Articles » Which is more circle-wise?

When is it about branding?
When is it about marketing?
But why isn’t advertising?
And so on.

Not once, I was asked to clarify this little doubt that over time can cause major misunderstandings towards the area we all want to live.

Unfortunately we did not find in textbooks any exposure "to our purposes" of this subject and so, in what follows, we propose a solution to this problem, in our own style.

Let us mention, in a first phase, what are we discussing about. Who is intersecting with whom?
Following then to discuss how and why they overlap.

Therefore we have:

We are going to begin with the topic that includes most activities, from the largest - Branding - and will explain (from our point of view) the following two categories: Marketing and Advertising.

If Advertising actions are completely covered in Branding, well Marketing tasks are not necessarily in touch with the Grand Circle (which is squarish).

Of course, Branding is in everything but... there are certain activities which are independent and do not affect the smooth running of a branding strategy. For instance, in this "zone" could be establish the product assortments, part of the price policy. The price may direct the product towards the luxury or low-cost area and therefore clearly segment the target, but on the “micro” level of adjustments it doesn’t affect anymore the communication or positioning strategy, tone or personality of the product.

Continuing with Creative – this case referring to both the process of generating the creative message and the graphic design components required for packaging and branding (OOH, POSM or sales materials).
We included the CSR in the PR circle not because we consider it less important but because it should be subject to PR manager and included in the planning of PR activities.

Both Creative and PR, as you can see in the picture, are fully included in Branding, intersecting more or less with Advertising and Marketing.

Last but not least, of course, the Sales and Strategy circles.

As you can see, the Strategy circle is much bigger than the other “circles” because it underpins all areas of activity on all lines of communication. As part of branding is the most important component.

In most cases, Sales are less involved as department in the process of branding. On the back of that, most marketing managers are sales managers also. And vice versa. That would mean that companies understand the importance of “sales force” input. Well not really. We refer to the repeated disregard of data coming from the field, not from market research, not from focus groups with end-users but from those who sell. Creative agencies, in particular, often look with mercy to brutal feedback given by sales people – “We don’t like it!”, “Let’s focus on a bigger logo!”, “And where is the promotion exposure?”.
As agencies, we must learn to read between the lines and get inspired by this feedback. Indeed it wouldn’t hurt if sales people would learn some things.

But… about this subject, in a future article.