PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MARKETING

In my last post I shared the difference between public relations and journalism because it was one of the professions that was overlapping it. This week I will want to share the perspective from marketing and public relations.

Marketing is the field most commonly confused with PR not unreasonably since marketing refers to PR in its texts and practices as part of the marketing mix.  It looks at a clear exchange of money for goods and services. To marketing practitioners and academics, PR is one of what they refer to as the 4 Ps – product, place, price and promotion – which is needed for a successful marketing campaign. This is not far from the truth since PR plays an essential role in creating successful products. Much of public relations activity is directed at support of marketing to the extent that it may in some instances amount to the principal promotional tool used by marketers.

Wilcox et al (2003) has identified a number of PR activities which support marketing efforts by creating new leads through gaining editorial coverage in trade and consumer media and also producing sales brochures. In a competitive field, such as fast moving consumer products, publicity can be crucial to success and PR provides avenues for publicity. While the marketing team may create special offers and sales promotions, the publicity people will be seeking media coverage and arranging launch events and together a create success.

Marketing has a broader remit that perceives customers as being one public or several disaggregated publics among many. The key words for marketing are ‘consumers’ and ‘profit’

Understanding the consumer and producing products or services that will satisfy consumer needs to the profit of the supplier is the traditional arena of marketing. There is a clear exchanged of money for goods or services which is easily measured. PR campaigns on the other hand are often harder to quantify. Many organizations may not have goods or services to sell but have messages to communicate or receive. They need to maintain relationships which are too complex for marketing to handle which is where public relations come in.

Kitchen (1997;28) explains perfectly the relationship between PR and marketing by saying that “Public relations and marketing are two major management functions within an organization but how they are organized depends upon managerial perceptions, organizational culture and historical precedents.” He goes on to say that “Marketing is concerned with an organization’s exchange relationships with consumers in which quid pro pro transactions occur. On the other hand, PR deals with a broader range of publics involved with or affected by the organization. Subsuming PR into marketing delimit organizational ability to function successfully in highly competitive environment.

PUBLIC RELATIONS AND OTHER RELATED PRACTICES

Public relations is something that is very dear to me, this season I am going to dedicate my blog to anything communications, public relations and media. One thing I realize is how public relations is being confused or misunderstood with other professions. I will share with you one after the other. Enjoy…………….

Public relations is usually confused with allied professions. PR draws on expertise and experiences from many fields while also overlapping with other disciplines and the profession tends to integrate rather than exclude and this is mainly due to the history and development of the practice.

Public relations encompasses various functions, from issues management to public affairs, advertising, lobbying and investor relations. This serves as strength for the practice but when it comes to definition and description of the profession this becomes a weakness.

There are recognizable differences between PR and these allied professions and the focus of this is to look at these professions, bringing out not only their differences to PR but also demonstrating how PR complements these other professions and vice versa.

PR and Journalism

Public relations and journalism have a long history. In fact founding fathers of the profession started their career as journalist. Thus it is no wonder a lot of people see PR as synonymous to journalism. Journalist and PR practitioners have a mutually beneficial relationship.

Organizations actively try to exert influence on policy-decision process and so they tend to seek access to the news media, with an assumption that greater and sympathetic media coverage of their stance will result in public opinion and policy making being favourable to them. As media space is limited, those who seek media attention inevitably have to engage in the intense processes of competition for this media attention (Anderson, 1993; Schlesinger&Tumber, 1994)

Many suggest that if organizations are to attract favorable media coverage, journalists must view them as a legitimate news source. Journalists rely on their own “judgments” when selecting sources. They treat sources differently “according to the degree of respect” with which they regard those sources(Blumler &Gurevitch, 1995, p55). They may view regular and accurate sources as more reliable and thus more legitimate. They may evaluate sources that can command more resources, as more important and thus more legitimate.(Anderson, 1991)

Theorists argue that journalists view certain sources as more legitimate, thereby allowing those sources to prompt media access and dominate the news in a public debate. Journalists tend to confer “a de facto legitimacy” on certain sources although it is “something that has to be gained by other sources” (Goldsmiths Media Group, 2000, p.36). Institutional sources for example, receive priviledges access to media and become the “primary definers” of news agendas by virtue of their power, representatives and Journalists also tend to assume that certain sources are entitled to know certain things by virtue of their social structural position and routinely rely on these authoritative sources; as it is the most efficient way of gathering news. Public relations practitioners are viewed as reliable, legitimate source of information for news content by journalist.

PR could be a key strategic choice that “already legitimate” and alternative sources should pursue, either to consolidate their media access or to make frequent interventions as they contend for media space. Public relations in some cases helps sources bypass the commonly cited obstacles such as lack of economic resources and realistic strategy for groups off the “beaten” path and without institutional legitimacy, to achieve media access.

Journalist for example may consider a large pressure group with a separate public relations staff as a legitimate news source. The size of the membership base of a social movement group may enhance the legitimacy of the organization in the eye of journalists. It should be noted, however, that not all actors in the public arena pursue media access. Rather, some corporations want to stay out of any news. Some groups pursue strategies of avoidance and secrecy. Other concentrates on their involvement in legal, political or education areas rather than on obtaining media coverage (Corbett, 1998). Thus, it is possible that such organizations may use their Pr departments to minimize rather than increase media attention. Studies of how PR influences news content to date have generally assumed a rather narrow view of PR efforts.

Much of the literature focuses on how news media utilize sources information subsidies are accepted whereas others are rejected.

Other studies highlight journalists’ perceptions of PR practitioners and the information subsidies they provide and the potential and actual effect of those perceptions on new coverage of the practitioners’ clients. Sources that can provide journalists with constant and usable story ideas are likely to become regular and favorable source. As a result, journalists and the sources can establish relationships, and the journalists may become dependent on the sources of news. Working under deadlines and competitive risk of being scooped, journalists also would consider responsiveness – the speed with which requested information is delivered to journalists- as a prime quality in practitioners (Hess,1984)

For their information to become news, practitioners must supply the information to the media by using the methods that coincide with the techniques journalists use to gather news. Although many accept press releases as the most ubiquitous information supply tool, other techniques include press conference, press interviews, background briefings, phone calls, and staged events. Journalists prefer information from sources that they perceive have no obvious self-serving economic interests. The “public interest appeal” strategy has proven particularly advantageous for nongovernmental groups, often operating in unfriendly political and media environments. 

Access to news making is a critical political resource in that it provides organizations the opportunity for their voices to be heard and to have an influence in public debate. Recent studies show that nonmainstream organizations increasingly achieve and maintain an authoritative and legitimate source through their media strategies developed by their public relations departments.

HOW IS COMMUNICATION RELATED TO PUBLIC RELATIONS?

Communication is the process of exchanging information, impacting ideas and making one understood by others. It also includes understanding others in return. Indeed understanding is critical to the communication process. If one person sends a message to another who disregards or misunderstands it, then communication has not taken place.

Communication is something people do. It has no life of its own. There is no magic about what the people put into it. When no studies communication therefore, one studies people and relating each other and to their groups, organizations and societies , influencing each other, being influenced, informing and being informed, teaching and being taught, by means of certain signs which exist separately from either of them. To understand the human communication process, one must understand how people relate to each other.

The power of communication, through oral and written word and the images that flash around the world to millions of people in real time, is more awesome than any individual or group or even nation. The world has become, “a global village” as the 20th century communication professor once put it. As a sequence, communication has never been a more potent tool and communication must be handled with great care.
Communication in planning public relations, aims to articulate an organization’s vision and support the overall business objectives. When it comes to public relations, communication with the publics, have been categorized into four models. Press agentry, the kind of activity most associated with public relations which are other times referred to as propaganda. It is a way of communication with emphasis on benefit to sender rather than the receiver; public information, which is a kind of information that seeks to provide information to people. And here accuracy is essential because it the release of relevant information to those who need it; two-way asymmetric, which introduces the idea of feedback or the two-way communication. It is however seen as inbalanced or asymmetric because it’s intended to change an audience’s attitude or behavior towards an organization rather than the organization’s practices through persuasion. Lastly, two-way symmetric; which is often referred to as the ideal of public relations. This model involves ideas of dialogue where organization and its publics exchange views leading to both being influenced and adjusting their attitudes and behaviors.
The public relations practitioner is a professional communicator more than anyone else in the organization. The practitioner must know how to communicate. As public relation practitioners known, however, communications with target publics is much complicated than this set of questions suggests.

A public relations practitioner also plays a role both internally and externally. Internally, he develops optimal relations with employees, managers, unions, newsletters, management and brochures are all important medium through which the public relations practitioner communications through to the internal publics.
Also, externally, as he involves himself communicating with groups of people outside the organization including customers, dealers, suppliers and community leaders.
Although all this are endowed with some capacity for communication. The practitioner can earn the respect of management and become trusted advisers; they must demonstrate a mystery of communication skills.

When communication is planned as it should be in the public relations, every communication must have a goal, purpose and objective.

Firstly, the communication goal of an organization is to reform and educate a particular public. For instance if MTN launches a new product, they would come out to the public and inform their customers on how to use the product.
Also a regular goal of communication to public relations is to persuade people to take certain actions. Such persuasions need a lot be overly aggressive. For instance in this time where there are so many telecommunication networks, that is MTN, TIGO, KASAPA, VODAFONE, and AIRTEL. If MTN would want to have more customers than their competitors, then they need to persuade the public with their products and services in order to achieve this aim.

However, motivation of employees is a regular original communication goal. Also a typical communication goal is to build a mutual understanding of a group of opposition.

The 2 step flow theory stated that an organization would send a message to the mass media, which would then deliver the message to the great mass of readers, listeners and viewers for their response. People today are influenced by factors which the media could be one but is not dominant.
Employee communication serves three purposes:

First, internal communication, which is meant to employees to get them to understand the organizations culture and values.

Also, internal acculturate communication is a way of informing employees of organizational development happenings through news.
Furthermore, internal communication is a way of the organisation to listen to its employees, to hear employees concerns and questions. All of these purposes can be served in any variety of ways and new technology increasingly affects the manner in what employee’ communication occurs.

Another importance of communication to the public relations in media relations where the public relations practitioner communicates with large groups of people outside an organization is practicable through the mass medium queries, arranges news conferences and issues news releases. These coordinates coach executives for news interviews and sometimes serve as their organizations spokesperson.
In a nutshell, we can say that communication plays a major aspect of the practice of public relations.