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.