More PR?

Public relations can be a powerful force and must be managed actively. Organisations like British Airways and Shell that have won awards for their marketing and management excellence have suffered PR disasters in recent years.

According to Roger Haywood(1998), few marketing professionals will have direct personal experience in PR, though most will have been responsible for the management of this activity.

Even if PR is not an active force deployed by the organisation, there may be countless issues that come to the top of the corporate or marketing agenda that will demand attention. Some may arise without warning and over which management will have no control; failure to manage the consequences will demonstrate that the necessary resources and skills are not in place.

No company has the choice to say it has no PR, it can only choose to be organised or not.

The Omnipotence of marketing can give the practitioners of this craft a distorted perspective of PR. Some think that PR is media coverage/relations, others think PR is part of marketing. There is so much more to PR than-meeting customer needs profitably, which is what marketing focuses on.

And so...

From all indications, the two disciplines are growing further apart. This is more apparent in the UK than countries like Nigeria for example.

After the merger and acquisitions within the financial sector in Nigeria, it became necessary for the banking industry to have corporate banking departments that deal more with the corporate image. However many corporate (public relations)departments have lost responsibility for corporate identity programmes to management consulting firms and marketing departments. Some have lost government relations to legal departments and internal/employee relations to human resources departments.

A bank like HSBC in the UK have a clearly defined communications department headed by a group head,communications that deal solely with internal and external communication. Also external public relations consultants are used by HSBC to give a neutral perspective on the relationship of management with staff, stakeholders and the public.

Can public relations and communications potentially emerge as a seperate discipline in the Nigerian banking industry?

Can public relations define itself and it's roles as a seperate discipline? For example,the resolution of conflict and the mediation of disputes is essentially a public relations function and not a concern for marketing.

Marketing has more than enough to worry about in terms of product development, marketing research,attending to customer needs etc,than spreading itself thin in attempting to manage relationships with a host of non customers publics as well.

This may very well be a topic worth discussing for my dissertation...

Please feel free to leave comments on my blog...what's your perspective on issues discussed?

Thanks

Back to the UK.

I just got in from Lagos, Nigeria at 5.30am this morning. Im off for my dissertation class which starts at 10.30am. Thank God for planes and computers :-)

Hiya!

Im currently in Nigeria where I've stayed for about a week. The weather's great! Hot hot hot!I used the time to get some first hand information from a manager at one of the top five banks in the country.
I told him about my topic of discussion and asked his opinion of the issue. Before I go further with what he thought, just to mention that I have had about 8 years banking experience and throughout my banking career in Nigeria, PR and Marketing were interwoven more or less.

As a relationship manager, my roles entailed mainly managing existing relationships and also sourcing for brand new relationships.Hence, it would be safe to say the disciplines were merged then (this was in 2005). I found myself doing marketing roles and managing relationships as well. There was no seperate department for public relationship at branch level. The manager of the branch had to do both to meet target.

However, the banking sector in Nigeria is now much stronger. The federal government increased the Capital base deposit for banks which saw alot of mergers.This has strengthed the industry, increased competition and so there was never a more important time than now to have a seperate public relations department that will concentrate on the image of the organization.

The manager I spoke with just last week, said to me there is still a merging of roles at branch level. However at headoffice levels there are now seperate departments that manage the banks reputations as it's main objective. This may be called a corporate Media department or corporate banking. How autonomous the communications, issues and marketing policies are is another thing.

I would say there was and still is a cascade of roles from head offices to branchs. Relationship managers are expected to market and manage relationships as well. Every staff afterall projects a company's image and everyone is important in potraying this, marketers as well. Who deals with non customer issues though? Is that left to the CEO? Are roles clearly defined?Where does public relations stand?

HSBC bank UK where I work presently have a different department for communications with a group head, communications director heading the department,after which you have communication officers. Their roles involve both internal and external communictations. It is afterall, the world's local bank and as part of it's strategies clear communication is key and so stakeholders, staff and the public clearly know what is going on within the bank and are carried along. This builds trust, customer loyalty and high staff retention.

So clearly in the UK, the two disciplines seem to be growing apart as the global markets expand. There has never been a more important time for clear, quick communication than now.

In my opinion, more will be achieved by having seperate departments for PR and Marketing in an organization. There will be more flow as Marketers concentrate on sales and service and Public relations practitioners take care of relationships, information, investor relations and promotion.

The size of an organization and it's objectives also affects if the two disciplines come together or not. For example,if an organization has no goods/services, it will concentrate on PR to make people aware of it's cause,identity and community outreach e.g professional services, hospitals and NGO's.

A bank however is a big entity and need Marketing and PR. Products need to sold and relationships have to be managed internally and externally.

I think there is more of PR in Marketing now, than Marketing in PR. So there should be a focus on PR.

Growing further apart?

Marketing's implicit goal is profit.

Public relations goal is positive perceptions and predispositions.

Marketing's measure of success is the no of sales/revenue generated,PR's measure of success is expressed public opinion or evidence of public support.

Also,a Marketing campaign's effectiveness is measured in months.However,it could takes years,even decades for a brands success to be measured.

Some companies and organizations use only one of these disciplines,others use both.The degree to which they are used vary from organization to organization based on:
Purpose
Size
Organizational history

If an organization is not for profit e.g NGOS,community service organizations,government agencies and it's primary goal was serving the public,PR was the more dominant function because building relationships with it's publics was it's overriding concern.
It's PR unit may be called public information,community relations,community affairs or something else other than PR.
PR coordinated relationships with various publics in order to gain public acceptance and approval of the organization's activities including sales.

However,if an organization was a business and profit was it's main goal.Marketing(possibly sales) was the more dominant function.PR was of secondary importance and used to enhance marketing efforts.Marketing generated sales of goods and services and directly contributed to the organization's profitability.

Distinctions between the two disciplines

Marketing always aims at an exchange,usually one that involves money.The one public is the customers.

Public relations aims at mitigating crisis,enhancing opinions,controlling damage,gauging attitudes,awareness. It has a broader range of relationships and goals with numerous publics such as employees, investors, governments and special interest groups.

Ray Simon expressed the distinctions in the second edition of his book: Public relations-Concepts and Practices:
''Marketing and Public relations...both are major external functions of the firm and both share a common ground in regard to product publicity and consumer relations. At the same time however, they operate on different levels and from different perspectives and perceptions.
The traditional view...is that marketing exists to sense, serve and satisfy customer needs at a profit.
Public relations exists to produce goodwill in the company's various publics so that the publics do not interfere in the firms profit making ability''.