Marketing, PR, Advertising, Branding, Design, oh my!

I came across a post on Linkedin this AM and while I generally try to avoid being the person who needs to correct everyone…

In this case, I thought a little consideration might help a lot of people.

It’s from a site that features a lot of great ads, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why this piece was there.

I get that it’s a simplification, but here are my issues with it:

• Poor piece of communication over all. The piece can’t decide whether it’s visualizing what the practices do (feature) or what they deliver (benefit/outcome). And the type is irritatingly small.
• Gets the definitions wrong. Marketing is not simply Advertising x 3. PR experts sell ink (media mentions) that hopefully translates to credibility, brand awareness, and long tail sales. Advertisers sell media space that hopefully leads to brand awareness and short-term sales. Branding is the practice of influencing perceptions (typically using aesthetics, experiences, tone & voice, and choice of placement).
• Misrepresents the relationship between the services. Marketing is an umbrella term that encompasses the many disciplines needed to take an idea from concept to market. Your supply chain could be your marketing and for that matter, could have a bigger impact on who hears about you and the nature of the impression it leaves on them.
• Misses the knock against each of the practices. Each of these industries has their issues, abuses, and abusers. This piece either misses them or could have communicated them better. The knock against marketing could be that in a globalized era, it has become too big, automated and impersonal. The knock against PR could be that it’s either still trying to influence perceptions deceptively or floundering around trying to find a new formula. Of course, a few smart people have realized that authenticity coupled with story-telling is the new PR. The knock against advertising is that nobody wants it and today they can more actively filter it. And the knock against branding is typically that people think it means designing your logo.
• Leaves out Design. Design influences impressions through experience. It also influences experience through impressions (don’t touch that button, it’s red. Push that door, it doesn’t have a handle). While design thinking documentation goes back to the 1930’s, the rise of the internet, and the success of design-led brands like Apple and Tesla have created a seat at the strategy table for the design industry.

I’d suggest that Marketing describes a range of tactics, like Adverting or PR, which may result in a positive influence for your brand.

But honestly, get with the program. It’s no longer sustainable to influence the way people think about you by interrupting them or doing a journalist’s work for them. Today:

• Marketing means examining opportunities from anywhere
• PR will need to abandon it’s backdoor media relationship approach if it wants a piece of the strategy pie and wants to genuinely offer its clients any credibility
• Advertising will need to go back to its essence–engage/inform/entertain people while respecting its diminished role in the marketing mix
• Branding will need to recognize that what you don’t do also forms impressions, that influencing word of mouth (like PR seems to claims to do in the infographic) is exponentially more powerful than telling people why you’re special, and that being perceived to be working on something bigger than your own bottom line is the best way to inspire word of mouth.
• Design needs to recognize that its single-minded focus on the end-user makes it a natural for strategic input in today’s consumer-controlled marketplaces. #justsayin’