(Excerpted from Dear VOCAL MIDDLE: The 2025 Mid-Year Report )
“Dear VOCAL MIDDLE:” is VOCAL MIDDLE's biannual flagship insight report, published mid-year and year-end each year. Every edition revolves around one central theme: the future.
This time, we chose the theme “PR Next: The Future of Public Relations”, focusing on two key points:
The year 2025 marks a pivotal moment where the aftermath of the pandemic intersects with the widespread adoption of generative AI. Amid the profound shifts in the global communications ecosystem, we invited industry experts to collectively explore the implications of this transformation for the future.
Every job, role, and task within the communications field ultimately aims to create impact. If we say that the essence of creating impact is trust, then PR consultants represent the most fundamental, core function, role, and industry in the process of building trust.
This report not only reflects the views of VOCAL MIDDLE but also brings together partners from across the Asia-Pacific region, leaders from public associations, and communication education pioneers. Together, we ponder: as change and restructuring become the norm, how will the role of the PR consultant evolve from being “one among many” within the industry to becoming the central link connecting markets, businesses, organizations, and the public?
As AIGC becomes increasingly widespread, content generation is no longer a high barrier—anyone can easily access a rich and diverse array of materials. However, the value of public relations has never been limited to merely producing text.
Truly outstanding PR consultants must start from the context, positioning themselves between the enterprise and the market to deeply understand the business problems that “need solving” and “actually exist.” They then use the most appropriate language, timing, channels, and audiences to drive the execution of communication strategies.
With AI shortening tedious steps and expanding knowledge boundaries, consultants can focus more on enhancing decision-making quality and efficiency, creating scalable and continuously accumulative image assets.
We often hear that “technology ultimately stems from human nature,” yet success or failure often depends on a single moment of human choice.
When we expect AI to fully replace complex tasks without understanding the origins and context of AI technology, treating artificial intelligence as the final answer rather than a tool to inspire thinking, we easily fall into the “productivity trap.” It may seem highly efficient and capable of mass automation, but in reality, it leads to self-satisfaction and struggles to deliver truly meaningful value.
The core function of public relations lies in “building trust.” Therefore, even if AI can produce an initial 80% draft, the remaining 20%—the subtle refinements and final-mile delivery—is where true insiders discern the difference. It's the translation of language nuance and context, the integration of strategy and situation, and ultimately the key that separates the mediocre from the exceptional and determines whether influence can be effectively realized.
The business environment is not a linear growth track but rather a landscape where market demands coexist at different rhythms and maturity levels. VOCAL MIDDLE adopts a hyperbolic growth strategy to offer differentiated services: on one end are large enterprises (EMM) with complex, long-term needs; on the other end are startups and small-to-medium businesses (SMB) that require speed and flexible support.
Large Enterprise Market:
We invest in highly efficient teams led by super users, empowered by AI to enhance consultant thinking and industry knowledge, positioning ourselves as high-value strategic AI consultants and brand architects for large institutions.
Startup and SMB Market:
We adopt a modular, process-driven, and self-service PRaaS (PR as a Solution) model, building super teams through Customer Success Management (CSM). This approach strikes a balance between efficiency and quality to achieve Product-Market Fit (PMF), helping brands rapidly generate buzz and establish market presence.
If the past decade was all about SEO, as traffic becomes increasingly costly, the next five years will likely demand that we start thinking about GEO — Generative Engine Optimization. This means that companies will need to communicate not only with traditional stakeholders like consumers, media, and investors but also learn how to win the favor of AI and large language models. When target audiences turn to AI for answers, brands must be more easily discovered, cited, and trusted.
This shift will profoundly impact brand communication strategies and redefine the operational logic of next-generation public relations paradigms.
At VOCAL MIDDLE, we never ask, “Will AI replace me?” Instead, we ask, “How can I co-create greater value with AI?” Starting from Q4 2024, we partnered with strategic collaborator ES Intelligence to launch the generative AI for creative inspiration: ADGo. Simultaneously, we held internal “AI Enlightenment Days,” advancing efforts across operations, product design, and employee empowerment.
Within just nine months, our consultants have achieved an average annual revenue contribution of 6 million TWD, and overall service delivery efficiency has improved by 50%. Behind these numbers lies one key truth: when consultants learn how to collaborate with AI, they begin to redesign tools, rewrite processes, and reshape their roles.
We believe that consultants who can explore the unknown are not simply those who know how to use AI, but those who—like designers and product leaders—start to redesign the way they connect with the world.
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