From a graduate business professor teaching MBAs in marketing:
Strategically, I believe you still have the old dilemma that you addressed early in your career at Medill. Can P.R. ever be true to itself if it is part of marketing? This debate was resolved twenty years ago—P.R. is part of marketing. My view and nearly every time there is a major P.R. issue or marketing driving dissemination of information there have been problems for P.R. Marketing ultimately is responsible to the company. No matter how much we talk about customer voice being represented by marketing, in the final analysis the company is paying marketing and it “HEARS THE VOICE” it wants to hear.
However, P.R. although paid by a client has the greater mission of correctly disseminating information as it is known.
“Let me offer up Walker’s Law: The greater the amount of communication, the less valuable bad communications and the more valuable good communications. Here’s how I got there. Today, many of us communicate essentially from the moment we wake up until we turn out the lights at night, sixteen hours or more. (If you include passive one-way communication, like radio and TV, that number goes even higher.) This is far more than our grandparents or their grandparents communicated. With sixteen hours of communications a day, only the good stuff cuts through the clutter and gets noticed.
The quickest way to the top in any organization is to be able to express your thoughts concisely and compellingly. Especially for those just starting out, it provides a way to set yourself apart and show your potential in a very tangible and noticeable way. I continually remind those on my team: “If this e-mail (or memo or presentation or elevator conversation) was the only thing a top executive had to judge you by, are you OK with that?” Often it is what they will be judged on. As a result I advise every professional, but particularly those starting out, to put communication at the top of the list of things to work on. Communication matters.” (from a very senior executive in our business).
