It’s my twice yearly chat with W Communications founder and CEO Warren Johnson and today it’s our 2025 PR Agency Review of the Year.

Warren founded W Communications in 2009. It now has global revenues of £25 m and a headcount of 200, with 140 in London and 60 across the rest of the world.

Over the next half hour or so Warren and I will discuss the ups and downs of PR agency life over the last 12 months.

Before that, the breaking news is that the PRmoment Awards final entry deadline is Friday 23 January. Don’t miss the opportunity to create proof points of the quality of your agency’s work.

Also, check out the speaker programme for our latest PR Masterclass: The Intersection of PR and GEO. It’s another stellar line-up.

Summary

Warren Johnson rated the PR agency market happiness index for Q1 as "three out of five" due to economic unease, but Q2 improved for W Communications due to diversification and a trend towards "silliness and frivolousness," while they rated Q4 as challenging due to "speurious pitches" and negative sentiment following a "disastrous budget."

The discussion also highlighted the strength of corporate and B2B sectors, the volatility of consumer PR, the necessity of innovation and entrepreneurial agency behavior, and the positive impact of fractional hiring which benefits agencies by providing "phenomenally experienced ex clients."

Warren Johnson predicted that 2025 will be "a real game of two halves," favouring innovative agencies, and expressed skepticism about AI's current efficiency in PR, suggesting it will allow experienced humans to do "even more work" while acting as a "real time bomb" by hindering junior development.

Details

• PR Agency Happiness Index (Q1 and Q2) Ben Smith asked Warren Johnson for a hypothetical happiness index of the PR agency market at large, starting with Q1, which Johnson rated as "three out of five," characterizing it as uneasy and jittery due to negative sentiment in the wider economy. Ben Smith recalled starting 2025 positively, though political and geopolitical uncertainty soon challenged that outlook. Warren Johnson suggested that this constant disruption has become the "new normal". For Q2, Johnson noted that W Communications felt "quite good" due to heavy diversification, including spinning off their restaurant business, Chomp, and growing their influencer business, which was showing better monetisation. This period also coincided with a push in pop culture toward "silliness and frivolousness" to escape depressing global issues.

• Sectoral Performance and Innovation The discussion shifted to the performance of corporate, consumer, and B2B PR sectors in H1. Warren Johnson highlighted that corporate shops are having a moment, with some valuations moving them toward management consultancy models. B2B is thriving, supported by the ascendancy of LinkedIn and technology powered by AI. Consumer PR, however, is more volatile, experiencing good highs but also lows around the budget. Johnson stated that innovation is critical, as they experienced their best trading quarter ever in Q3, driven by diversification into specialized services like influencer and experiential marketing. They emphasized that agencies must be entrepreneurial and reward innovation, suggesting that clients post-COVID have increased their appetite to buy more from agencies.

• PR Agency Happiness Index (Q3 and Q4) and Economic Climate W Communications experienced their best trading quarter ever in Q3, predominantly driven by consumer work and specialized services due to extensive innovation. Warren Johnson noted that things started to slow down approaching the budget. Q4 was generally challenging due to "speurious pitches," "the worst pitch behavior," and the short month combined with the negative sentiment following a "disastrous budget". Johnson suggested that increased rules, regulations, and taxes on employment mean overall industry headcount is "inevitably going to go down," noting that the government seems to be deincentivising employers. They lamented the government's perceived lack of understanding of basic economics, viewing the high "job tax" as an indication that they want fewer people to be hired.

• Impact of AI on Agency Structure and Efficiency Warren Johnson expressed skepticism about the claimed efficiencies of AI in the agency world, suggesting that it has sometimes produced "inefficiencies."

• Johnson predicts that AI will allow existing experienced humans to do "even more work" but will likely prevent juniors from entering and gaining skills, labeling this a "real time bomb".

• In-house Redundancies and Fractional Roles Ben Smith highlighted a quiet trend of in-house redundancies, particularly at the senior level and possibly in the tech sector. Warren Johnson acknowledged this trend, noting that while it is tough for in-house teams, it is beneficial for agencies because it has created a strong employer market, allowing them to fractionally hire "phenomenally experienced exclients". Johnson confirmed that W Communications frequently engages experienced people for fractional roles, such as pitch assistance or internal strategy development, which is great for obtaining high-caliber talent on a day rate. Johnson stressed that this fractional expertise is less about the role and more about gaining a nuanced understanding of the client's industry to elevate the agency's work beyond comms and help drive business value.

• Campaign Trends Warren Johnson observed that campaign trends moved beyond nostalgia toward "fun, light-hearted, silly pop culture" in 2025, serving as a positive counterbalance to depressing global issues.

• 2025 Market Outlook Regarding the overall PR agency market for 2025, Johnson believes it will be "a real game of two halves". Those who extensively innovate and expand their services will do well, while those who have not innovated or are within large, merged networks suffering from inertia will face "a really, really dark couple of years".

• GEO/LLM Optimization Warren Johnson noted that while agencies are aware of the impact of great editorial content on Large Language Model (LLM) search, this is not yet translating into clear client briefs for media relations, though it is powerful in B2B corporate PR. Johnson suggested that the opportunity for PR in this area may be missed in consumer comms because in-house contacts are not always KPI'd on it, resulting in a missed opportunity to align SEO/GEO with PR.

• Network Mergers Discussing the Omnicom IPG merger, Johnson noted that John Wren seemed positive about the PR brands, possibly viewing them as strong traders that do not require too many immediate changes, though Johnson is interested to see how the consolidation of brands will play out.

• 2026 Outlook and Agency Expansion Looking ahead to 2026, Warren Johnson is approaching it as "always a coiled spring," though less focused on the core comms business, which they expect to be flat. Johnson affirmed the strategy of using PR as a "Trojan horse" to enter a client and then sell a range of other services, which successful firms have done for a long period. They are placing "a lot of bets in a lot of areas," realising that with "bright, curious people," everything is possible.