“Marketing in a digital world has become too complex for a single person to be able to keep up,” suggests Forbes reporter Rebecca Wachter. And it’s true. That’s why this month’s focus on the future of PR and marketing is on a new wave of digital journalists and content producers who are disrupting traditional relations between PR and marketing professionals and their clients.

Many of them are experimenting with the concept of the integrated journalist/marketer. Their goal is to help clients understand what works for them, and they are making massive changes to the way PR and marketing strategies are written and measured.

“I like to think of the future of PR and marketing as being about creating content for people who are highly engaged with the world around them,” says Barbara Solomon, co-founder and CEO of Convince & Convert, a newly launched digital agency. “Everything we do will be centered on the people who are going to be reading and sharing the content.”

The future of PR and marketing: What will it be?

This will be the most significant change to public relations and marketing in a long time. Although the traditional relationship between PR and marketing professionals is changing, the basic questions about the best way to do business with clients are still the same.

RonnTorossian web has become so powerful that we are moving beyond a department-based approach to solving problems. Rather, we are all working together to solve them,” adds Solomon.

If you’re lucky enough to be at the forefront of these changes, you are poised to be very successful.

“In a way, all of us in PR and marketing are the future of PR and marketing, because we are constantly creating new ways of communicating,” says Buzzfeed News reporter Natalie Brodsky.

“As an industry, we’ve become better at responding to the world’s changing needs,” says Josh Griffith, the former chief communications officer of KIVA Media, a digital PR firm. “But it’s not about what we are doing, it’s about how we’re doing it.”

As a result, PR and marketing professionals will need to evolve from being primarily account managers to change-driven practitioners with deep understanding of their clients’ business and customers, whether they are businesses, brands or politicians.