Making the connection between public relations and marketing: building relationships, corporate equity and a ‘culture‐to‐customer’ business philosophy

As marketers develop new marketing strategies and as marketing scholars seek a new paradigm for the field, public relations perspectives may be preferred over traditional marketing perspectives. Given that public relations has a longer history in building relationships and corporate equity — two of the cornerstones of marketing's future — a public relations perspective has the potential, first to help marketers move from a tactical to a strategic focus, secondly, to contribute substantially to marketing theory by providing depth, breadth and context to emerging concepts such as brand equity, one‐to‐one marketing and relationship marketing, and thirdly, to help more organisations discover the ‘culture‐to‐customer’ business philosophy that characterises most great marketing organisations.