Marketing or Public Relations?

It was not Public Relations that broke the story about David Letterman's retirement from Late Night. All it took was a 140-character tweet on social media to break the story to the world. There was no press release, there was no speech, and there was no reportage. A tweet is all it took.

 So with the new trend of breaking news from social media, is there a need for public relations? Are Public relation officers today doing the jobs of marketing professionals? And how is public relations different from marketing?

Public relations, marketing and advertising are all about communicating a story to the public. All three areas are involved with getting customers, moving products and driving revenue (Chima, C. 2013). So then what sets them apart?

Wikipedia defines Public Relations as a practice that manages the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public. The main objective of public relations it says is for a company to be able to persuade the public, investor, partners, employees, and other stakeholders to maintain a point of view about it, its leadership, products, or of political decisions.

So with all the interchangeable roles of marketing, public relations and advertising, experts say that the future is of integrated marketing and public relations. Everyone should be able to do a little of everything. For instance marketing teams should be able to buy advertisements and pitch stories to reporters and advertising agencies should be able to whip some compelling content.

Besides a good press release can grow brand awareness by getting a company's name out in the market. But to get the name out, we need to have the distribution channel that will reach out to the target audience. And hence Marketing and PR go hand-in-hand. PR Newswire's research shows that there's a lot of potential for PR opportunities when content marketing is used effectively. Bylines can lead to blog posts, blog posts to bylines, and press releases can lead to bylines and blog posts (Cohen, H., 2012).

Both marketing and public relations went through an evolution in the twentieth century. Some business historians called this period the teenage years for public relations and marketing. As marketing and public relations expanded, their activities became more aggressive, sometimes considered to be interchangeable. In his book Public Relations: Concepts and Practices, Ray Simon wrote:

"Marketing and public relations ... both are major external functions of the firm and both share a common ground in regard to product publicity and consumer relations. At the same time, however, they operate on different levels and from different perspectives and perceptions.

The traditional view ... is that marketing exists to sense, serve, and satisfy customer needs at a profit.

Public relations exists to produce goodwill in the company's various publics so that the publics do not interfere in the firm's profit-making ability."

In fact majority of public relations practitioners and marketers think alike. They say that marketing's measure of success is the number of sales and/or the revenue it generates, whereas public relations' measure of success is expressed public opinion or other evidence of public support (Turney, M., 2001)

Reference List

Chima, C. (2013). What Is The Difference Between Public Relations And Marketing? PR Tips for Startups. Retrieved from website link

Cohen, H. (2012). 11 Communications Experts On Marketing, PR & MarCom. Heidi Cohen website. Retrieved from website link

Turney, M. (2001). Public relations and marketing were initially distinct. On-line Readings in Public Relations website. Retrieved from website link