Defining Terms (Part I)

by Kelle Campbell

 
Ever felt that nobody understands what you do? Not your family, sometimes not even the people you actually work for? Maybe it's because you're in public relations, which can also be called social marketing, reputation management, public affairs, corporate relations, corporate communications, etc, etc.

It's hard to nail down what you do when there are a gazillion titles you can select. However, without a common understanding of terms and titles, we run into communication problems. These  range from applying for a PR job and finding yourself in sales to tackling the results of an unwise decision that management neglected to tell you about because they figure you're there to fix, not prevent, crises.

Also, a lot of PR activities and goals are identical or closely resemble other management functions such as marketing or advertising. So let's start with what is not public relations:

Marketing
Marketing is the mix of disciplines needed to move products and services to the final consumer, e.g., research, promotion, distribution, PR, etc. However, some companies separate their PR department from their marketing department while others make marketing a part of their PR departments.

Advertising
This is the controlled placement of paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media to attract public attention to a product or business. Public relations occasionally makes use of paid placements as well, but this is just an option, not a dedicated mode of operating.

Branding
According to the 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, branding "creates the perception that there is no product quite like yours." Now the main function of PR is to gain public understanding and approval for a product, service, group or idea.

Can you see a potential overlap? In fact, PR practitioners and brand managers have had long arguments about the boundaries of their functions. However, the authors of the book, Al and Laura Ries, offer some clarification, saying that brands should be built with publicity and maintained by advertising. (We'll tackle publicity later).

Sales
Sales usually involves an interpersonal exchange at some point. That is, the salesperson builds a rapport with prospects and often maintains a relationship with them in order to expand future sales. From this perspective, sales does have something in common with public relations, and in the end, PR is supposed to support sales. However, going up to a person and saying "Buy my product/service," is not considered public relations.

So what is public relations? There have been hundreds of definitions, but I'll use one that the late William C. Adams, APR, Fellow PRSA, gave in the summer 2000 issue of The Public Relations Strategist: "Public Relations people build credibility and understanding for their organizations with various publics through dissemination of truthful and timely information."

Kelle Campbell specializes in freelance public relations writing for PR companies, businesses and nonprofit organizations. She has contributed several articles on PR, writing, small business and technology topics to print and online publications. For more information, visit http://www.kcwriter.com.

This article may be freely reprinted as long as the bio is included.

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