BEYOND ADVERTISING, PR AND DIRECT MARKETING – 3 OBSERVATIONS Say marketing and most people think advertising. Some advertising agencies even claim to be marketing agencies, or worse still designate themselves as – ‘advertising and marketing’ – as if marketing is less than marketing. The facts are – advertising is a subset of communication and communication […]

BEYOND ADVERTISING, PR AND DIRECT MARKETING – 3 OBSERVATIONS Say marketing and most people think advertising. Some advertising agencies even claim to be marketing agencies, or worse still designate themselves as – ‘advertising and marketing’ – as if marketing is less than marketing. The facts are – advertising is a subset of communication and communication is a subset of marketing. Advertising is an obvious but small part of the overall marketing equation. Even within communication there are other subsets including media relations, direct marketing and many others. These are the suite of communication options or tools the marketer can select from. A number of these tools receive a lot less attention than they should, including: Personal selling Sponsorship Sales promotion Personal selling is in my view the most neglected and yet potentially the most powerful, particularly in the B2B environment. I would argue that advertising has little or no role…