One of the things that I love about this business is how disciplines that are seemingly specialties often blur together. Take Direct Marketing and Public Relations, for example.
On the one hand, they are very different. You could say DM is targeted and PR is mass. Or you could say DM is promotional and PR is objective. Or you could say DM is using your own media and PR is using someone else’s medium. Or DM is …
This discussion popped up here lately cause I am in the process or reorganizing our Direct Marketing department into one that looks a whole lot like the promotional agency I used to own. I have been frustrated lately about how ineffectively many of our marketing managers use DM. So we’re going to put in an account team structure and mold our project managers, our database automation team and our creative team into one unit that serves our company’s direct marketing needs more effectively. But this post is not about the reorg. It’s more about the observation that our PR Director and I got into as we discussed the reorg.
We began looking at what kind of work would flow through the DM agency. It was real clear that informational communications like collateral was not DM and it was not PR. And it’s pretty clear that when a mailer is sent to a list with an offer to cause a response that we are talking DM. And it is pretty clear that when a news release is sent to the media that we are talking PR.
But what about our company’s eNewsletter that is run by our PR department … but carries links to promotional opportunities like new white papers and webinars or free downloads of software? The newsletter goes to 135,000 opt-in subscribers who generate a huge percentage of our web traffic, many of whom register for various offers and are entered into our lead generation process. Is the eNewsletter a DM tool disguised as PR, or is it really a PR tool that builds our reputation as a thought leader?
Another example … our corporate blog is run out of our DM department. It clearly is designed to build our reputation as a thought leader, but it’s real task once we build up the audience is to create visibility for our products and promotions with C-level decision makers.
DM increasingly must deliver content that is contextually relevant and sensitive to prospect needs, based on their interests and their stage in the buying cycle. These offerings look more and more like PR. When we run our 6-page ads in special editions of Fortune magazine, we are promoting the concept of “simplification through innovation” and encouraging readers to register for our promotions at a microsite.
And now, a more PR-centric example. The boilerplate in all our news releases contain hyperlinks back to special pages in the website where we can then launch a promotion and create a sales lead.
The good thing is that the PR Director and I are not territorial. We are both focused on the objective of growing our company’s business. And the blur will continue.
