PRSA ICON 2025: Reflections From Washington D.C.
Posted by admincarolyn on Nov. 18, 2025 / Thought Leadership / Subscribe 0
PRSA ICON is the largest annual gathering of public relations and communications professionals in the country — a few days each year where practitioners across every industry come together to learn, exchange ideas, and sharpen the work we bring back to our organizations. Three PRSA Las Vegas board members attended this year’s conference, and the takeaways below reflect what stood out most to them.
Courtney Fogle, President Elect
- Owned content is a critical part of how audiences — and AI — understand your brand. In The Rise of Brand Newsrooms, Noah Greenberg emphasized that the strongest teams ground their stories in subject-matter expertise, not CEO soundbites, and distribute them beyond their own platforms. This approach serves a dual purpose: it gives AI models accurate, credible material to cite, and it increases the likelihood of earned pickup when newsrooms need stories on slower days. In an environment with fewer reporters, consistent, credible owned content has become one of the most reliable ways to maintain visibility and trust.
- Crisis decisions are stronger when communicators are involved from the start. In Crisis PR: Navigating Crisis with Clarity, Max Marcucci noted that “facts don’t matter if no one believes you.” His guidance: ask what else could come out, move with timely accuracy, and stay steady when tensions rise. He reinforced that crisis readiness is strongest when communications is tied into risk and operational planning, not treated as a final step.
- AI is accelerating our work but only if we learn to lead it. In The Ultimate AI Toolkit for Communicators, Elizabeth Edwards pushed attendees to take an active role in how AI shapes their work: “Are you going to be a passenger of AI, or are you going to lead it?” Her focus was on using tools like Fireflies.ai, WhisperAI, Gamma, Perplexity.ai, intentionally to free up mental bandwidth, offloading note-taking, transcription, first drafts and data organization so practitioners can spend more time on strategy. She also noted the importance of using secure, paid AI tools, including custom GPTs, to keep proprietary information out of public models.
- Stronger campaigns happen when PR stops operating in a silo. In Integrating Public Relations into Marketing Communications, Ryan Johnson emphasized that PR can’t drive meaningful results when it functions separately from marketing, social, content, or paid. The strongest teams build one unified plan, work from the same messaging, and understand how each channel supports the bigger strategy. He encouraged communicators to ground narratives in a single SME interview to keep consistency across teams, use quarterly content calendars to stay aligned, and amplify earned coverage through owned and paid channels instead of letting placements stand alone. His biggest point: when PR is integrated into the broader communications strategy, it demonstrates clearer value and drives stronger outcomes.
Matthew Swope, Incoming Director at Large (Programming)
- PR has always been in the business of influence. Allison World Wide dove deep into the new frontier of Modern Media and Influence, a new way the global agency is viewing the changing media landscape and how influencers are included in that mix. A major focus of this discussion, too, was on the importance of PR professionals owning influencer relationships (versus advertising, marketing or social teams) as PR teams have always been in the business of influence. This also triggered an incredible back-to-basics thinking around what we actually need influencers for: is it content creation, is it credibility or are we breaking through a channel? More than ever, too, reporters and producers are turning to influencers to validate and source.
- Rethinking Thought Leadership From Kamala Harris’ Speechwriter. Steven Kelly, former speechwriter for Vice President Kamala Harris, spoke at length about his experience writing for the VEEP and how that translates into speech and byline writing in the corporate sphere. The biggest takeaway: get in their head. You must read, watch and listen to everything the person you’re writing for has ever done. You need to broadly understand everything they stand for, then dive deep. You also need to find their most unscripted moments–that’s where the gold is to understanding their voice.
- The Business of “Why” Communications. We don’t ask why enough. Scott Ward led a session about the True Measure of Comms ROI and while he did share invaluable takeaways around how to measure ROI for campaigns, his biggest takeaway was really asking “why” more often. When a client or boss says they want to be in a specific publication, let’s find out why. When a client says they want to say X for Y, why? Understanding the full picture for those we communicate on behalf of can help us more effectively and efficiently achieve success and manage better expectations.
- Relationships. Relationships. Relationships. At every session, at every hotel ballroom, hallway, small-talk intro to the networking sessions, one of the biggest takeaways continues to be the importance of strong relationships in public relations. While the connections you have are important, it’s how well you treat and cherish those connections that is key.
Bridgette Menist, Director at Large (Digital)
- Culture is Your Crisis Plan: Communicating Unity in Divided Times. Culture isn’t a slogan on the wall; it’s the muscle memory your organization relies on when things get tough, which is why Elizabeth Whittington emphasized, culture is your crisis plan. When employees already trust leadership and understand how things are done within your organization, you enter difficult moments with built-in alignment instead of scrambling for unity. Problems arise when the culture you promote doesn’t match the culture people actually experience, creating skepticism and widening the gap between words and behavior. Strong cultures act like reputational goodwill, giving organizations more room to navigate mistakes because values are consistently lived, not just stated. That only works when leadership treats culture as an operating system rather than a communications campaign. By auditing gaps, elevating teams and team members who model your values, and ensuring leaders set the tone, organizations shift from reactive to resilient and culture becomes your most reliable crisis tool.
- Proving PR in the AI Era — Now It’s Measurable. It’s not news that AI is changing how people discover information. Figuring out how to implement it into our roles as PR pros in a strategic, ethical fashion was just about the number one question being asked throughout the week in DC. It’s safe to say, our roles matter more than ever. Dave Burnett emphasized that instead of relying on page authority and backlinks alone, AI-driven discovery depends on entity authority, aka the clarity, accuracy, and consistency of information about you across the internet. When PR placements, website content, and bios reinforce the same facts, AI systems can retrieve and summarize them more reliably. Clear writing, strong About pages on your or your clients' website, and making your earned coverage visible on your own site all help build that “source of truth” AI engines look for. This is why PR is becoming a core part of GEO, the new version of SEO for the AI era, where factual accuracy, credibility and high-quality coverage influence what shows up in AI results. By pairing backend optimization with strong media relations, organizations can shape how AI understands them and push down outdated or negative results. Think quality over quantity!
- DC + Politics = A New Reality for Communications. This conversation went deeper than how politics are influencing our roles. My biggest takeaway was that the most effective communicators are the ones willing to take smart risks, pitch boldly and show up in both traditional and emerging news spaces with equal commitment. Relationship-building is still the heartbeat of our jobs – treating reporters like humans, grabbing coffee with journalists or thought leaders, and nurturing trust long before you need to pick up the phone. Influencers matter too, and it’s especially important that their values align with your organization's. Empathy and authenticity will carry you further than over-optimization or rigid caution ever will and brands that stay consistent in what they stand for (think Patagonia or Chick-fil-A) prove that clarity of identity is still one of the strongest tools we have.
From keynote presentations to hallway conversations with practitioners from across the country, ICON 2025 highlighted the same theme: our profession matters, and the judgment we bring to our organizations is essential. The best way we can support that work is by continuing to learn, ask better questions, and advocate for the value communications brings.
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