A Fine Red Line

Have you ever asked yourslef what is the difference between marketing, advertising, and public relations (PR)? I have to admit that as a marketer-to-be I have spent numerous hours reading various textbooks and articles, trying to explain to myslef what the differences were. And then I have spent many more hours in futile efforts to convince my friends that it is not "all the same" whether they use one term or the other, because they actually refer to quite distinct things. In my last post I discussed the new trends in today's marketing industry but in order to be able to better comprehend what is going on behind the scenes we should get a better understanding of who-is-responsible-for-what. So let us draw a fine red line.

Marketing is the systematic planning, implementation, and control of a mix of business activities in order to ensure that mutually benefitial exchanges of products and services could occur between buyers and sellers.

Asvertising is the paid, public, nn-personal deliveryof a persuasive messageby an identified sponsor to its existing or potential customers with the goal of selling the sponsor's goods or services.

Public Relations (PR) is probably the hardest of the three to define. But the definition I think best captures the nature of PR is the one adopted by the Public Relations Society of Amrica (PRSA) that states that "Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other."

As it can be seen from the forementioned definitions, marketing is an "umbrella" for advertising and PR (two "business activities" that help the company sell itself to its customers). However, important differences exist between the two. In her article 10 Differences Between Advertising and Public Relations, Apryl Duncan outlines most of them. First and foremost, as she points out, advertising professionals pay for their ad space while PR is often referred to as "free publicity" because typically PR practitioners do not pay the mass media to publish their press releases or vido news releases (VNRs). This takes us to the second difference between the two. Because advertisers pay for their space, they have ultimate creative control over what gets published, while in the case of PR the medium has the final say on what makes it through to the audience and what - not. Another distinction is the shelf-life of the promotional effort. While one ad can be repeatedly used over a period of time (or, at least, until the advertisers realize that the consumers are already tired of seeing the same thing over and over again) a press release can only be published once. There is also a difference between the way people view advertising messages (ads) and PR messages (press releases, press confreneces, etc.)Generally, people accept PR as more objective because it often involves a third party endorcement and because they do not feel like someone is overtly trying to sell them some product (or service).

Probably to best summarize what we have said so far we can say that " advertising's function is to sell goods and services the PR function is to create an environment in which the organization can thrive." (Wilcox, D.; Cameron, G., Public Relations: Strategies and Tactics, 2006, p.17)