Chapter 13: Public Relations and Marketing

I agree with the movie we saw a couple of weeks ago when the reporter was standing in Times Square surrounding by the bright lights of advertising and marketing. As consumers, we have become jaded that for the most part, we just ignore advertising and commercials. Now with inventions like TiVo and DVR, most can record their shows and fast forward through the commercials, which causes advertising to get more creative with how they sell the product and marketing teams to figure out which audience to target.

The two most annoying forms of advertising and marketing are spamming and those stupid signs on the highway advertising the space for rent (you know-- the ones that have "Does advertising work? Just did!" in bright crazy letters). When I had AOL and a bad pop-up blocker, I would get frustrated every time I went to a new website when five advertisements would pop-up and I would have to click out of every one of them until I could get back to the website I originally wanted. With much of the public online, advertment teams have gone to the internet to try to sell their product through pop-ups and banners that flash crazy colors, but if anything, at least with me, it has annoyed me so much that I go out of my way to ignore them. Similarly with the highway signs, I make it my mission to stare at the car in front of me until I pass the signs then congratulate myself that I didn't look at that sign; yet, at the same time, I know I saw it because I just tried to ignore it. I guess in the end, they were indeed successful.

This chapter has finally reassured my answer so that when some one asks, I can tell them the difference between marketing and public relations. With PR, we are focusing on the many publics and trying to strengthen relationships between the company, public, and media. On the other hand, marketing is promoting the product to a specific consumer through sales promotions, personal selling, and direct marketing.