Understanding the Functions of Marketing and PR

Use this work book to help you explain the functions of marketing and public relations. You
should ensure you use additional examples to support your explanations.

Marketing
Market Research - Market research is the process of gathering information and then
analysing or interpreting the information about a certain market, product or service that
is going to be offered in the market they are researching into. They also look into the
past, present and potential customers for this product/service and so this gives the
seller an indication to who they are aiming their product at and how they can target
them. Some of the research process includes looking into the characteristics of the
audience and what habits they have. Looking into the demographics of the audience
and the age range of them will also give a clearer view on who to aim the product at
and ways of advertising the product so they are aiming it at the right audience.
Looking at the particular competitors that will be alongside helps give you an idea of
the competition that will obstruct the product and how you can overcome that and
make the product better than the competitors. Market research is crucial for the
development of a product as it helps shape a better understanding of the target
audience and how aiming the product at a particular audience will draw them in more
towards the product. It is the first step to do by looking into the market and see what
there is in the market and how the product you create will top the ones already out
there. There can be two ways to gather market research and these are: primary and
secondary research. Primary research is creating your own way of gathering
information (this could be a survey or interview) and this is for your own benefit.
Secondary research is looking at sources out there that have conducted studies or
reports and then by using the information already out there, you can get a clear
understanding of different audiences and their demographics. By getting a clear
understanding of what is out there gives the product a better place in the market
because you need to find a place for the product in the market and see what gaps
there are for your product and this is important when looking at market research. An
example of this is if you were producing a product for teenagers and that was the
target audience, you would need to look at the demographics and the age range of
this audience so that if they mainly come from a wealthy background, the way they
need to advertise the product is more of a high quality and more formal so that it
approaches that audience. If its aimed at teenagers, the way they advertise the
product is crucial too and having the market research helps them to do this. With them
being teenagers, using social media would be a good way to approach that audience
and use advertising and making sure its advertised on YouTube too as young people
tend to be on these more rather than an older generation.
Market Analysis Market analysis involves looking at data (mainly numerical data)
and attempting to discern patterns and look at probable future movement based on the
data that is collected. It also involves looking at how the market is trending, which
specific sector is moving and how the prices are moving and what individual events
might affect the prices of stock. It is analysing what is happening in the market so that
the product being created can fit into the best possible slot available in the market and
how it can grow and gain customers. When looking and analysing the market, the
investor needs to consider announced mergers, profit predictions for a coming quarter
and new technological discoveries. Some investors take a mathematical approach,
looking at historical market data and they predict the markets future path. Some like to
create a rough sketch of what the possible market tendency will be and this is helped
by relying on news and other sources and rumours which helps build to this rough

sketch. The goal of a market analysis is to get an estimate of the attractiveness of a

market in the future and now. Investors evaluate the future attractiveness by getting a
clear understanding of evolving opportunities and threats that relate to the investors
own strengths and weaknesses. By having this information, it helps put the
product/service in a clear spot in the market. It will then grow into a more successful
product by analysing the future statistics as the product needs to develop and be
recognised by the audience and it needs to develop more in the future without losing
the interest from the audience so analysing the market helps this happen.
Marketing Strategy To increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive
advantage, there needs to be a marketing strategy in place to help achieve this. A
marketing strategy involves all long-term and basic activities in the field of marketing
that deal with the analysis of the situation of a company. Marketing strategies are
there to serve as the underpinning of marketing plans and they are designed to fill
market needs and reach marketing objectives. Marketing strategies are developed as
multi-year plans, with a tactical plan detailing specific actions that will be accomplished
in the years. Marketing strategies need to take a long-term view; tools such as
customer lifetime value models can be very powerful in helping to stimulate the effects
of strategy on acquisition. Having a marketing strategy in place helps create a plan
that will effectively help the business/product grow and helps having the plan in place
so that the inventor will know where to develop and without this it wouldnt give much
of a firm background for the product and it might not succeed as much as the inventor
would want it to. Marketing strategies will differ depending on the situation of the
business but there is a number of ways to categorise some of the general strategies.
They are based on market dominance and the firms are classified based on their
market share/dominance of an industry. The four typical types of market dominance
strategies are leader, challenger, follower and nicher.
Advertising For a product or a company to get more recognition, the use of
advertising helps this be achieved. There are different ways to advertise a product and
there is a lot of technology nowadays that will help something gain recognition. The
most common way to advertise a product/company is the TV. Most channels will
provide the opportunity for people to advertise products (such as ITV) and with
programmes like Britains Got Talent and X Factor on this channel, a lot of people tune
in to watch them so there will be a lot of recognition for adverts and more people will
buy the product or look into the company. It could also be advertised through print
based products (such as a newspaper or magazine). They normally provide slots that
you can buy to advertise the product and this will gain recognition from people who
buy the paper. Its not as popular as reading the news online but there are large
proportions of people still buy newspapers and magazines so they will end up seeing
the advert. The internet has an important role in society today as its used by millions
of people everyday and this is where advertising will become noticeable. Sometimes
you can get pop ups when on a certain website which then makes the viewer watch
the adverts and if you go on YouTube they sometimes have adverts playing before the
actual video does so this also is a good way to advertise a product as YouTube is very
popular. There are also different forms of social media (e.g. Twitter and Facebook) so
companies could upload different images or videos to advertise a product and with
people following the account, they can see what is uploaded and constantly follow the
adverts and pass them on. With people constantly watching adverts whatever they are
doing on a daily basis, it helps a certain product become more popular and this then
increases the profit the product makes by the advert. When people start to talk about a
certain product and if the advert is made quite catchy, it then becomes even more
popular. One advert, which was really popular last year, was the Christmas advert for
John Lewis. They created an emotional advert that captured the hearts of the nation
and it was advertised on the TV and was also advertised on YouTube. It was also
trending on Twitter and had millions of people watching the advert and this gave John

Lewis a lot of recognition by the advert.

Brand Promotion Brand promotion is slightly similar to advertising but the focus of
this is more towards brands and how to promote that certain brand. Brand promotion
is a common marketing strategy and is intended to increase product awareness of the
brand and sales and overall company value. Businesses use it to keep the image alive
for the consumers and they also show what the company has for sale. They change
the promotions based on what is happening in the market and the efforts required for it
to be effective is for the marketers to be passionate about what they are doing. A
primary objective is to increase brand awareness, which is a measure of whether
people know about a companys products and services. If a film is made and in the
film a group of people are sat drinking the brand Coca-Cola, this is promoting the
brand and so its not advertising the product noticeably, but they are promoting the
brand so when people watch the film and see that they are all drinking Coca-Cola,
they will be gaining recognition from that as a company. Sometimes even when a
celebrity posts on image up on a social media site of them using a certain hairspray or
make-up brand, they will be promoting the brand themselves as people will be looking
up to what they use and end up looking into the brand more and this causes
recognition for the brand and is a simple way of brand promotion.

PR
Managing The Message Managing the message is about trying to control the
stories that are getting out about a certain topic. It is similar to positive publicity in a
way as you release a prepared statement or press release out so that you are
managing the message and controlling what you say so that it influences the story
more and your opinion more. You could also conduct interviews for company
spokespeople by speaking in public. You could prepare media interviews and
speeches and could write website and social media content. Normally when
something goes wrong at an organisation/event which turns into a news story, you
could allow one or two people to speak to the media and this would then let them
rehearse the message they want out there and stick to it. The public relations
professional must know how to effectively address those concerns using powerful
tools of the PR trade, which is publicity. The spokesperson must address the subject
in an emotive way and have to make sure that when managing the message they
need to reach out to the audience by using appropriate statements so there is no
upset caused by this. Using social media now is a good way to manage the message
as people will post on Facebook or Twitter a statement so that it gets passed around
quicker and more people will read it through that than the news but the most common
way is to release a statement.
Positive Publicity Using the media is a really good way of generating positive
publicity for a business. Its an area of marketing, which is sometimes forgotten about
and isnt really considered in some cases but if you can use the media to tell people
about the business it can be a really effective way of spreading the word. It can also
generate sales and enhance the credibility of the business and its also a free way to
promote a business so its not going to be hard to do and is an easy way to start of
promoting a business. Being published in the press or getting a feature in there can
add weight to all other marketing strategies and shouldnt be seen as something that
small businesses cant do when a business is just starting out. There are different
ways to gain publicity and its not just businesses that use positive publicity. For
example, if a celebrity had done something or said something wrong which may have

offended a few people, they will mainly turn to social media (e.g. Twitter) and post their
apologies to try and show them in a better light and gain positive publicity from doing
something bad and making something good out of it. If they want to kick start their
career again after being out of the media for a long time after maybe a bad incident,
they could turn up to a charity event so they are helping out a certain charity but also
giving themselves some positive publicity. It is an easy way to gain back fans, which
were lost, and show that they are a good person and again its a free way to gain
positive publicity.
What Is A Spin? A spin in public relation terms is basically a form of propaganda
which is done through providing an interpretation of an event or campaign which will
persuade the public opinion in favour or against a certain organisation or public figure.
Politicians are normally accused by their opponents of claiming to be honest and seek
the truth while using spin tactics to manipulate the public opinion. As there is a
frequent association between spin and press conferences (especially government
press conferences) the room which these take place is normally described as a spin
room. A group of people who develop spin may be called spin doctors who engage in
spin doctoring for the person or group that hired them. With the 2015 election coming
up, politicians will be using spin to try and get voters to lean towards their political
party and use propaganda to influence people towards their party. There are a number
of techniques which helps the spin more persuasive. The techniques include
selectively presenting facts and quotes to support a certain position (e.g. a
pharmaceutical company could pick trials where their product shows a positive effect,
ignoring the unsuccessful trials). Another technique is phrasing in a way that assumes
unproven truths or avoiding the question, Burying bad news which means
announcing one unpopular thing at the same time as several unpopular things, hoping
that the media will focus on the popular one and the last technique is misdirection and
diversion.
Damage Limitation Companies will sometimes be involved with damage limitation
and this is all to do with a bad piece of PR. A company will try to limit the damage
which is caused by this as it could go downhill for the business and cause a lot of bad
press. To try and turn the negative publicity round, a company will defend the business
and will try and add a positive light to the business by limiting the damage that
negative press stories have on the company. They would then release a statement
which would include how well the business is and how good they are and will
apologise for the disruption caused and the negative impact it has had on the business
and the impact it has had on the target audience or users of the business. When there
was the horse meat scandal a couple of years ago, Tescos had to use damage
limitation by using adverts to show how apologetic they were and that they were doing
everything they could to fix the situation. But with this story having a really negative
impact on the audience, people will then refer Tescos to the horse meat scandal and
thats why damaging limitation is vital for this story with it being a huge scandal. When
an MP says something that is racist or homophobic and is offensive to a certain group
of people, they may get sacked for it (if its a serious issue) and this then distracts
them from the issue and shows that the political parties take offensive statements
seriously and this then helps the public see them more in a positive light. The British
diplomats in Washington made immediate attempts to limit the political damage which
followed from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The embassy officials realised
before the magnitude of the disaster that the BPs leaking oil had the potential for farreaching political and economic effects in America. There was an early priority to avoid
a backlash against British interests and Sir Nigel Sheinwald stated We need to be
active and sympathetic. He wrote this in a memo on the 30th April 2010 which was 10
days after the explosion and he asked if British Government agencies were offering
any assistance. Sir Nigel had then tried to communicate with Tony Hayward (the BP
chief exclusive) and Nigel was pushing repeatedly for meetings or at least a telephone

call but Hayward was proving hard to pin down. This then annoyed Nigel but he did
also comment that Hayward would receive a sympathetic audience.
Creating An Event For an organisation to get more recognition for their company,
they can create events, which will help promote the recognition of the company, or a
new product that they have as many people from their target audience will come and
participate in the event. An example of a company that organised an event is LG
(mobile phone company). Even though their event didnt achieve the expectations they
had, it still promoted the brand and a lot of people still talk about the event now. They
decided to have helium balloons filled with free gifts from the company and made them
into the letters L and G for the name of the brand. This is beneficial for the company
because they are promoting themselves by giving away free gifts and gaining positive
publicity with such a huge event. But unfortunately, when people turned up for the
event, they started bringing knives, sharp sticks and BB guns to then pop the balloons
and get the free gifts. This ended with 20 people being injured so what they had in
mind and what they thought was going to be a positive way of promoting their
company, ended up as a disaster. I would say it didnt create positive publicity
because it ended up being negative in the papers but it did promote the company as
people are still talking about the event now.
Lobbying Lobbying involves interest groups, charities or business groups and they
will speak to politicians mainly and will try to get a law made or changed which will
benefit their group/charity. Its all about trying to influence your ideas onto politicians or
the government and to try and persuade them that the laws you want to introduce will
benefit the public and other factors. Greenpeace is an organisation which looks out for
the world and the environment and wants to make a change in that sense and they
target and engage with people in power and pressure them to take the bold steps that
are needed to protect the planet. They make sure that their campaign demands to be
heard by the decision makers (like politicians or industry leaders) and they ask them to
translate their demands into the real action which will protect the environment. In the
1980s, the commercial exploitation of Antarctica for oil and minerals became really
bad and inevitable. The Greenpeace group launched a campaign to make Antarctica a
World Park. They wanted to set up a World Park Base on the continent and they
were constantly lobbying and negotiating with Antarctica Treaty Nations. In 1991,
seven years into the campaign, the nations agreed to a 50 year minimum prohibition
on all mineral exploitation and the World Park Antarctica was declared.