making sharper decisions about where to invest, what to pause, and what to eliminate, ensuring focus on the initiatives that truly move the brand forward.
• Differentiation now hinges on emotional resonance and experiential depth. Whether through storytelling, physical experiences, or community-building, brands are prioritizing moments that feel human, authentic, and impossible to replicate at scale.
• Impact is being redefined beyond traditional performance metrics. Strong brands are broadening their definition of success to include community engagement, cultural relevance, and qualitative resonance, while staying anchored in clarity, consistency, and intentional creative choices.