Ever since the early days of social media I've been struck by the crossover between social media and public relations. Many of the basic rules of engagement are the same - be honest, be transparent, be timely, be relevant, seek advocates, etc.
Since I'm a digital marketer with a PR background, the happy marriage of these two worlds is kinda fun for me on the agency side. Sure, we have the occasional turf battle with other agencies jockeying for position in this new space. I think our clients struggle with this a bit, too ... the brand teams want to work with their digital marketing agencies and the public relations departments want to work with their PR agencies. But in my experience, there's plenty of work to go around, especially in the pharma world where we're really just getting started.
Of course, the holy grail would be for PR and Marketing (and perhaps even - gasp - Sales!) to get together on their social media strategies. The right approach would be to take a look at all marketing and advertising activities - including PR - and determine how best to integrate them together (first) and how to integrate social media into them (second). Sadly, I don't see this happen often, largely because of the departmental silos pharma cultures tend to foster.
Just like offline and online marketing, everything works better when it's integrated.
I'd love to see the pharma PR and Marketing teams step out of their comfort-zone-silos and work together. With the right leadership, it can be done.
So is social media a marketing or PR function? I think it can be both.
5 comments:
Risk in social media is a function of two elements: the content created and the environment it is viewed in. PR has been dealing with this issue for years. There are some formats in which you control the message and the environment (press releases), other where you control one but not the other (town hall meetings) and some where you control neither (traditional media). I think this is why PR agencies seem more comfortable in social media--they are used to living in the gray. But I agree, at its best, it will be an integrated agency approach that will get the maximum value from social media.
Perhaps neither... What if the role of SM is owned by Customer Service? People who sincerely care and are great at helping others are certainly more equipped to thrive in an honest, transparent and timely communications channel.
Marketing & PR should certainly promote open and honest corporate communication going on via SM channels, but in my experience, they are not the best equipped to own those conversations.
Great point - thanks for the comment. While the name "social media marketing" inherently implies a marketing function, certainly components of the social media conversation require a customer service mindset. And it's possible this is there area where pharma could make the biggest difference in the eyes of consumers.
Amber - thanks for verbalizing so eloquently what I haven't been able to explain myself re: why social media is so close to the PR realm ... You're absolutely right about the control issue.
Marketing is not divorced from PR. In fact, it is a limb of marketing. While marketing refers to the 4Ps mainly - Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement; marketing also includes, publicity, packaging, positioning, sales promotion, and personal selling.
The latest definition of marketing from AMA states that marketing is the set of processes, activities, and institutions involved in creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
Social media from the marketing perspective is a PR job for the marketer - and also a customer opinion/discussion platform for the customer.
When the platform of social media is controlled by the marketer (for eg., a company blog) it is a PR - marketing job, when it is on a third party platform, it is the wisdom-of-the-crowds buzz. Who owns that?
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