Are you a “marketer” or “advertiser”? A “communications professional” or “PR practitioner”? Chances are, if you have a title, you’re using a term differently from how others might — maybe even contradicting an institutional or industry association definition.

Here are some examples: The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines “marketing” as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” Within most universities and colleges, the “marketing” discipline resides in the business realm, versus communications or journalism. Many people I know with marketing degrees would say they focused more on product research and development than promotion and communication, and rightfully so.

Then there’s PR: The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) defines “public relations” this way: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” While marketing may fall under a business degree, PR usually lies within journalism and/or mass communications — focused some on working with the media, but even more on an integrated approach to influencing a target audience, using all sorts of mediums.

Advertising, contrary to what you’d think, may be the vaguest of them all. The American Advertising Federation (AAF) does not have an official, adopted definition for “advertising.” But, Wikipedia (hey, why not, the definition there was as good as anyone’s) says, “Advertising is a form of communication used to help sell products and services.” And, of course, almost anyone would agree that “advertising” involves a paid-for medium or channel.

To further confuse matters, communicators often refer to “marketing” as the umbrella, and put “advertising” and “public relations” underneath it … Most then say the difference is this:

• Advertising is paid-for (as stated).
• Public relations is “earned editorial or news” — or the process of trying to turn a negative situation into a positive or not-so-negative one (using news media).

Not exactly. This type of thinking too often prompts segmented objectives. In the above scenario, advertising may be held responsible for moving the needle on an objective, while public relations is simply charged with garnering coverage — or, worse yet, is only engaged during potentially damaging situations.

It might be better to contend that, rather than one umbrella, there are indeed two: marketing and public relations — with advertising falling under both, in the form of purchased print/online ad space or broadcast time, and even direct marketing (and possibly more).

That said, the audiences for marketing and public relations traditionally differ: Marketing audiences are customers/buyers (and maybe influencers to some degree). You hope to effect a transaction of some sort. Public relations audiences can be anyone — but the objective is not to get them to buy or recommend your product; it’s to get them (in loose terms) to like, appreciate, respect, and possibly even agree with, your organization and its mission.

So, what’s the objective of communications overall? Sales? With marketing, maybe. With public relations, maybe not.

And what’s goofy is that, like advertising, media relations may fall under both. Often, when people say they’re in public relations, they may actually be in media relations, and they may be trying to sell an actual product or service (using editorial). In that case, earning editorial space is no different than buying it, except it’s less expensive, and people may be more swayed by it, depending on the actual angle or deliverer of the message.

Personally, and, yes, even though our company’s name has the word “marketing” in it, I prefer the expanded term “marketing communications” to define the role of many of us. It just seems to better qualify our role as an agency, and what most of us in the industry do day to day. But, as we’ve all learned, “marketing” can be a loose, all-encompassing term, understood by most to involve communications (however they’re categorized or separated), and not to always be taken literally to involve product development research, pricing, distribution models, etc.

And, I’m ok with all that (as long as I don’t need to go back to school and get another degree). Because, if the titles and terms don’t factor too much into defining our roles and determining how our efforts are evaluated, formality may not be needed. But if you’re ever at a cocktail party and introduce yourself as a “marketing expert” to a “product development manager” — and your job involves developing communications and promotional materials or dealing with the media — prepare to explain yourself.