If you’re anything like me, you have probably wondered what makes PR different, especially when it comes to other marketing communications fields like journalism, advertising, and marketing. As a marketing major with a public relations minor, I am only just now learning the difference. In fact, before I took on my PR minor, I had interviewed a woman who works in public affairs for a project that was supposed to be centered around a career in my area of study. (Mind you, my area of study was just in marketing at the time.) I mistakenly thought that working in public relations was in the same boat as working in marketing, and while it technically is, these two fields are still very different especially when it comes to their end goals and objectives.
Sitting in my public relations principles class, I learned that when it comes to marketing vs. public relations, the main difference is that PR is all about building relationships while marketing is more focused on selling products/services. Marketing specializes in driving sales; PR maintains an organizations’ reputation. Another difference is that PR is catered towards internal and external publics (they work to build and maintain relationships inside and outside of the company) while Marketing focuses on external customers only.
These two fields are closely related, and in some companies, you can see them working together. For example, the PR team predisposes the target audience to the sale that Marketing helps the Sales team make. If a company ever mistakes these two different fields/teams as one, they are only hurting themselves and their business in the long run because each field has such a different role to play.