The battle has been going on for a while. The public relations side says that our work is a management function designed to create, enhance and sustain relationships with relevant parties, securing public permission to do business.
The marketing side says that all that is important, sure, but in the end it’s enabling sales, creating an exchange relationship of value, and that the end result we both are seeking is to generate revenue, and if we PR peeps aren’t doing that, we are simply irrelevant dinosaurs.
Oy Vey.
Does it really matter? Our central skillsets are a little different, with PR ideally seeking to use more of the PESO than marketing. We generate content and seek to either convince the media and influencers to use it organically. Marketing generates content and simply buys the audience, space or time to promote it.
We are senior counselors, with the reputation of the organization at stake, and the tools of employee communication, media relations, community and government relations and issues management at our behest. Marketing controls vast budgets, but mainly thinks “top of funnel” as it generates awareness and describes features and benefits. In fact, a new entry to a marketplace will struggle to generate awareness (the first step to landing in the consideration set) without paid strategies.
I’m a little “internet famous” for the phrase, “All marketing is communication, but not all communication is marketing.” I strongly believe that these are complementary disciplines, not interchangeable ones, and that a chief communication officer with responsibility for all the functions, including marketing, is a superior model to a chief marketing officer because of the CCO’s inclusive remit.
Regardless, though, this ship may have already sailed. Marketing is ascendent still, even if Al and Laura Ries predicted that PR would steer the ship. The Cluetrain Manifesto declared that the age of brands and organizations dictating the terms of marketplace communication was over, thanks to social media. As it turns out, advertising has seized the moment across the media mix, and social does a lot less empowerment of the consumer/user than was predicted 25 years ago.
In the end, therefore, what does it matter and why do we care what we are called?
