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Marketing, Public Relations and Corporate Communications 37

speciality of media relations under the umbrella of public relations, and public
relations gradually developed into a fully-fledged ‘managerial discipline’(see Table 2.1).
Ever since this development, the process of communications from organizations to
these powerful publics has been based to a lesser extent on downright persuasion, and
more on dialogue and relationship building. The many NGOs and environmental
lobby groups,for instance,that mobilized themselves in the 1980s against big business,
forced many organizations to enter into a dialogue about environmental issues and
often to accommodate these groups.

The professional development of marketing

Marketing developed as a result of expanding mass communications opportunities
and increased competition after the stable period of mass production and consump-
tion (‘production era’) that had characterized the early years of the twentieth
century. Although the century had started with very little promotional activity,
with supply, promotions and distribution of secondary concern (and largely left to
independent wholesalers and retailers), greater competition and saturated demand in
many markets led in subsequent years to the understanding that the ‘belief in the
7
sanctity of “I sell, you buy” became simplistic’ and increasingly outdated.The pro-
duction era had been characterized by mass production as demand exceeded supply;
the conception and design of product lines had therefore also reflected production
requirements more than research into customer needs. And because of the little com-
petition in each product market at that time, businesses, wholesalers and retailers had
made little effort to promote their wares because products effectively ‘sold them-
selves’. The greater competition forced organizations to initiate energetic personal
selling, backed by research, promotions and advertising, which came to be known as
a ‘sales orientation’ (see Figure 2.1). Around the 1950s, again because of a surge in
competition and the emergence of an individualistic consumer ethic (that broke
up the homogeneous mass markets of the past), a sophisticated market orientation
was adopted by many organizations emphasizing a focus on product branding and
positioning, and customer wants and needs as the engine of the marketing process. 8
Marketing thus matured into a full-blown managerial discipline as a result of chang-
ing economic conditions and advances in media and technology, and, like public
relations, has moved from an ‘inside-out’ to an ‘outside-in’ approach in its handling
of the relationships between an organization on the one hand and existing and
prospective customers on the other.That is, marketing thinking, and the use of the
marketing communications tools of advertising, sales promotions, direct marketing
and publicity have moved from direct persuasion and transaction to indirect means
of exerting power in the creation of favourable conditions and mutuality within rela-
tionships with existing and prospective customers and consumers. 9
So far, the chapter has sketched the historical development of public relations
and marketing, and has started to outline how both these functions have changed in
their orientation and practices as a result of socio-economic forces in the Western hemi-
sphere. While such a sketch is rather broad-brushed – as the actual changes in
scope and practices have obviously been more complex, turbulent and a matter of
contestation – it does, however, roughly draw out the stages of development of both