I certainly see your point, and agree in many regards, that developing cookie cutter organizational structures is dangerous. Some organizations (again to your point) don’t have the types of communications mangers in place to appropriately spearhead my definition of how it should be. Every organization is different and the differences define the structure.

However, in an ideal situation, it is my contention that while most brands or organizations think of marketing as being the overreaching umbrella that public relations falls under, they should treat communications (read: relating with the publics, internal and external) as the umbrella that marketing stems from.

It’s kind of a chicken before the egg arguement, I know, but communications is best done by communicators and communications managers, not advertising or marketing-focused individuals. Our world has it upside down for the most part.

It seems to me that customer service is not meant to be owned, much like professional development really isn’t owned. Many customer service departments report to operations or direct to the executive team.

Where public relations can play a role in supporting customer service internally and externally is developing programs and communication (unless this has been delegated to internal communication) to reinforce customer service skills, or perhaps under communication management, eg. vice president of corporate communication.

Where social media fit in to customer service, something I wrote about some time ago, is that social media is front-line communication.

I also agree with Martin that PR has a broad context because part of its function is to communicate with multiple public — not just customers, not just media, not just the executive board, not just >blank<, but across the whole of the organization. It has to because if the public relations team is doing its job right, it is providing critical advice from the top down and out across various publics.

One thing I am sometimes leery of though is trying to tie this into any organizational structure for a company. Whereas I feel the tie that binds is communication management, I also recognize it may not work within the content of many companies because their structures are all unique. As such, I sometimes think we spend too much time on the organizational structure and place ourselves at risk of creating cookie cutter structures.

That said, however, I don’t think public relations is well suited to be the overall communication guidepost. In general, public relations professional (not all of them) lack certain skill sets to accurately perform the job of communication management.

My apologies for jumping through the conversation; there were a lot of hoops in your comment.

Best,
Rich

Rich – I see your point about customer service being a role everyone in the organization is responsible for, but who, I ask, should own it? My arguement is public relations. PR should develop strategies, messaging, training and feedback for everyone in the organization. It aligns with Martin’s assessment that PR is about broad context. Who is it that has to ramp up when there is a crisis? Who is everyone instructed to direct folks to in those cases? PR. My thought is that PR should be the overall communication guidepost. Marketing is an extension of the communications program — has audiences with different degrees of interest and awareness of the brand, different metrics for success and thus, needs to be managed differently — and should work hand-in-hand with PR.

And Bill, I think my stance here is in agreement with your perspective as well.

Thanks again for the discussion. Do continue!

I see a whole lot more agreement than disagreement in this thread, but that’s often true when you bring strategic communicators together. It all comes back to audience, objective and outcome, doesn’t it?

But dang it, there IS a big difference between marketing and PR. Martin captured my sentiments best: “Marketing is more about delivery. Where PR is all about the broad context. That’s why PR people get so frustrated when they get subsumed by the marketing department.”

This guy and I are on the same page.

I think you are right in that “relating to the public” is what it has become. But simply “relating” to the public (and very often not the right publics) doesn’t help companies during a crisis. Customer service is certainly an admirable skill set, but customer service can be applied to every position in a company so that argument seems pointless to me.

Marketing and public relations do have different skill sets and neither is really above one or the other, but they really cannot work effectively apart either. What good is a public relations person saying something different from marketing? That’s were it begins to look like manipulation.

As for social media, it seems to me it depends on the function of the blog. I’ve seen marketing and public relations (and advertising) people all employ it equally well.

Loved the last graph. Something to think about.

Best,
Rich

Your post was perfectly titled, by the way. Without points of contention, even semanticly, it wouldn’t have sparked such interesting responses. You rock!

I like how you have summarized it here, in that public relations is too often narrowly defined by those that practice it. Maybe I also narrowly defined it in my piece. Possibly a better title might have been Customer Service is at the root of Public Relations. At any rate, it should be.

I can’t agree more than PR is so much about communication to multiple audiences at the same time. From the basic press release to large scale PR campaigns, there are always at least three or four different audiences to cater to. Now that personalized outreach has become an imperative, particularly in the online world, that makes the job all the more difficult.

Thanks, so much for stopping by.

I think you hit it on the nose in your last answer: the line that separates marketing from PR is one of scope of information. I think marketers (at least the ones I know) tend to focus narrowly on crafting the best possible “delivery” system, in both content and vehicle, for the company’s sales message — i.e., what the organization wants to say.

That’s a slender slice of the information universe. The PR-pro, on the other hand, has to deal with the ENTIRE information universe… planning and executing with a wider scope — i.e., to many more audiences, each with its own agenda, all at the same time.

I have to remind executives all the time… effective communications is less about what you want to say, and more about dealing with what people want/expect to hear. You can’t get your message through without considering the context in which it is heard.

Marketing is more about delivery. Where PR is all about the broad context. That’s why PR people get so frustrated when they get subsumed by the marketing department. When you narrow the universe of considerations, you tend to get bad PR decisions.

Anyway… i enjoyed the site.