Public Relations (PR) Q&A

Thanks for tagging me to this @Hatty Bell I may have missed this question with that.

I think that the answers given by @Lisa Creffield and @Erik Bigalk get to the heart of what I would call a traditional answer that is still relevant and meaningful to many businesses.

However, my perspective on this is not as traditional. Department names often carry baggage with them. I’ve also experienced professionals from Marketing and PR that unfortunately don’t speak well of one another.

I believe a realignment corporately is necessary for this to ever really change, because only changing the name doesn’t fix the underlying problems and trust issues. That said, I believe several roles should fall under the group name of “Communications Strategy”. It is often necessary for PR, Marketing and Advertising to all work together. I think at direct consumer business (B2C) this is even more apparent. But, I also think that Customer Service (CS), Customer Experience (CX) and User Experience (UX) are also part of the Communications Strategy team.

Marketing, PR and Advertising are typically a one-way communication channel. CS, CX and UX are typically either two-way communication channels or at least funneling the customers’ communication back into Marketing, PR and Advertising.

Unless a company is really trying to send waves through their industry newsletters and magazines or to position themselves for awards, I don’t think traditional PR plays as big a role as it previously did. This is especially true for remote all internet based ventures and retailers.

However, as the others have stated, when reaching out to media (publishers, tv, radio, etc.) sometimes they are put off by the sales-y marketing department style. They typically want the facts and then they determine their own angle based on those inputs.

Additionally, I think PR still needs to make an adjustment because often times by consumers they are only thought of as the “spin-team” that tries to walk back bad actions or events that have happened. I think a healthy dose of transparency, honesty, and authenticity would go much further (especially with the younger generations that are more immune to BS and ads because they are constantly bombarded with them).

I also tend to think of the marketing role as focused on the Product or Service reputations, and PR focused on the business reputation. This also gets muddied for a business that has one product and the product is essentially the whole business.