The Not-so-Thin Line Between Marketing and Public Relations

Name: Lynette Liew
Campus: Curtin University Sarawak

Hello everyone! It's me again! It has been almost a week since my last entry. How is everyone doing? How's school and how's work? Well, hopefully all of you had a great week. 

I have so many things to share about with all of you! I have to apologize again for the pending posts. I will post frequently in here now, I promise! :) So, where should I start? Hmm, I will just go further into detail of my internship in Miri Marriott Resort and Spa since I did not share much about the organization and also what we do in the resort as public relations practitioners in the first entry.

One interesting information that I want to share is that the Public Relations & Communications department in Marriott is actually a subset of the Sales & Marketing department. The Sales & Marketing department consists of the PR & Communications department and Rooms & Reservation department. The marketing communications is of course in charge of marketing activities such as dealing with customers, meeting the needs of customers, making sure the company generates value in return and maintaining the budget so that revenue meets the budget. In short, it is more to providing services to customers. The Rooms & Reservation department is responsible of making reservations for guests looking to stay in the resort by helping the customers over the phone who are calling to get price quotes and reserve rooms.

So what do we, the PR & Communications department actually do? Most of the time, people often get confused between marketing and public relations and take it to be the same. I have to admit that I used to be one of them in the past, but after working in the industry, boy I came to realize how wrong I was. There is actually a thin line that separates both of them. Well, in my opinion, they are both in charge of totally different responsibilities. We, as public relations practitioners, are responsible of building and managing the resort's reputation and providing free media exposure. We publicize about the resort through the media such as newspapers, televisions and magazines by writing press releases, doing flyers, brochures and advertisements and holding press conferences. We also have to be active in social networking sites such as Facebook, Blog and twitter, brandworks (a template to manage websites) and our Miri Marriott Resort and Spa website, making sure they are all well maintained and updated with the promotions and latest news of the resort. I was even told by my manager that in bigger corporations, people are being hired just to maintain the organization's Facebook page. How cool is that!! :D That piece of information was really a new insight for me! Other than that, I also noticed that everything which has got to do with writing, will be passed on to my manager. For examples, writing speeches for events and replying to certain emails. It seemed to me that it is absolutely important for a public relations practitioner to excel in the English language.    


So now, I finally came to realize that there is actually such a big difference between marketing and public relations, at least in the organization I am working in now. Our goals are the same, but our responsibilities are completely different. I hope this entry will give all of you a clearer view on the difference between marketing and public relations. It might not apply to all the other companies though.  


Well, I will stop now. I will post another entry soon, as promised. :) I really hope to get some responses from you. So that I know if this post has helped you in understanding public relations in any ways.

 Stay tuned people! :)