Public relations, it would appear, is having another identity crisis. Take, for example, Stephen Waddington’s Wadds Inc. Summer Annual – an empirical, cold-shower audit of an industry struggling to live up to its potential. And compare that to the What If Manifesto by Ana Adi and I – a more philosophical, "metamodern" perspective that questions and challenges the industry’s established comfort zones.

Where Wadds Inc. is the pragmatist pointing out that the corporate house is messy, the What If rebels are asking why we’re still living in a house built on shaky assumptions. When you put these two positions together, they don't just talk; they spar.

Round 1: The Measurement Theatre vs. The "Growth Driver" Delusion

Waddington’s well-researched report opens with a remarkable stat: intangible assets such as trust and reputation now account for 92% of S&P 500 market capitalization. That makes reputation a multi-trillion-dollar asset class. Armed with this data, 43% of corporate affairs leaders confidently identify as "growth drivers", according to Deloitte’s The Road to 2030 report.

That contrasts with the Summer Annual’s punchline: 45% of practitioners admit they have little to no idea how to link communications to financial outcomes. Worse, only 26% actually use economic indicators to measure success, preferring comfortable, shallow metrics like reach and sentiment – the industry refers to these as “vanity metrics”.

This is exactly what the What If Manifesto’s third refusal calls out: That "the seat at the table justifies the theatre." For decades, PR has treated measurement not as genuine accountability, but as a theatrical performance to mollify clients and to secure budgets.

While Waddington expresses concern that corporate affairs seats on executive committees have slipped from 73% to 64%, the What If position essentially says: Good. Maybe now we can stop performing. A dashboard full of green lights while the business model is under societal siege is what we (Adi & Stoeckle) call a "category error" – using "tame" tools (KPIs, SMART goals) to tackle "wicked" problems (like climate transition or systemic trust collapses). We explore this further in one of our Substack Dispatches.

Even when the Wadds Inc. report highlights the shiny new AMEC Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) Principles launched in May, it comes with the caveat that if we treat AI visibility as the goal, we’re just building a "new AVE" (a vanity metric trying to calculate PR value in advertising terms). The What If rebels would agree, pointing out that counting AI citations is just more theatre. True accountability requires deep, societal listening and sincere engagement, not a better dashboard.

Round 2: Generative AI—The GEO Gold Rush vs. "Technochauvinism"

This brings us to the tech. The Wadds Inc. report highlights a structural advantage for PR in the age of AI: earned media drives roughly 84% of AI search engine citations. You can almost hear agency bosses rubbing their hands: this is the new gold rush! PR can finally beat SEO and advertising at their own game.

However, this looks different from a What If perspective. The Manifesto’s fifth refusal rejects the idea "That efficiency is a purpose." The warning is against “technochauvinism” (Meredith Broussard in her 2018 book, Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World), the blind belief that a technical solution is always best.

Yes, AI can churn out press releases at lightning speed. But as the What If Manifesto notes, large language models (LLMs) are ultimately "stochastic parrots", spitting out fluent language with zero actual understanding. The example (in another What If Dispatch) is Klarna, which replaced 700 customer-service agents with AI in 2023, suffered a massive customer backlash over lack of empathy, and had to rehire humans in 2025 to handle complexity and preserve trust.

The Wadds Inc. report data backs up this scepticism: only 24% of corporate affairs functions have a formal AI strategy, and practitioners are waking up to massive governance risks like simulated communication (60% of web traffic being machine-generated) and cognitive drift (the gradual erosion of human critical thinking due to AI reliance).

The tension here is telling. While the Wadds Inc. report expresses excitement about the tactical "structural advantage" in GEO (the AMEC led principles guiding AI-driven discovery), the What If rebels are worried that by chasing GEO algorithms, we are once again making "the organisation the protagonist" (our Manifesto’s sixth refusal). Instead of gaming the AI, we should be building the human communication capacity that AI can't simulate. And in making this point, we go further by calling out “AI’s flattery trap”: sycophancy is not an advantage, it will not elevate our field.

Round 3: The "Purpose Retreat" and the Cowardice of "Strategic Silence"

Then there is what the Wadds Inc. report calls the "purpose retreat". In 2023, 90% of practitioners believed companies should advocate on social issues; by 2026, for reasons we are all familiar with, that number has collapsed to 55%. In this environment, 41% of practitioners are advocating for "strategic silence".

Waddington is politely worried, noting that while silence can be tactical, "avoidance gets dressed up as judgement". Translating that from PR-speak: corporate leaders are worried by commercial repercussions from culture war battles and pretending their silence is "strategic." The What If Manifesto exposes this as a core tension in PR practice: "The mandate—paid by one, answerable to all." PR practitioners have always carried dual, conflicting loyalties to their employers and the public conversation.

The "purpose retreat" is what happens when you collapse that tension because it gets too hot. By retreating into silence, corporate affairs is abdicating its role in shaping strategic narratives around "super wicked" challenges such as global heating (largely) due to climate change. What If argues that responsibility cannot be delegated. Retreating to a safe compliance checklist or "strategic silence" is just another way of pretending a wicked problem is tame. You are paid by one, but you are still answerable to all. Own your accountability.

Round 4: The Career Ladder on Fire

Finally, the talent crisis. The Wadds Inc. report notes a severe, self-inflicted capability gap. Because AI is automating entry-level tasks of monitoring, drafting, and basic research, the career ladder is losing its bottom rungs. Employing juniors suddenly looks bad on the P&L, because their billable hours have been snapped up by algorithms. But how do you build high-level judgment when the tasks that teach you that judgment are done by a bot?

The What If Manifesto points to this as the ultimate feedback loop of its fifth tension ("The address"): we are inside the very communication environments we build. If we automate the entry points of our profession for quick margin gains, we erode the foundations of our own future.

Conclusion: The Verdict

So what is the outcome of the sparring match?

The Wadds Inc. report provides the straight, empirical diagnosis: we are an industry that controls a multi-trillion-dollar reputation asset but is structurally hollow, talent-starved, and running scared from social complexity.

The What If Manifesto provides the mirror: it shows that these failures are the natural result of our own orthodoxies. If we want that seat at the table, we have to stop playing "measurement theatre". If we want to survive AI, we have to treat it as a "companion, not an oracle." And if we want to be "growth drivers," we have to stop pretending we can remain strategically silent when the world is on fire.

Ultimately, the two perspectives need each other. Without the hard data, What If is just philosophy. Without What If's philosophical courage, the Wadds Inc. report data is just an autopsy. The future of PR belongs to those who can hold the tension: the realism to face the data, and the metamodern courage to ask, What if?