When looking at job requirements for Public Relations positions, there seems to be a common theme in what companies are looking for. Most are looking for strong writing skills and communication skills. Most ads that I saw also emphasized some sort of self motivation and a good attitude. All these skills make sense. What I thought was most interesting however, was how hard it became to search for a job that was exclusively PR. Most companies were looking for their goto guy that would manage the marketing, media, or journalism side of their organization as well along with the area of public relations. I just thought this was ironic because we had just participated in class discussion about how these are NOT the same thing. It’s interesting that even people in these areas can’t seem to separate PR from marketing, advertising, journalism, or media.

Chapter Thirteen goes more in-depth about the relationship between Public Relations and Marketing. The funny thing about this chapter was that it was almost like an overview of my principles of advertising course that I took last spring. The book says that it is so important to read about and understand the key concepts of marketing because Marketing and many aspects of Public Relations focus on the same thing. Public Relations Professionals used to be able to rely on mass marketing to get their word out. However with the rise of mass media, audiences have become can be reached on one television station. Even though audiences have become fragmented, they are still easily and more efficiently reached due to the increase in channels through mass media. With the fall of mass marketing, the PR world has adopted a new kind of marketing that is “consumer-focused”. This uses “a variety of media to build relationships with individuals”. This is where Integrated Marketing Communications has become really important. The rise of consumer-focused marketing has changed the face of Public-Relations from an afterthought in the minds of advertising agencies, to an integral part of the advertising process. The idea of combining marketing and public relations is that if we build relationships with consumers, we can better understand how to persuade the publics to purchase products.  On the other hand.  The article by Bill Sledzic talked about what PR is not and his main focus was on the fact that Public relations and Marketing are not the same thing.  Public Relations uses tools like advertising, selling, public affairs, media relations, publicity, and marketing but in know way are they the same thing.  because PR reaches a far broader scope.