By: Julia Montgomery Stewart, Public Relations Manager
As communication mediums splinter, the integration of all marketing efforts is becoming an absolute standard for all brands.
With this in mind, it seems to me that there has been a lot of discussion lately about where PR stands in the marketing universe (or Marketing Umbrella for those tracking college Marketing 101 terminology). The general conversation centers around two questions: Is it still a stand-alone discipline? Or is it a part of the overall mix?
I firmly believe in the latter, and in response to a recent blog post by social media and PR guru Danny Brown, titled “Is there room for market relations,?” there seem to be quite a few PR professionals who are coming over to my side.
For years both corporations and agencies have had separate departments for PR, advertising, media, branding, marketing, interactive, etc. Now these functions are being forced to work together as a team – no longer able to fight for territory on programs or work in silos because of the implications of splintered brand communication and need for measurable ROI. Simply stated, every discipline needs to be at the table from day one of all marketing planning. Am I calling for a Kumbaya-like collection of the minds, with no clear leadership? No, I am simply saying that each and every marketing discipline needs to work together to solve all business problems and reach all marketing objectives, never assuming that the solution falls in one camp over the other until all avenues have been explored.
For the team at Push, this is a way of life. We take a discipline-neutral approach to client work, putting the business objectives over the marketing nomenclature. And this is the way it should be.
Every marketing program needs a central strategic focus from which all executional strategies and tactics should fall, not the other way around. Which discipline executes what in a marketing program should be based on skill set and know-how; there is simply no more room for traditional discipline roles in today’s marketing universe.
It is my hope that the PR industry will continue to encourage integration and work to break down walls between marketing disciplines, further blurring the lines.