Marketing Vs. P.R. — The Ongoing Debate

The Scenario: An employee is needed as a new and exciting product needs promotion. The employer debates long and hard whether it should be a marketing specialist or a public relations practioner. He then debates if he should hire both, because one may not be enough, but that causes him to wonder if they would work independently or if they would collaborate. Not only that, but he is hesitant as he also believes they may get in each other’s way and interfere with each other’s work.

This circumstance has become predominant within today’s society. In fact, it has been stated that marketing and PR are so close, that they often become allies on the battlefield of customers minds. However, it has also been stated that the lines that differentiate between marketing and public relations have blurred or even have disappeared completely.

In order to answer the questions posed within the scenario, it is important to have a strong grasp of what marketing and public relations actually entails. To begin, it is clear that marketing aims at an exchange, usually one that involves money. More specifically, Webster’s dictionary has further associated it as a function that “identifies consumes needs and wants and offers products and services to satisfy those demands.”  Marketing focuses upon gratifying these needs, which, in turn, produces some kind of transaction that delivers those products and services in exchange for something of value.

Conversely, it is this notion of exchange that allows marketing to distinguish itself from public relations. In effect, public relations has been associated with measuring awareness, controlling reputation damage and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships. Evidently, none of these objectives are directly linked to sales.

One could conclude that marketing is focused on a demand for a product and on promoting sales and encouraging consumers, whereas PR aims to create a positive image of an organization. My question now is, upon hearing these definitions, is it safe to conclude that marketing focuses on exchange relationships with one public, while public relations covers a broad range of relationships with numerous audiences?

 It should also be indicated that the agendas of public relations and marketing are different. For example, marketing is interested in the market, or more specifically in transactions between consumers, while public relations is interested in relationships. What is important about this distinction is that, in many cases, good public relations will create a healthy environment for marketing, and thus, good transactions. Therefore, it is as though PR is almost being used as a management function.

Furthermore, through contrasting them once more, one is able to recognize that marketing adds value by increasing profits whereas public relations adds value by decreasing the expenses that are necessary when issues are ignored. Therefore, this concludes how they work best when they are treated as distinct management functions.

I believe they would work well as a team because both marketing and public relations are very similar in structure. For instance, they both have an aim on identifying audiences, segmenting those audiences and are focused on setting objectives. In order to achieve their goals, organizations should make use of both functions. Both marketing and public relations adds its own special, but complimentary, contributions to building and maintaining the relationships necessary for an organization to thrive. For this reason, I believe an organization can’t get by without using both. In fact, as marketing and public relations become more aggressive and communicate with more publics, they often end up talking to the same publics!

Well that’s all for now. Off to marketing class… oh wait… or is it public relations?

P.S. Who would you hire?