Greg Shaw serves as Advocacy Director for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s U.S. Program, a role that directs public policy, finance and communications for their giving program in the United States.
He was also a featured moderator at PR+MKTG Camp Seattle held earlier this month. I asked him to share his views on whether PR and marketing more or less aligned because of social media?
He is what Greg had to say:
“Over the years I have worked in a variety of scenarios – PR and Marketing disconnected from each other, PR and marketing aligned, PR reporting to marketing, marketing reporting to PR. You name it, I’ve seen it.
The line between PR and marketing is blurring just as the line between media and social media is blurring. PR practitioners are often hired to in lieu of marketing and vice versa. This blurring creates interesting PR and marketing scenarios.
For example, take the scenario of selling a new book. A book review in The New York Times is read on my iPhone which enables me to purchase and read the book through my iKIndle app. I can write my own review of the book on my own blog and then promote it through my own Facebook and Twitter accounts which I know are read by several book publishers as well as New York Times writers and editors. You can see PR and marketing aligned by necessity in that scenario.
Were PR and marketing aligned in the naming of iPad? I’ll let you answer that one. Where was the alignment of PR and marketing in the Tiger Woods scandal?
With so much blurring its worth creating some definitions in order to answer your question clearly.
Differences between PR and Marketing
For purposes of argument let’s say PR is the art and marketing is the science behind influence. Both practices ultimately are about persuasion and influence. That is of course a gross generalization, but there is more than a grain of truth. Creativity plays a vital role in both PR and marketing approaches as does statistical analysis and segmentation. However, in my experience public relations and its best practitioners often have a sense – a feel really – for how a message should develop in order to play well with a certain audience. They also are experts at landing those messages in a genuine, credible manner in the right news or media venue. The outcomes they seek are measured in metrics like awareness, impressions, recognition and support. PR outcomes can seem a little squishy to marketing types.
Marketing and its best practitioners often have numbers – analytics – that guide resource allocation toward a set of activities designed to achieve outcomes like market penetration or market share. Marketing outcomes are often quite concrete.
Enter Social Media
Social media is agnostic about PR and marketing alignment. Social media’s attitude is: whaddya got for me today? Social media doesn’t give a damn if you are a PR or a marketing person. Social media cares that you are genuine, in the moment and directly relevant to its particular community of passionate and committed people. Social media is really the dream of PR and marketing people. It is the embodiment of two-way communications with engaged, impressionable people.
Edward Bernays, the father of modern PR, and David Ogilvy, the consummate ad man, might have sat over single malt scotches together dreaming of the day they could reach audiences through a social media.
In my world, we are interested in public and political will for specific policy and awareness changes. We call the work of achieving those aims advocacy. If marketing integrates PR, advertising and other approaches, advocacy integrates the tools of public affairs. I define advocacy as public policy, public communications and public finance. Advocacy in my sense is probably most closely aligned with marketing. Our policy shop is a little like product development, our communications shop does the work of public relations and our public finance work is often about understanding costs and driving revenues.
Aligning PR and Marketing: A Case Study
A recent partnership between the Gates Foundation and Viacom, the company that brings you MTV, CMT, Comedy Central and BET, is a terrific blend of PR and marketing for social good. Get Schooled uses traditional and social media to raise awareness among relevant stakeholders and communities about the challenges facing America’s public education system. This initiative is dedicated to identifying sustainable and effective approaches that will increase high school and college graduation rates, and promote the fundamental importance of education. This past fall we launched the initiative with an event on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood and a half-hour road block across all Viacom properties with content that featured President Obama, LeBron James and Kelly Clarkson.
Marketing assured us we would reach influentials across several key audiences including elites who watch The Daily Show, parents who tune into Nickelodian, young people through MTV and BET and the heartland through CMT. Traditional media reached 12.7 million viewers – the highest viewed show that day.
PR was thrilled that education reform would breakthrough pop culture in E!, Entertainment Tonight, People Magazine and even the Hollywood industry press. The campaign launch generated more than 110 distinct print articles (including three AP articles that were picked up in over 500 outlets) and 50 broadcast stories.
Ultimately both marketing and PR were most elated and surprised by the reception the campaign received through social media – blogs, Facebook and Twitter. More than 100 blogs posted and Facebook and Twitter drive hundreds of thousands of consumers to view our PSAs.
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