It's sunday evening and I have a few thoughts.

If Marketing uses PR as an aspect of it's promotions, how much of PR is used in marketing promotions and does this mean the two disciplines are coming together?

The main pie in Marketing is in it's use of advertising which is paid for while PR is said to be third party endorsement.

Advertising focuses on bringing a product or service to the attention of potential and current customers. Marketing uses advertising as it's key strategy to get value in return. The needs of the potential customers are researched and marketing deals with how to meet those needs with particular products and services.different approaches are used for different products. These paid for approaches include: brochures, commercials, direct-mailings and personal contacts.

PR uses communication techniques to promote goodwill between an organisation and it's publics. It is an on going process and does'nt just happen when there is a new product/service. These publics include stakeholders, customers and employees. There is more to an organisation than getting returns for sale. There is the need to make sure the organisations vision, mission and strategies are communicated to the staff.Staff have to be kept up to date on changes in organisational flow as this will give them the confidence to face customers and be the best they can be.
PR is broader in the promotional aspect of it. A company's reputation is enhanced, protected and promoted all round. With regards to promotion, PR seeks to promote an entire package; the company using the media, newspapers, magazines, word of mouth. Though PR sometimes aims at promoting a particular product or service, there is more of a longterm objective in terms of influencing people's opinions, views and arousing interests for these goods.

There is indeed a bit of a gray area as regards whether the two disciplines are merging or growing apart, however though there seems to be a blur, Marketing and Public relations are really two distinct management functions.