Page 51 - Corporate Communication

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40 Mapping the Field

Marketing
Public relations
Marketing/PR
Market assessment
Publications
Customer segmentation Image assessment
Product development Customer satisfaction Events
Pricing Corporate reputation Issues management
Distribution Media strategy Community relations
Servicing Corporate advertising Identity/corporate imagery
Salesforce Employee attitudes Media
Sales promotion Lobbying/public affairs
Social investments/CSR
Product advertising

Figure 2.2 Public relations and marketing activities and their overlap

From the perspective of such overlap and similarities between the marketing and
public relations functions, the separatist attitude of the past has since come to be consi-
dered as a ‘hide-bound’ approach, and the motives that had guided it have also been
criticized by theorists and practitioners alike.The criticism levelled at it was that the
motive for strictly marking the two functions off from one another was merely par-
tisan with concerns about ‘imperialism’ and ‘turf’ lying not far beneath the surface.
And because of such concerns of ‘imperialism’, ‘turf’, and indeed ‘encroachment’,
theorists and practitioners realized, little consideration had gone in the past into
‘questions of organizational strategy and the organizational basis for bringing public
relations, marketing and other related functions into closer alignment with one
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another’. What is more, many practitioners had already dismissed the separatist
attempts to clearly delineate the two functions from one another as political postur-
ing and as rather philosophical, figuring in the scholarly world, whereas, in practice,
companies had, particularly since the 1980s, shown an increased interaction and
complementary relationships between the two. 17 A more fruitful perspective on
the relationship between marketing and public relations was therefore, as academics
and practitioners came to realize,to consider them both as full-blown and largely sep-
arate functions,but at the same time as sharing some common terrain.Philip Kitchen,
a public relations academic, calls this view the ‘middle-of-the-road’ approach where
the public relations and marketing functions are seen as distinct, but where they share
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important similarities and complementary relationships. Similarities, first of all, exist
in the common asymmetrical nature of public relations and marketing; the related
understanding that both marketing and public relations cultivate communications
with targeted groups; and the sharing of research techniques and communications
tools. Figure 2.2 displays a number of core activities of both the public relations
and marketing functions, and outlines a set of activities (including specific tools and
techniques) that are shared, indicating the overlap between the two functions.
Besides the direct sharing of activities such as image measurement tools (the middle of
Figure 2.2), there are also a number of ways in which marketing and public relations
activities can complement one another. For example, there is ample evidence that