By Tanu Jalloh
This is 2015, and I am returning to the fabled discourse of how the ever growing world of communication has caused us to look back at the apparent superiority fray between Marking Communications geeks and Public Relations gurus.
While I believe that some amount of decency has been, or is still being, injected into a largely adulterated vocation in recent Sierra Leonean experience, the real professionals, who are trained as public relations managers, now compete with impostors for want of functional literacy or the fact that anybody can do PR.
In the year before this one, I made a case that having been part of the convergent communication systems of Sierra Leone, in a way I thought, and still do, that Public Relations has been reduced to one’s ability to be on every radio stations even without them exhibiting any knowledge of the pronounced situation or issue. To be a bit humorous here, in this country the PR thing, which I was taught in college is a serious management vocation, is now at the mercy of the organisation recruiting a PR person. I had argued that PR, against that backdrop, needed to be repackaged and marketed properly. That’s my idea of ‘Marketing Public Relations’ to earn its respectability (see Politico, October 9, 2014p4).
It is in that regard that I go the Marketing way and I subscribe to those views, no matter how controversial they may be, that Marketing as a discipline has subsumed Public Relations in so many ways. I justified those conclusions, albeit entirely on the premises of first-hand experiences in journalism, public relations and later marketing. I consider myself a media and communications practitioner who would later engage in public relations. I now, more or less, see myself making the marketing executive type. I have had a taste of the three worlds – Journalism, Public Relations, and Marketing and I’m, therefore, coming from those backgrounds to look at how the relevance of public relations is gradually being subsumed by marketing. The latter is now making effort to sell the former, given their emergent relevance in the business environment today.
This review, (largely an account of personal practical experiences as a media and communications scholar, a journalist cum PR executive, trainer and lecturer in media, public relations, marketing and corporate communications), is largely based on observatory approach and as well as a bit of a qualitative research. It is also informed by the stretches I hope to attain in marketing communications as a possible career.
Consequently, I ventured into analysing business, finance and economy here at Politico. Today’s apparent radical departure from the usual ‘Biz & Eco’ spotlights on the routine, might appear to some of you as a subtle but potent marketing strategy. Let’s agree that something is being marketed here. But for purposes of hypothesis what is being marketed here, if at all anything is? By the time we get to the rear of this peroration you will have been reasoned enough to get some answers.
While Public Relations (PR) on the one hand largely refers to how an individual or an institution wants the public to perceive them with an ultimate goal of securing public goodwill, that attempt is open for a rejoinder. But premised on that assumption, which I think summarises the plethora of definitions of PR generally, I think the concept itself, public relations, is limited in terms of scope, reach and effect. With activities usually also confined to the norm.
Marketing on the other hand is wider in terms of outlook and approach. Marketing is attractive in strategies with activity plans and attendant budgets invariably convincingly larger than most PR efforts can possibly propose for the same scope of engagement. Soon we realise that what we consider PR now will fast become a component of marketing. In fact, marketing has the power to determine the success of a particular product or service launched. Effective marketing involves the application of many strategies, two of which are: advertising and public relations.
In this part of the world most PR course outlines, or syllabuses if you like, at college or university levels are lacking in real marketing exposure. While students who develop some knack for the discipline end up not learning anything about marketing, almost every marketer gets to learn about the rudiments of PR as a component of their academic endeavour. I will come to that later when I put a case for marketing as opposed to public relations in contemporary society.
But first let’s try to explain and, for the purpose of this argument, possibly differentiate between PR and Marketing. It is also possible that similarities exist, but who’s got an edge over the other? I mean the competitive advantage between PR and marketing? I will get to deal with a few instances as if to proffer some clues that may indicate the margin marketing has over PR in terms of contemporary appeal. By the way those who practice public relations, advertising, branding, brand language, direct marketing, graphic design, marketing, packaging, promotion, publicity, sponsorship, sales, sales promotion and online marketing are termed marketing communicators, marketing communication managers, or more briefly, marcom managers.
Take a look at “the whole picture”, according to Danielle Walker (January, 2009) in one of his Ezine articles. He says organizationally, marketing is usually a line management function, the first level of management, with supervisory or team responsibility for individuals and tasks. Line management operates in real-time and works closely with the workforce to contribute to the goals of the organization. Public Relations, on the other hand, is a staff management function and one that provides counsel and other services to support line functions.
He refers to a scenario that tells the real organizational strategic response to output and results in terms of marketing. “Recently, a colleague of mine told a story about how management at his organization had arbitrarily decided to change the title of his department from ‘Public Relations Department’ to ‘Marketing Communications Department.’ Surprised? You should be, but not just because they changed the department title on a whim,” he recalls.
The American Marketing Association (AMA) Board of Directors defines marketing “as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”By contrast, here’s how PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) defines PR: “[Public relations] helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other. Public Relations broadly applies to organisations as a collective group, not just a business; and publics encompass the variety of different stakeholders.”
So you tell me. Was I marketing public relations? Was I marketing my Biz & Eco column? Was I marketing my potential? Any attempt to answer these questions will suggest that public attitude to public relations tends to be a bit repugnant largely owing to perceptions around certain conducts of public relations people in Sierra Leone. We are lost out on public relations here, totally consumed by the fact that we often get usually inadvertently engaged in perfecting marketing efforts, even at its basics, without an intent so well established. It happens every day; everywhere and even now, here.
I have come to learn that perceptions are the most obstinate human attributes no single approach could adequately change in totality. By totality here I refer to the aggregate or collective thinking of a people differentiated only by social, political and cultural commitments and orientations. That is a poignant basis for doubt. Although some cynicisms are informed by education, high level of exposure or the critical thinking ability of an individual or a society, they nonetheless affect goodwill, product sales, service delivery and image appreciation.
Lies, some of the perceptions will claim, are almost always synonymous to the proselytisation of PR executives. In Sierra Leone when an outright lie is told, usually about a political decision that went bad, most people consider it a public relations stunt and sometimes marvel at the source, usually a mistake of a professional. Besides non-professionally trained practitioners, who can barely express themselves well on anything they are familiar with, consider themselves public relations officers or communications experts.
Before I leave, and given my profile at the outset of this piece, I know for sure that in Sierra Leone a large number of the so-called public relations people, scattered all over the place, is a bunch of untrained ‘professionals’ who crash-landed into the trade for want of the real PR professionals. This is never easily the case with marketing executives who deal with such complex tools as ‘marcoms’, integrated marketing, social and digital marketing, etcetera.
© Politico 21/01/15
