The integration of marketing and public relations within an organisation is situational. It depends on market, size, type of organisation, and scale.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr
1949

Over the past three months I’ve investigated trends in the integration of marketing and public relations for Vuelio. It’s a debate that’s been ongoing for more than 50 years. Indeed, paper published in The Journal of Marketing in 1978 suggested that alignment of marketing and communication functions drove better business outcomes.

We spoke to the leaders of marketing and public relations functions working in agencies and in-house to understand the opportunity for the integration of marketing and public relations. COVID-19 has been a significant driver, but media change, a reappraisal of brands, and business performance are also factors.

Marketing and communications, like all operational functions, should work together

Discussions about the integration of marketing and public relations are typically abstract and of limited value in practice. Without a defined organisational structure and business objectives we can’t begin to understand the best way for these functions to work together.

Such discussions also ignore the role of other business functions within the organisation, such as the integration of sales and marketing, or the way that internal communications and human resources collaborate. That doesn’t make sense.

In large organisations the integration of different public relations functions can itself be difficult to define. Each has its own set of stakeholders and objectives. There are different priorities for corporate and financial public relations relative to consumer and trade public relations.

A recent case study highlights the issue. Unilever has been lambasted by an investor about Hellmann’s Mayonnaise having a purpose. These impacts corporate and consumer public relations. It also impacts the corporate and consumer brand.

These teams will need to work together, along with investor relations, brand, marketing, legal, compliance, and office of the CEO. It illustrates the absurdity of trying to apply a general structure to how two functions should integrate.

Integration of marketing and communications is situation

The role of marketing and public relations within an organisation is highly situational. It depends on numerous factors including market, size, type of organisation, and scale.

Any discussion about the relationship and integration of marketing and communications quickly becomes polarised and breaks down. Conversations should start with customer needs and business objectives.

An organisation should put its stakeholders first and build an operation model around their needs. Where stakeholders and requirements overlap, it makes sense to integrate functions.

Tony Langham, Executive Chair and Co-founder, Lansons, is quick to shut down debate about the integration of marketing and communications, because he believes integration is the only realistic option. CEOs and celebrities don’t care about definitions. They care about being successful, he says.

“Senior professionals in traditionally structured companies love to create silos. In commercial life, caring about definitions or silos is usually in inverse proportion to the importance of the task,” said Langham.

In Reputation Management: The Future of Corporate Communications and Public Relations Langham asserts that all marketing services including communications practice have naturally been divided into two parts. The first deals with the reputation of an organisation, investors, crisis, and risk; the second is aligned to sales and marketing.

Trends in marketing and public relations

Through a series of conversations with leaders of marketing and public relations functions working in agencies and in-house we identified contemporary trends related to the integration of marketing and communications.

1. Customers, CEOs and celebrities really don’t care

2. A reappraisal for brands

3. Account based marketing integrates sales, marketing, and public relations

4. COVID-19 as an accelerant for media change

5. Community management as the sharp end of a brand reputation and sales

6. Influencers as relationships not media

7. Searching for answers

8. Measurement matures and that’s a good thing

Please download a copy of the paper if you are interested in exploring any of these areas.

Thanks to Vuelio for funding this project and for everyone that contributed. As I suggest in the introduction this is a debate that has been ongoing for more than 50 years. Let’s check in again in 2070 to see how it's progressed.