Hi everyone,
This is my third blog and I am coming towards the end of my placement at Rocky Bay. So far it has been a thoroughly rewarding experience. Despite my desire to pursue a career in journalism, the experience I have gained so far has been invaluable. For today’s blog, I wanted to discuss something that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with my placement but does have an overriding impact on many jobs in public relations.
A large majority of industry PR jobs (or at least the ones I have come across) are not straight down the line PR. What I mean is that they are tied in with another aspect of business, most commonly marketing. In my opinion I think this can be a danger to PR as a profession as people can commonly take for granted the importance of PR as an individual function to an organization.
It can be even more dangerous when PR is simply a secondary function in a marketing department. What happens to PR if that marketing department becomes redundant? Is PR simply thrown into the mix? The issue here is that in many marketing departments, particularly in charities, the performance of the department can be measured through how much money is raised. PR on the other hand can be much more difficult to measure. Unless you come from a PR background like many of us do, public relations can often be overlooked in its true value. This can also be tied back to many CEOs coming from business backgrounds where all that matters is the bottom line.
You may or may not agree with me but I would love to hear your opinions nonetheless.
Thanks guys,
2 comments:
i do agree with Ben, cos i also experience this during my internship. i was doing my internship in a small newspaper and they did not have PR department but the PR duties were done by both editorial, advertising and mostly by the marketing department.
Marketing department manages communication and identifies the stakeholders of the company by building long-term relationship wit these key publics. The department communicates with the key publics that enhance the effectiveness of the company. Marketing department they oversee the problem of selling the newspaper, manufacturing the problem of producing the newspaper, human resources, the problem of motivating employees and finance the problem of acquiring the resources which some should be performed by public relations practitioner.
marketing department’s is also onto Product Development and CSR/PR. The team is responsible for finding out the new features for the newspaper that can attract the existing and potential customers. Product development is one of the key departments in the company. While developing new layout and the features, the marketing team should keep in mind the profit and cost issue.
I also completely agree with you Ben. Unlike many other PR students I opted to do PR and Management instead of PR and Marketing and at times regret my choice because of what you are saying.
My placement thankfully does differentiate between the public relations and marketing functions but I know that a lot of positions dont.
Whilst currently trying to obtain full time employment in the public relations sector I am finding it really hard to find jobs that I can apply for because of my lack of marketing knowledge.
Many job titles are said to be Communications Officer or Public Relations Coordinator but then when reading the job description it is clear that public relations and marketing in particular organisations are interlinked into the one set job.
I agree with you that public relations seems to lose its worth within organisations once the marketing function takes over.
Kendall
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