Friday, 4 January 2008

Are Public Relations and Social Marketing overlapping?

In adopting one of the alternative models of the relationship between PR and Marketing functions by Kotler and Windak. The consensus is that social marketing and PR have overlapping functions in some areas.
For example according to John Cole Morgan the role of the chief information officer in the British Government have three kinds of duties towards the public:

  • To tell them what the government is doing on their behalf and with their money

  • To make them aware of their rights and obligations

  • To persuade them to do something eg. to use condoms as a protection against AIDS

For the first two duties public relations would be appropriate however to persuade people to change a practice or adopt a new behaviour, this calls for social marketing strategies. Programmes such as these are designed to influence action.


One approach used to influence behaviour includes the Seven Doors Social marketing approach developed by Les Robinson. The 7 steps include:

  • Knowledge

  • Desire

  • Skills

  • Optimism

  • Facilitation

  • Joining

  • Reinforcement

The conclusion has to be that these two disciplines sometimes overlap to reach communication objectives. This doesn't mean however that one is taking the others place.

Reference : The Practice of Public Relations by Sam Black

1 comment:

LeMonde said...

Wow Kristina, I really like your blog because I worked at a Social Marketing Firm in London two summers ago. Honestly I couldn't tell you where the marketing began and the PR ended. The two were blended together as far as pitching ideas, setting up focus groups, and designing marketing and pr strategies.