Between Convergence and Power Struggles: How Public Relations and Marketing Communications Professionals Interact in Corporate Brand Management

Abstract

The last years have seen a new dynamic in the confluence of marketing communications and public relations. Trends and developments in the social and technical environment of organizations, like a growing concern for business’ impact on the natural environment, critical stakeholder movements, and new ways of communication and content production on social media and web 2.0 platforms, confront both functions with a common challenge. While marketing theory and practice increasingly adopts traditional PR related approaches and dialogical modes of communication, PR has broadened its spheres of activity towards classical marketing areas (Hutton, 1996, 2010). And although, from a historical point of view, both functions derive from different paradigms, in today’s working environment their scope of duties and functions are increasingly overlapping and hard to distinguish. Thus the need for integration and cooperation becomes greater. This is especially the case in areas where both parties have high stakes in, like e.g. corporate branding. Building up a strong corporate brand (Schultz et al., 2005) and an integrated communication strategy with a common core and polyphonic instruments (Christensen et al., 2008) is a preferred solution to master the challenge of increasing homogeneity and interchangeability of products and services. However, the implementation of such strategies is often hindered by a struggle for power and conflicting worldviews between the marketing communications and public relations function. In order to analyze the relationship of both functions in the process of corporate branding, we conducted an empirical study in four large German industries (energy, telecommunication, insurance, and chemical industry). In each company both the head of corporate communications/PR as well as the head of marketing communications were interviewed (n = 104; random sample, CATI telephone interviews). We used descriptive and analytical statistics with SPSS to analyze the data. The results of the study draw an interesting, in parts very contradictory picture. On the one hand we found a strong convergence of stakeholder priorities, goals and instruments of branding, and a high level of structural collaboration. But the data revealed a number of underlying conflicts, discrepancies and contradictory perceptions. Although integration seems to be rather advanced in day-to-day branding activities, marketing and PR managers do not share the same mindset. Perceptions of their roles and functions within the organization are very variant. PR managers still lack self-esteem on behalf of their value contribution to corporate success. Having these findings in mind, the paper argues for a change in the focus of scientific research. Research in strategic communication should not only focus on organizational structures and departmental power struggles, but identify the different mindsets and perceptions of the actors involved. Educational background, job experiences and overlapping or contradictory role perceptions in PR and marketing (Holtzhausen & Tindall, 2011) are important issues to be analyzed.