Marketing and Corp Comm are out of alignment – economic uncertainty and financial pressures will make things even worse in the months and years ahead. For many organizations, a Chief Comms Officer may be the answer – with the experience and gravitas to help navigate the storms just over the horizon.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-2023-year-chief-communications-officer-sarah-thompson

Another team of that caliber was Carl Byoir & Associates, one of the two largest PR firms years ago. Today’s New York Times blast on page one against gas ranges would have brought a reply from Byoir executive Gene Martin who would have convincingly shown Times royalty (always willing to listen) why the flaws in today’s story put a ceiling on credibility (a situation one could call flaw to ceiling).

Marketing execs had no influence—zero—at GE News Bureau, Byoir and other greatest-ever communications firms. Separate staffs, separate budgets, separate objectives. Marketers wanted maximum sales, and the PR people wanted maximum awareness of positive truths. When Byoir defended A&P against government efforts to break up the company, A&P marketing executives were willingly under Byoir PR geniuses who eventually won.

Top communication teams had their own anti-discrimination rules. When GAMA (Gas Appliance Manufacturers Association) asked for an account chief younger than Gene Martin, the Byoir president said simply “Gene is the Byoir executive in charge of your account.”

Gene stayed and so did the account.

You’re right that dollars are influential. May we need dollars even more urgently than we need public esteem? We should admit reality so that our managements don’t see us as over-inflating our egos.

Is there anything wrong with students wanting great grades and management wanting great earnings? There’s way too much baloney about “putting profits ahead of people.” At any company including our own, judge whether most employees would rather have 50% more profit or 50% more people.

Killers should go to prison but is it wrong to promote and enrich marketing people who help customers to have more happiness and in many cases longer life?

“Let’s get out there and sell” can bring us as much happiness as “let’s get the public appreciate our goodness.” Notice that sales can help pay for goodness but no amount of goodness will pay the rent. Marketing may help us do more for the environment, women, minorities and public health. Marketing can be good for the public as well as for the marketers.

Good public esteem is enjoyable as is the “good pint” that a brainy PR Daily writer is said to enjoy. But bringing in money may deserve even more management attention than bringing in the euphoria that pints and
reputation can bring. We can enjoy both and is it sensible to prioritize?

.2. The bigger budget enables Marketing to hire more people and smarter people and to pay better. When Marketing’s money talks it may entice brilliant people to “come hither” with the appeal of a Taylor Swift number.

.3. Because Marketing spends big bucks for advertising, Marketing may have more access and influence than Communications with major media.

.4. Top management may understandably see Marketing as a source of income and Communications as more of an expense.

.5. Communications may more often have to counsel top management “don’t”
but Marketing may more often counsel “here are two ways to do what you want.”

.6. Marketing often has several group chiefs, Communications may more likely have just one chief, so Marketing may have several times more people at the table.

.7. When sales are great, management is more likely to know this than when attitudes are great among a company’s publics, so Marketing gets appreciated more often and more for putting points on the board. And listen, do they not deserve it?

A good idea, if you’re in Communications rather than Marketing, is that if you can’t be with the one you love, try to love the one you’re with.