P.R. vs. Marketing

A Guest Blog - P.R. and Marketing My Gallatin Public Affairs colleague Sydney Sallabanks has a guest post today. She offers thoughts on public relations and marketing - flips sides of the same coin really - and stresses that effective advocacy in a cluttered marketplace still requires the basics: clarity and honesty.

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"'Public Relations vs. Marketing'? Isn't that a bit like 'patriotism vs. love of country'?" questioned a friend of mine about the presentation that David Cook and I gave last week at the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Yes — that's the point that Cook, creative director of Boise agency Stoltz Marketing Group, and I hope we made to the audience of about 30 small business owners, non-profit executives and entrepreneurs assembled for the workshop, aptly titled "Public Relations vs. Marketing."

After working on a few projects with Cook, not only did I learn that his "awkward phase" spans from 1969 to the present, I also discovered that we share similar notions of our respective fields. Public relations and marketing are flip sides of the same coin — Advocacy. When well planned and implemented, they serve to reinforce one another. With some savvy, small businesses have the power to market their goods and services, control their exposure and customize it to mirror their corporate climate.

This may be accomplished with a happy, if not blissful marriage of marketing and public relations. The point is to send the right message to the right audience using the right mode of delivery. We help our clients tell their story and start the conversation.

A principal nuance, however, is that public relations can be harder to control than marketing, "You can never guarantee full control of what is being said about you or your company with PR, unlike marketing, including paid advertising," said Cook.

While social media is often a valuable piece of the marketing and PR mix, starting with the customer experience is critical, according to Cook. "Isn't Facebook scheduled to replace television next week?" he joked, advising the audience against abandoning traditional marketing and PR altogether in favor of social media tactics. "These new tools are not a replacement for traditional media; they are an addition to it." Cook advises to strike a nerve and keep the message simple to cut through the clutter, whatever the delivery.

I advise a similar practice on the PR front. There is no substitute for clear and honest communication. Our firm specializes in developing campaigns for complex issues, often involving multi-member partnerships between the public and private sectors — which means clarity and candor is key.

And like all worthwhile things in life, relationships do matter. In my experience, they are the most rewarding part of the job.

As the Public Relations Society of America notes:

"Public relations is much more than endorsements and what many of the media, bloggers and the public have defined as 'spin.' The practice of public relations has and will always be the art and science of building relationships, connecting people and measuring how these relationships with various publics lead to long-term value for on entity or organization (whether it's in regard to government, investor, analyst, media, community or employee relations)."

Any worthwhile relationship requires time and attention, including the working relationship between public relations professional and the media. As newsrooms continue to shrink, journalists are being pushed harder. But there are ways to make life easier on both sides: Do your homework, be accessible and respect the deadline driven nature of a reporter's world.

Think truth and action, avoid jargon and spin. The Onion recently profiled a fictional, laid-off PR exec and quoted him: "I wasn't fired so much as my job was one of the positions phased out through the outsourcing of certain activities and the restructured insourcing of others."

A good rule of thumb: If your campaign or marketing initiative can't pass a simple "straight face test," including a basic question -"is what I'm doing serving a broad public interest?" - then you might consider going back to the drawing board, or risk getting ink in The Onion.