Livingston

Dec
10
2007

Convergence

tightrope

You can feel the tension.

Consider the following post titles from the past two months:

    And so interesting discussions are taking place about the proper placement of tools and roles. Unfortunately, driving square pegs into round holes never seems to work well. The end result equals healthy debates about semantics.
    Susan Getgood more than anyone nailed this one when she said the lines are ablurring. Convergence of communications and marketing disciplines is upon us.  Social media tools are forcing marketing, customer service and PR to work together. Further different departments have been assigned to manage social media, and in some cases it’s given it’s own role, Community Manager.

The Real Issue: Goodwill versus Transactions

Professor Bill Sledznik has an outstanding post that analyzed the differences between the PR and marketing disciplines, “Why I don’t trust marketing.” His beef was that too many 30-something PR bloggers blend marketing and PR,  and in process defined marketing and PR.  Check this out:

PR involves adaptation of behavior — a process through which organizations work to align themselves with the needs of publics… We must advocate for our clients but also for the stakeholders they impact.

…marketing is the process of getting goods and services to customers using those 4 Ps we learned about in college: product, price, placement and promotion.

These definitions are absolutely correct for the modern marketing and PR function in a traditional company. However, I think this division is a lost cause within social media tool sets (maybe because I’m 30-something). Convergence is upon us. But Sledznik’s accurate definitions describes the convergence crisis.  It’s the tension between PR’s mission to create goodwill between organizations and stakeholders, and marketing’s mission to deliver return on investment (ROI).

This crisis between goodwill and transaction is an inevitable result of tools that cross disciplines. Yet because they are multi-disciplinary tools, it’s important to comprehend all aspects. Whatever box you’re coming from, to be successful in social media I believe you must understand the classic purpose of PR: “the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc.”

We’ve seen numerous examples over the past few weeks (most notably Facebook’s Beacon) where placing transactions before goodwill has resulted in more corporate blow-ups. To me, the true tension revolves around the primary outcome.

Marketing needs transactions, but as we have seen, forcing this doesn’t work. More than ever permission (a result of goodwill) must occur before marketing occurs. Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing vision may finally be coming to fruition.

Two of my social media experiences (Goodwill and Godsmack lead singer Sully Erna’s book “The Paths We Choose”) demonstrated that success occurred when calls-to-action were discretely available to an engaged social media community.  That being said, those results were an intended by-product of goodwill, but not the primary outcome of our outreach efforts. People loved the fashion and Sully’s work enough to click through for more.

Will this convergence spill over into the traditional marketing department, forcing more PR outcomes into traditional marketing disciplines? Or will social media PR and marketing be its own unique discipline? The future is uncertain, and no one really knows.

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by Geoff Livingston | Branding, Internet Marketing, PR |

15 Responses to “Convergence”

  • Gaurav Mishra Says:

    December 10th, 2007 at 9:30 am

    @Geoff: I think that digital media is custom-made for Permission Marketing and any attempts to use it for traditional media type interruption marketing will be unsuccessful. Permission Marketing needs patience which a lot of transaction-oriented marketers don’t have. However, as the balance of power shifts away from traditional media towards digital media, permission marketing will eventually become the “only” effective way to connect with consumers and close transactions. Let me point you to a post I wrote sometime back on digital media and permission marketing which discusses some similar issues.

  • Lauren Vargas Says:

    December 10th, 2007 at 11:13 am

    Juggling hats and something will fall…

  • The Beta Stage » Blog Archive » Can’t Misses for December 10th Says:

    December 10th, 2007 at 12:01 pm

    [...] The Buzz Bin: Convergence:  The cries of bloggers against PR have been growing as of late, and naturally there’s been [...]

  • Kami Huyse Says:

    December 10th, 2007 at 12:44 pm

    I agree that this is mostly semantic, I possibly should have called my post, “Customer Service is at the Heart of Public Relations.” Still, I am glad that the post sparked a discussion because marketing and PR are going to continue to be in the same sandbox.

  • Valeria Maltoni Says:

    December 10th, 2007 at 1:33 pm

    Although semantically in marketing communications, I have also worked as Product Manager with P&L responsibilities. The online medium (and mindset of its dynamics is producing) lends itself to some form of integration.

    Tom Peters said it so many years ago — service is key for individuals and organizations alike.

    I see a marketer looking at value vis-a-vis needs and wants and to reach those ears and eyes wherever they choose to be — choose being the operative word. I see a PR practitioner and communicator seeking to have a conversation with his publics where there is interest in having one, wherever they are.

  • Geoff Livingston Says:

    December 10th, 2007 at 3:21 pm

    @Guarev Thanks for coming by and sharing this link. Permission markeitng seems to be the middle ground.

    @Lauren Not necessarily…

    @Kami A victim of headline scamming in the Google Reader has turned into a pretty fascinating discussion.

    @Valeria True, yet now online the marketer is being called upon to have conversations.

  • Techno//Marketer: links for 2007-12-11 Says:

    December 11th, 2007 at 1:35 pm

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] Convergence » The Buzz Bin Geoff Livingston looks at the convergence of marketing in social media. (tags: marketing convergence geoff livingston) [...]

  • PR Squared: Marketing: It's Evolution Not Revolution Says:

    December 13th, 2007 at 12:09 am

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] We’re still evolving.  Look at Marketing.  In the last few years alone, the Live Web has emerged – empowering all online denizens to publish/share/influence with the same speed and efficacy as any multinational marketeer – and lo’, the top-down “broadcast” model which dominated Marketing for the past 75 years has been turned on its head.  [...]

  • On Convergence - Covering All That's Social All the Web Says:

    December 13th, 2007 at 2:21 pm

    [...] this week, Geoff Livington wrote a post about Convergence. Geoff referred to the convergence of marketing, customer service and PR. Not [...]

  • When Should Marketers Use Social Media? | Gauravonomics Blog Says:

    December 16th, 2007 at 7:32 am

    [...] and I followed the trail and stumbled across interesting posts on the topic by Susan Payton, Geoff Livingston (also see), Mack Collier, Jeremy Pepper, Kami Huyse, Susan Getgood, Bill Sledzik, Robert Passikoff [...]

  • Eric Eggertson Says:

    January 8th, 2008 at 1:04 pm

    I guess it depends on how narrowly you define customer service. If I’m helping a client or a client department, then I’m in customer service whether I like the term or not. If I have lousy relations with those clients, then I won’t be very busy, and I’ll have lots of time to moan on my blog about how they don’t “get it.”

  • Geoff Livingston Says:

    January 8th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    @Eric Similarly, I guess that means if you are a janitor talking to a NY Times reporter then you are the PR department. And if you screw up the VP of PR should get canned, and the CEO will have to explain how the story ended up that way…

    Just because you may understand a department function esoterically doesn’t mean your qualified to perform that job.

  • » Public Relations can be Challenging Connie Bensen: My Conversations Says:

    January 15th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] So I have a question back - doesn’t marketing put a ’spin’ on things, too? (Having a feeling Connie’s going to get an education in the difference between marketing & PR…which is great because I’m willing to learn!) Geoff Livingston said, in January 13th, 2008 at 12:57 pm In online communities, there’s increasing convergence between marketing disciplines. I wrote a post called Convergence on that topic http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/2007/12/10/convergence/ [...]

  • Copywrite, Ink.: Digging In: Marketing vs. PR Says:

    January 18th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Kramer auto Pingback[...] is distrusting of the integration of public relations under marketing. Livingston believes in the convergence of integrated communication under marketing. They are neither wrong nor right, or perhaps they are [...]

  • Marketing Departments Become Two-Way » The Buzz Bin Says:

    March 24th, 2008 at 8:01 am

    [...] Just a disclaimer: Some may place different tools under the control of another function like PR or product marketing.  This is particularly true in the case of social media, which is often fought over by different departments within marketing, in large part because it combines aspects of many disciplines. [...]

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