“Public Relations should never be ranked below marketing or advertising within an organization. Marketing and advertising should be placed under the umbrella of public relations because they usually target only one group – the consumer.”
As a student of public relations, I would love nothing more than to agree with this statement. However, a look into to real world of business and communications quickly causes me to disagree.
Public relations, advertising, and marketing bring similarities that are essential to the success of a company, but it is the difference in their approach to reach a goal that sets them apart.
So what makes one rank above another? This depends mostly on what a company’s end result is and how they want to get there. Most companies look to match their goods or services with a customer’s need. This approach would rank the three as follows:
1. Marketing
Marketing generally allocates the budget to communications programs, like advertising and public relations that will help sell products and services. Mostly associated with product, place, price, and promotion, marketing’s goal is to attract and satisfy customers on a long-term basis. Using tools like PR and advertising helps them to reach this goal.
In Amy Nutt’s article “What is the Difference Between Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations?," she explains how public relations and advertising fall under the marketing umbrella.
image source: SteveGeiger.com
“Marketing could be considered the whole ball of wax in this equation. A company's marketing department could be subdivided into several smaller sections that operate as separate entities, but all work toward the same ultimate goal - which is the success and growth of the company.”
-Amy Nutt
Marketing does in fact target more than just the consumer to reach this success, and it uses public relations and advertising to do so.
2. Public Relations
I ranked public relations as number two because boundaries between PR and marketing regularly overlap. Whether it is deciding which communication tools to utilize to reach the public, or how to deal with organization relationships, both have the same goal to maintain the success of the organization and its economic survival.
The department of public relations is used in a company to establish and maintain a favorable relationship with various publics such as consumers, stockholders, even employees. Brochures, events, press releases, and presentations are all tools used by PR practitioners to present information to numerous publics in hopes of earning trust and credibility for an organization.
3. Advertising
Advertising is a tool used by companies to promote their goods and services to external audiences through paid space and broadcast time. Companies look to the marketing department’s budget plan to dictate how much money can be used for advertising.
I placed advertising under public relations due to the large expense it can become. Placing an ad in a magazine can cost thousands of dollars, and television advertisements can cost in the millions. Companies see public relations as more cost-effective and more credible because, when earned, it appears in a news environment.
“Advertising and public relations may just seem like small pieces of the overall marketing puzzle, but without them the marketing plan could never fully be realized and the company's success would suffer accordingly.”
-Amy Nutt
Although advertising and public relations are integral components, the marketing department is the glue that binds them all together. Marketing gives these other entities direction and, as Nutt says, “ensures company growth and success.”
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Katie Keane
