The Maturation of PR
Public relations is playing a more decisive role in the marketing mix

Public relations, once viewed among marketers as a discipline relegated to little more than media relations, executive speechwriting, and publicity stunts, is emerging as a key part of the overall integrated marketing mix for many advertisers.
A recent ANA study of 100 members showed that a majority of marketers (62 percent) plan to increase internal staffing and overall spending on public relations over the next five years, and 75 percent said they plan to increase overall spending on PR. That’s an increase from 16 percent and 25 percent of respondents, respectively, who said they had planned to make similar increases for 2017.
The study, titled “The Evolution of Public Relations,” was conducted by the ANA in partnership with the USC Center for Public Relations at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. It was intended to gauge client-side marketer perceptions of PR and to identify the trends most important to the future of the discipline, how it demonstrates its value, and how it will evolve over the next five years.
“Public relations as a discipline is clearly evolving and becoming more important to marketers,” Bill Duggan, group EVP at the ANA, said in a statement. “And PR is being fueled by the rise and omnipresence of digital communications. Digital has put PR front and center, as it allows immediate outbound communication and inbound feedback.”
In the same statement as Duggan, Fred Cook, director at the USC Center for Public Relations, added: “Our findings clearly predict a convergence of PR and marketing over the next five years. It’s going to be very interesting to see how that merger plays out in agencies and organizations.”
Different Disciplines
While old stereotypes have PR and marketing execs being somewhat suspicious of each other and engaged in turf battles, merging the two disciplines is logical, with business and financial forces now afoot to bring them closer together than ever before.
“We’re already seeing these two disciplines move considerably closer, in many ways because they had to,” says Samantha DiGennaro, founder and CEO of DiGennaro Communications, a New York-based boutique PR and strategic communications agency.
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