PR and marketing go hand in hand, they are like carrot and pees, bacon and eggs, and all other culinary examples of great pairings. Most companies run the same department responsible for both activities. This poses an issue when an agency is involved and wants to make just one of those things. It’s important to understand the differences in both tools used by marketers and PR reps, but even more so the results. The problem arrives when you expect PR to achieve goals reserved for marketing and the other way around.
Not to say that there is some overlap when it comes to using PR and marketing tools. They can get the job done, even if they're not designed for this purpose. Think about shoes – “these boots are made for walking”, but if you know the right technique and use it properly you can open a wine bottle using your footwear. But you rather use a corkscrew (which can be used for drilling holes - another example of a tool doing the job it was not intended to do).
The first difference I would stress when doing PR are sales, the main point of running any business, including video games. Let’s get this straight - public relations will boost your sales, but they are not designed for this purpose. A good PR campaign can do wonders, although some gimmicky PR stunts blur the thin line between themselves and a creative marketing ploy. Ads, paid cooperations, discounts - these are all marketing tools which serve one purpose only – boosting up your sales and wishlists. PR spreads its deadly rays over a more vast area. As mentioned – it helps with sales (and even the best marketing won’t work as efficiently without good PR), builds up your employer branding and helps with investors. It also plants a seed for the most effective type of marketing, i.e. word of mouth.
This is the second difference. Building a good PR campaign requires time, while a marketing activation is a short flash, a large flame that dies quickly. Each media presence, each CSR move you make builds up the public image and in the long run helps with that holy grail of high numbers. But before you get there is no reliable way to measure PRs performance, while marketing has a lot of indicators to tell you are you doing the right thing or is it time to correct your course. That would be the third difference I’d like to point out. And yes, with all the corporate reports and diligence PR reps came up with some indicators of their work - the number of publications, sentiment or AVE (this beast should have a separate blog post)... But they won’t give you the full picture, and I wouldn’t use them to calculate even the simplest statistics like correlations, nor the more juicy stuff like predictions.
I will cover more details about each of the differences in the future as the divisions between PR and marketing are blurry and the 3 general differences I listed here are just the tip of the iceberg. But there might be a question in your head right now - which one should I choose, if I have a budget for only one?
Don’t worry - I won’t answer with the classic “it depends”. I will answer that you should treat your budget for these activities as a whole and let marketing and PR experts divide it accordingly. Because one cannot exist without another, there is no binary choice here. You have to use the whole package for your game to succeed, and even if you try one approach, you will soon realize that it is still a matter of proportion between the two. And so the question changes - what is the right proportion? And now, I have no other choice but say “It depends” and invite you to further studies of this subject coming soon here - at better gaming agency’s blog.