There is often a lot of confusion between the difference between pr and marketing and people seem to assume that they are the same thing, however they carry out different roles towards a company.
Pr focuses on relationships and building them whereas marketing focuses on selling, driven by the consumer’s wants and needs. Pr is about the reputation of a company or product whereas marketing is about changing behaviour.
These two functions may be different but they work very well alongside each other and create success through the strong relationship that they have once integrated, as it is easy to achieve a marketing aim such as changing behaviours if you have a strong reputation due to pr.
Pr involves all forms of communication inwards and out, whereas marketing only sends out messages. Two way communication, first established by Gruing and Hunt 1984, is evident between pr and its publics. This two way communication ensures the feedback of its publics tackling any problems or misunderstandings. Marketing responds to this feedback and to the changing trends within society and requires the needs and wants of consumers in order to carry out marketing that is successful. Both pr and marketing have similar outcomes therefore leaving the differences hard to define, as pr can be seen to be just one of the aspects under marketing communications. Marketing and pr can work alongside one another in order to keep the product or service in the right light in the eyes of its audience. For example, if a product has been targeted and received bad publicity, marketing would focus on increasing sales through methods such as those displayed in Ansoffs matrix of finding a new target audience whilst pr would focus on restoring the products reputation through methods such re branding the image and creating new relationships. This is a classic example of how the two functions can work together in order to generate sales and restore reputation. Both functions can be seen as complimenting one another rather than strategies which are in competition.
Brilliant post, your clearly defined the difference between PR and marketing. I completly agree with you that PR and marketing are different roles but work well along each other.
ReplyDeleteThank you Sukhpreet. Do you agree that marketers have the tendancy to make people think what they want you to think about a certain product or service, they influence the audience whereas a pr team influence the products reputation?
ReplyDeleteI believe that a pr team influences reputation aswell as the thoughts of their audience?
ReplyDeleteI agree to an extent Melinda as yes marketing may influence peoples thoughts and decisions on a certain product but surely pr has the same effect just through the reputation of the product or the brand behind it. By working on the reputation it will automatically change the audiences perception of the product in question (just as marketing does)
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