[Background: If I'm being honest, nearly everyone I follow on Twitter related to my profession pisses me off. Their not so hidden agendas, "ME ME ME!" attitudes, lack of valuable content and overall shmooziness make me want to not be on Twitter to connect professionally. Andrew Swenson (aka @wordpost) is not one of those people. I'm not sure how we got connected, or who followed who first, but this guy is the best kept secret on Twitter (seriously, check out his blog). When I asked him to guest blog for me (an invitation I would not hand out lightly) he heartily agreed (making him more awesome). In addition to his business smarts and Twitter awesomeness, I'm fairly sure our iTunes libraries were twins separated at birth, our snark whittled from the same balsa wood and our passion for Gen Y in biz pennies in the same wishing well. So without further ado, someone much more adept to discuss all that is marcom than me, Andrew Swenson.]
After Abby’s previous post (What the Eff is Marcom?) we started a conversation about the practice of marketing communication, and as a former Director of MarCom, I agreed to share what I think the eff marcom is.
Marcom in relationship to Marketing
Marketing Communications is usually associated with the promotion part of marketing’s practice. Product, place and price shape marcom.
Take for example Apple’s Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) upgrade. With regard to user interface, the product is only minimally different from it’s predecessor (Leopard). As Apple Blog says, it’s boring. And at $29 bucks, the price is equally boring.
I think Apple understood this when they named the OS. Moving from “Leopard” to “Snow Leopard” is far less dramatic than moving from “Tiger” (10.4) to “Leopard” (10.5). The product and the price of the OS reflected only a minor shift in direction, so the name followed.
Marcom is about making decisions that support product, place and price. It’s not only about figuring out where to place an advert or who to email, it’s about what you’re saying and how you’re responding.
Marcom is about crafting a compelling and relevant story and communicating that story to the right people.
The thing about stories is, in order to be convincing, the story has to be the same every time you tell it. Marcom pays close attention to overarching messages—from packaging, to adverts, to point of sale.
For those businesses that engage in personal selling, marcom has to extend through the voice of sales people too. It’s about the integration of a unified message tied together from individual product messages.
All of this means that marcom people tend to stick their noses in everybody’s business…and that sometimes grates on PRs who feel like their jobs are being taken over.
Marcom in relationship to PR
I think that marcom and PR both boil down to the same goal: effective communication. For me, the real distinction is that marcom is located at the product level, and PR is located at the organizational level.
But because marcom and PR are both focused on what they’re saying and how they’re responding, there will always be grey area in terms of responsibility.
Take social media for example. Should the marcom people or the PRs get the keys to the Twitter account? I think that because there is a significant amount of overlap, each organization has to decide the responsibilities of PR and their marcom specialists.
Marcom is just part of the mix
Marcom is just part of the business mix that both serves and is served by the rest of marketing and PR. There’s always creative tension between the responsibilities of each.
The point is not to place one practice above the others. The point is that each organization must understand the unique responsibilities of each business function and find a way to divide responsibilities for the overall benefit of the company, not one discipline. Battles over domain will always happen, no matter how clearly we try to define “marketing,” “marcom,” and “PR.”
But even amidst battles, it’s pointless for PR to say marketing squanders money. It’s also pointless for marketing to claim that PR is marketing. Sure, their goals and tasks are different, but in the end they’re ultimately on the same team.
-Andrew
Andrew Swenson is a marketing strategist, communication specialist, believer of youth in biz, lover of indie rock, writer, listener and news junkie. He blogs at wordpost.org and tweets @wordpost.
[...] was recently honored with the opportunity to write a guest post “Marcom - The Space Between Marketing and PR” on Abby Wambaugh’s (@abbyannette) blog, [...]
Abby - I feel the exact same way as you describe about a lot of folks on Twitter in our profession! So glad its not just me that feels that way
Andrew - I think you describe it perfectly when you say, “The thing about stories is, in order to be convincing, the story has to be the same every time you tell it.” That’s so key for everyone to keep in mind when folks may feel slowed down or micro-managed by Marcom.
Thanks for the affirmation Rebecca.
As an agency, the first thing we did was get a copy of our client’s brand standards and statements of copy style. For many clients I did a complete rhetorical analysis of their brand and core messages before I even started thinking about a marcom plan.
I guess this is a long way of saying that I think the same details that slow people down or make them feel micro-managed are what can make or break a communicative experience for customers.
-Andrew
[...] dear to me. As I mentioned in the background for the guest post he recently wrote about marcom on here, he is a tweeter to be followed and a blogger to be read. Thanks again for the space and [...]
This is one of the best descriptions of marcom that I have read. Nice work, Andrew.
In some organizations (i.e., where I work), PR and marcom have become blended. We’re a pretty flat organization, so a lot of the PR and marcom responsibilities are co-mingled. We might be seeing more of that model down the line as times get tighter.
[...] the Eff is Marcom” a while back, which Andrew Swenson then kindly followed with a guest post describing his thoughts on Marcom. He and I have recently been discussing marketing, and he sent [...]
I’ve been eagerly catching up on Andrew’s writings. I think that keeping marcom and PR acting like they’re on the same team is part of a holistic approach that necessarily involves upper management, just as a football coach makes different squads with different internal agendas work with each other as part of a greater whole. That they should function together is obvious. Making it happen is a delicate issue.