Experts in Spreading the Word

Since I went to school for a traditional English and Literature degree, I left school knowing about the must-reads of British and American literature from eighteenth century to the present. Interning in advertising and a small newspaper, I quickly assessed and confirmed where my interests lie. Curious to learn more and understand the connect between brands and consumers, my current experience in public relations is definitely adding to my knowledge of "how things work." However, I can't seem to settle, what the difference is between marketing and PR? I can't help but think these two roles might be double dipping. Think about it - let's say you're creating a campaign to raise awareness for something. Where does marketing come in, wouldn't you tap into a PR company? In the PR world, marketing is used as a verb (let's market this by doing XYZ), but marketing folks like to think they are the "big" idea... Being the biased PR girl that I am, I would like to say, PR is queen and marketing follows the lead. In the interest of expanding knowledge and spread the word, like any good PR girl, here's what I know about PR and marketing.
PR is about measurement and reputation - how many people know about you or your product or your message and how many people like it. PR has control over messaging and trends. Here's an example, Kleenex is a household name, my guess is some savvy, super cool PR girl working for Kimberly Clark refused to call it tissue until it caught on. She probably called people, stalked the internet and called it monitoring, and threw an event called "Dry your eyes here's a Kleenex" - a relationship forum for women going through break ups/divorces/PMS. So there you go - message spread, PR = A+*. So, then what is marketing? If marketing is the management process that establishes how to execute successfully to satisfy both consumer and organization... is the difference how the brand relates to you vs how you relate to the brand? Courtesy of Ads of the World, here's the best answer I've received.

Interesting right? Choose your field wisely, where do you want to fit in, when it comes to brands, the message and the recipient.

*Fictional analysis, not actual

Great minds, don't think about gas stations.

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This past week I joined some of my younger wahoos at the Get On the Street networking event at Public House. Get On the Street a the University of Virginia is an on grounds organization (student run) that creates a connection between current students and alumni that are in the corporate jobs. Not surprisingly, most corporate and communication jobs are lacking in the diversity department (specs of pepper in a mound of salt, if you catch the drift). The purpose of this initiative is to change that! Of course, when a friend reached out to me about it - this is exactly the type of program I'd love to lend a hand to.
Anyhoo, talking to some of these fourth years reminded me of my interview experiences and getting my feet wet in the marketing/communications world! My first interview was with a search marketing company in Charlottesville, Va-  I was a third year at the time and I had no idea what to expect. I thought it was going to be thinking of clever tags for articles so they would show up in Google at the top of the search results list ... wrong. Apparently, you have to be good in math to be in search marketing. When I arrived they decided to test my skills with excel formulas (fail), then they sent me to a room with 5 chairs and a dry erase board. When the 5 suits entered the room, I was asked to figure out how many ping-pongs would fit in the room. I wasn't privy to the size of the room OR the size of a ping pong for that matter. Needless to say I started to tell jokes about how great I was at math  - my interviewed turned into a Friday night comedy routine. Five minutes later with my not so future employers entertained; they said - "Danielle, let's forget the ping pong balls, how many gas stations are there in the United States?" No joke. Blank stare. They were serious! I made up some lame story about how I was from a town with two gas stations and I'm sure that wasn't indicative of an average US city, so I didn't have a good perspective to answer the question.  Embarrassed, discouraged and disjointed - I went to my car and cried. Granted, these types of interview questions aren't expected to be spot on they really just want to see how you think - unfortunately, I never think about gas stations.

So a note to my young readers, just getting out there and getting their feet wet: if you think you had a bad interview, think of this one ... it could be worse and I'm still alive and working!