What is the Difference? – PR, Advertising and Marketing

The difference between Public Relations (PR), Advertising and Marketing used to befuddle me. I am sure many of you are still facing this confusion and I plan to help you discern the difference. PR as I have explained in my previous article, involves creating and managing all forms of contact with a company’s publics.

Hence, PR inevitably has to deal with both advertising and marketing. But are the terms interchangeable?

The answer is an obvious no.

Marketing as we would learn in schools involves the 4 Ps – Product, Place, Price and Promotion. Marketing is a process – from creating a product to putting it out and selling it off. When I asked the question “What is marketing?” many simply said it is advertising. Unfortunately, they are missing out a whole chunk of what marketing really is.

Advertising falls under one of the Ps of marketing – Promotion. It is an act to promote a product or brand. Advertisements are most commonly seen in print and video. Since all forms of promotion, which includes advertising, are responsible for conveying messages to the publics (most of the time consumers), they fall under PR as well.

As you can see, there are many overlaps between the 3 terms but they are certainly not the same thing. Advertising is just a small part of both PR and marketing, and the latter two have so many dissimilarities that it is impossible to mix them up!