Whether a PR specialist, marketer or ad professional, the communications professional must work as a team to ensure their company's success.
Despite being considered a support function within a company's org chart, the Communications Office or Department plays an important role in achieving its goals. That's why it's common to find this space home to specialists across various areas, such as: Communications, Public Relations, Marketing and Advertising.
What does each of these professionals handle? Can they do each other's jobs? Or do they simply complement one another, forming a unit focused on pushing the company's goals forward, strengthening its reputation, and giving it a good corporate image?
The truth is that a communications professional, no matter their specialty, should know a bit about each area to do a better job. Still, it's worth clarifying what each of these people does, from their respective fields, for the company's benefit.
COMMUNICATIONS PROFESSIONAL
This is the company's core when it comes to communication. This is the strategist who understands and masters corporate and institutional communication in order to interpret any event that could affect the company's image and how it's perceived by its internal and external audiences.
The communications professional, while they can work in the media, can also work on the organizational communication side in the private or public sector, through fields such as: Internal Communications, Communication Training, Marketing, Institutional Communication, PR Specialist, among others.
PR SPECIALIST
James E. Grunig and Todd Hunt, two communication theorists, said Public Relations (PR) was: “The management of communication between an organization and its publics.”
Based on this definition, the PR specialist must know their company's reality, its mission and vision, in order to communicate to internal and external audiences what the organization does. In this way, they become a manager who builds cooperative ties with their company's employees, community representatives, interest groups, the media and other stakeholders. The tools they use to send their information include: press notes, newsletters, events, press releases, etc.
The PR professional must also be an effective advisor in crisis situations that could affect corporate reputation and image. To do this, they must constantly monitor what's being said about the organization in offline media, online media and social networks, so as to prevent any conflict or rumor from impacting the organization.
MARKETER
The marketer is the Marketing specialist. This is the professional who, through a well-studied strategy and creative ideas, positions their product or service in the market with added value.
Among this specialist's functions is market research, which leads them to identify their consumers' needs and wants, so they can offer them a tailored product. Knowing your target audience or market segment is essential to successfully positioning your product.
The marketer works with the 6 tools that make up the Marketing Mix: Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Processes and Physical Evidence. The right combination of these elements will make it easier to succeed when rolling out your Marketing Plan.
AD PROFESSIONAL
Their main strength is persuasion and creativity. They're in charge of researching, coding, tabulating and interpreting information about a given brand to craft a message that, with simplicity, grabs the target audience's attention.
Based on the study of the product, the market, the consumer and the competition, they're able to create an advertising piece that captures their audience's attention and stands out from the rest.
The ad professional uses various methods to organize creative teams and generate ideas to shape a creative concept for their graphic, visual or audiovisual proposals.
The combined work of these professionals, with proper direction, defined objectives and goals, and an open mindset toward innovation, becomes a valuable human resource that strengthens the work of everyone at a company, and creates new opportunities to give it visibility in front of its audiences.