If it walks like a duck, it's not an eagle
Marketing is generally defined as a process that identifies, anticipates and supplies consumer requirements efficiently and effectively. Marketing communications, publicity and advertising exist on one side of the marketing effort, pushing information to the customer. The media and analysis communities are on the other side of marketing providing information to create the messages that are pushed to the customer. Public relations exists along side of marketing and serves the marketing effort, but it is not a subset of marketing because it is not directly involved in the sale of products and services. Instead, the activity of public relations is the engineering of opinion in the marketplace. It is, in essence, the conversation of the market, where the various publics – the media, the consumer, and industry – participate in defining and building the economy. A public relations practitioner is one who acts as an advocate for all the various parts of the marketing community – the media...