Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman Public Relations, recently posted Marketing 3.0 and the Mischaracterization of PR, where he comments on a new book written by Northwestern Business School Prof. Philip Kotler, one of the foremost authorities on marketing. Here are the excerpts Edelman takes issue with:
“We have observed that many companies undertake socially responsible actions as public relations gestures. Marketing 3.0 is not about companies doing public relations. It is about companies weaving values into their corporate cultures.”…….”Some employees are ignorant of their corporate values or see them designed only for public relations.” ……”In Marketing 3.0, addressing social challenges should not be viewed only as a tool of public relations…on the contrary companies should act as good corporate citizens and address social problems deeply within their business models.”
I agree with Richard Edelman’s assessment that Prof. Kotler’s perception of public relations is deeply flawed. In fact, I would go so far as to say Prof. Kotler does not know what public relations is—clearly he thinks it is simply a company’s actions to position its public image. This is particularly disturbing given the fact that he teaches marketing to the next generation.
DJA recently interviewed for an intern. Several of the candidates had, or were earning, degrees in marketing. They had never written a press release and had never been required as part of the curriculum to take even a basic class in PR. Unless these young people have an opportunity to work in a PR agency, they will not get that basic understanding of how PR is the success factor in a marketing program and will market like Prof. Kotler, with the belief that PR is only for sending out press releases and fronting a public image.
My PR 101 textbook quotes the PRSA on the many and varied components of PR: counseling, research, media relations, publicity, employee relations, community relations, public affairs, government affairs, issues management, financial relations, industry relations, development/fund raising, minority/multicultural relations, special events and marketing communications. How does a marketer expect to communicate his/her messages to these essential audiences without the use of PR?
While Prof. Kotler is certainly on the right track calling for companies to act as good corporate citizens and incorporate social responsibility into their corporate cultures, his idea that the only role public relations plays is to position companies as socially responsible to the public misses the most fundamental point of PR—communications. How does Prof. Kotler think corporations will create and sustain the awareness that they are socially responsible not only the general public, but to employees, investors, customers, clients, and their industry markets?
Prof. Kotler says employees are ignorant of their company’s values or see them designed only for public relations—could that be because the company has not done a good job of using internal PR to communicate those values? Prof. Kotler says companies should act as good corporate citizens—part of being socially responsible and acting as a good corporate citizen is getting out in public, putting your money where your mouth is and being a good role model—all done through PR programs in media relations, community relations, public affairs and special events.
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Likewise, if a company institutes programs to be socially responsible and no one knows about them because the marketing department doesn’t know how to leverage PR to create awareness, then how can those programs be successful?