Marketing communication: principles and practice

T H E F U T U R E
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The initial RSA study concluded that the successful company of the future
will be inclusive, that is, it will recognize and respond to the interests of
those with a stake in a company’s success, and will ‘include’ all such groups.
The part of management concerned with the management of relationships
is public relations, which may also be described as public affairs, corporate
communications, and corporate affairs. These terms do have different
meanings: public relations is the practice of managing important relation-
ships, and public affairs deals with relationships involved in public policy
development (with government, political parties, pressure groups and the
media, as they contribute to public policy debate), and with issues of manage-
ment. ‘Corporate communications’ recognizes the importance of managed
communication in relationships and includes forms of communication used
for corporate
1
purposes.
The 
Tomorrow’s Company
study advocates inclusion, and values the interest
of stakeholder groups. Where important internal-stakeholder groups are
involved, other studies have shown that they are more willing to come forward
with ideas, feel able to express ideas, and trust the corporation to use rather
than criticize the ideas that are put forward. Drawing in, and including
stakeholders, means identifying them, and then using communication to
establish a dialogue with them, which allows for:
• the expression of interests
• clarification of interests
• conciliation of what may be conflicting interests
Communication is central to the Tomorrow’s Company approach, and
communication between people is the core of business activity. The trad-
itional emphasis of marketing, however, does not fit this philosophy.
Final comment
While the creation and retention of customers is crucial to business enterprise,
the traditional implementation is too narrow. A relational marketing model,
while it cannot resolve the many non-marketing problems of business in
society, can work in tandem with public relations (managing relationships
with publics to resolve conflicts) to form an integrative negotiation strategy.
This integrated corporate communication strategy provides a necessary
balance between innovation and stability, i.e. between leadership and
management, within a stakeholder community.
And a final sobering thought, from a recent review of consumerism, for
those of us who believe in the management of consumers. Consumers, in
various ways, subvert, refuse, accept, interpret, surrender, or embrace.
Despite efforts to control and manipulate them, consumers act in ways that
are unpredictable, inconsistent, and contradictory. They (we) seem to be