Future Gazing: 2026 with Stella Jansen, Managing Director of Progress Communications
COLLECTIVIST: For 2026, what do you think the best tech brands or the best PR managers are going to do differently compared to this year?
Stella: I’ll talk about PR and marketing managers. PR managers should work on consistency in storytelling and consistency in building brands. I think there will be many more AI fakes, deepfakes and mistakes regarding brands ‘popping up’. We are not only in the Public Relations business but will be more and more active as leaders in the field of Public Reputations.
Our clients will need to be very consistent in building brands, so that the moment something fake ‘pops up’, their audience will know that the brand would never do that. PR managers will need to focus on consistency in storytelling and building long-term credibility.
For marketing, above all, in times of AI, the marketing manager will be automated! There is just so much more you can automate in marketing now and that is what every marketing manager will be looking at.
COLLECTIVIST: What is your big, bold prediction for next year?
When we look at tech, we’re going to see some difficult times ahead with the US. Lots of tech was flowing through the US to Europe; but it will not do so going forwards.
As a result, we really need to ramp-up European tech. More of our attention will go into more local, more EU work.
However, that’s a challenge, because we have so much regulation in the EU that the fast-moving pace that we need seems to be difficult to achieve within Europe.
We need to agree how we can speed up the pace of technology innovation and rollout in Europe. We need to focus on tech sovereignty – our region’s ability to control our own digital infrastructure, data, and critical technologies. We need to work on some of our own tech platforms. As a Benelux agency we will be looking more and more at our European home market for business instead of the US.
COLLECTIVIST: If you think ahead to next year, what issues and thought-leadership topics will we be talking about? You’ve already mentioned sovereignty and I’m guessing AI will be quite popular?
It’s interesting because a lot of media are already tired of the AI topic. We’ve seen this before – we talked about big data for many years, then cloud, then digital transformation.
There are too many AI pitches now landing in journalists’ inboxes. I don’t think they are happy with it anymore.
We should steer away from all these futuristic reports and move toward more credibility in AI: proving how it’s working, showing the cases, showing where the results are and how it’s impacting people.
From a consumer perspective, because we work for several brands in the consumer space, there are lots of discussions on social media and smartphones and the impact on kids. That’s the real discussion we’re seeing now: many people suggest social media is the new smoking. How are we going to make sensible use of technology.
COLLECTIVIST: I was reading this morning about Australia’s ban on social media for teenagers. Do you think that’ll happen in Europe?
We’ve certainly started to see it in schools. You’re not allowed to bring your phone into classrooms in most schools. Not every school has banned it, but you’ll see this discussion growing next year. I don’t think we’re up for a full ban yet, but the conversation will start. And once that begins, more regulation might start as well.
COLLECTIVIST: What trade shows, conferences and events will you or your clients be attending?
For us, it’s still the Mobile World Congress, which is by far the biggest for us to attend. I’m looking forward to the Mobile World Congress again this year. It’s a massive conference. I really enjoy it.
I like how it evolved from a telecom/mobile smartphone trade show to a super telecom/tech B2B event. All the media are there. The offsite programme is really good too.
Otherwise, the second trade show is IFA — which is still alive and kicking – and will be in Germany next year, 4-8 September.
COLLECTIVIST: What will the ideal client or ideal campaign look like next year?
I’m looking forward to working with a small device called Plaud.
I’m going to a trade show tomorrow, so I’ll bring it with me.
I’ll put it on the table — it records the conversation and structures it.
It’s amazing for capturing real-life conversations.
If you have seven or eight interviews in one day at a trade show, you can easily record them. It cancels all the noise.
The brand is a bit stuck between China and the US. They manufacture in China, have their headquarters in San Francisco, and don’t necessarily want to be seen as a Chinese only brand.
Of course, you can only do so many reviews with the device as it is. I think it’ll be challenging: what do you do when there’s no news? What should we be talking about? How do we make ourselves newsworthy? What are our opinions? How do we build on our credibility? I like the challenges that come with these types of products and such challenges always lead to new, bold ideas..
COLLECTIVIST: How will we measure campaigns next year?
Automated!!
I really look forward to that, to be honest. Ask all our team members – they hate coverage reports, coverage reporting, writing these tiny summaries of the articles.
Next year, thanks to AI, I’m looking forward to automated PR reporting in any format a client likes. We can pull out the data through our monitoring tools and there it is 24/7 – just like marketing automation tools.
COLLECTIVIST: Last question: if we have this conversation again at the end of next year, what will be the agency’s biggest success? What will you be most proud of?
We will have improved our internal processes a lot because that’s what we need for the AI automation we’re implementing as an agency.
I’m looking forward to rolling out more AI and productising AI more for clients.
At the same time, I think about societal impact. You hear a lot about juniors being pushed out of agencies because of AI. We need to take responsibility there as well. We must talk about societal impact and taking care of each other. I would hate to be the one saying, “We’re getting rid of juniors because we don’t need them.”
