Article
October 1, 2025
By J.J. Carter
One year into my role as President & CEO at FleishmanHillard, one truth stands out: global agencies stand at a crossroads. Over the past 12 months, I’ve traveled to dozens of offices worldwide, listened to our teams, and met with nearly 200 clients. I’ve seen firsthand the extraordinary energy of our firm thriving in this moment of complexity and consequence.
When a client faces a reputational crisis that spans continents, creates an entirely new category, or launches a breakthrough product across multiple markets, they turn to us. Global agencies excel at orchestration, diversity of perspectives, and resilience under pressure.
But legacy strengths alone are not enough. Being the biggest does not secure relevance, and ubiquity matters less than deep sector expertise. The world is moving at a pace that demands more than incremental change. Tectonic shifts in business, technology, and society are accelerating — audiences are fragmented, channels more abundant, and trust more fragile.
To remain indispensable, we must rethink our operating system: how we deliver value, how we scale, and how we measure success. This transformation rests on three primary disruptions:
1. Retiring the Billable Hour
The traditional agency model—built on billable hours and incremental outputs—is no longer fit for purpose. Clients value impact more than activity, and today’s challenges require more than time alone — they require tools, technology, knowledge, and multidisciplinary teams. Every assignment demands a diverse set of skills working in harmony. Treating every hour as interchangeable devalues expertise and drags everyone into a race to the bottom. We must build commercial models that reflect true value, and it requires partnership between agency and client to do so.
2. Fusion of Tech + Talent
AI and digital tools are raising the baseline for what’s possible in research, insights, and content. But technology isn’t our differentiator. The future belongs to communicators who can interpret complex signals, counsel clients, and craft narratives with dexterity. At FleishmanHillard, we’ve launched the largest upskilling effort in our 80-year history, embedded AI into our processes, and empowered every team member to be both a technologist and a trusted advisor. This fusion of tech and talent is what enables us to deliver ideas and impact at the speed of 2025 and beyond.
3. Specialism at Scale
Clients today face challenges that are simultaneously local and global, technical and political. They need partners with deep expertise in the most complex issues of our time — from geopolitics to trade disruptions, from climate regulation to cybersecurity — delivered with the consistency of a worldwide network.
When a company is caught in a geopolitical dispute, it requires communications expertise that spans diplomacy, trade, and reputation management. When a global brand navigates climate regulation across multiple jurisdictions, it needs advisors fluent in sustainability standards and energy transition. When supply chains fracture under trade pressures, businesses demand counsel that blends economic insight with real-time public affairs.
That is why we are evolving our model to integrate high-value specialisms within a seamless global structure. From guiding corporate leaders through high-stakes transformations, to helping brands drive sales through new market segments or leveraging global platforms like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games to prove brand value— our expertise is designed around the industries and capabilities that will shape our clients’ futures.
This focus on specialism is not only about delivering sharper insights — it is about building resilience. We deliver the precision of a boutique, with the strength and stability of a global consultancy.
Act now to define what endures
The year ahead will not reward those who wait. It will reward those bold enough to redefine value, blend human judgment with technology, and bring specialist insight to a global stage. This is more than an inflection point for agencies — it is a proving ground for the role of communications in business and society.
Those who rise to the moment will not only shape what comes next, but what endures. They will define how markets evolve, how reputations are built, and how trust is sustained for decades to come. At FleishmanHillard, we embrace that responsibility — and we are determined to seize the opportunity to lead.
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