1. Understanding the Functions of Marketing and PR
Use this workbook to help you explain the functions of marketing and public relations. You
should ensure you use additional examples to support your explanations.
Marketing
Explain what market research is, how it can be carried out and why it could be
important.
Market research is about a company that gathers a lot of different information about
their target market. This can be done through questionnaires, surveys and focus
groups; from these different techniques you can see how the customers feel and what
they think about the new product. This will help to give a variety of answers that will
help to make the product a better quality and also to merge well with the target market.
The further importance of the survey‟s etc is to see what a certain age group are like
at the moment, what they are interested in. If you are producing a product then it‟s
important to involve your website and business in a social networking site, this would
be perfect for any target market as technology and social networking sites e.g. Twitter
and Facebook are becoming more and more popular with Twitter getting 555 million
people registered worldwide. The more you research about your target market, the
more you know about them e.g. Company magazine uses more images than text on
most of there pages within the magazine, this says that the audience might be in a
rush and just want to see the latest trends or they shop in the high street and want to
know what the high street clothing looks like on. Company magazine‟s target market is
26+ this says that they are working women, so working around there schedule and
social life is what „Company‟ do best, within the magazine they show work clothes and
party clothes, this shows that they know there target market has a double life of
working at partying.
Explain market analysis. Why is it done and who could carry it out for you?
Market analysis is market research that produces and provides information about the
market place.
The aim of market analysis is to determine the appeal of a certain market and to
understand the evolving opportunities and threats, as these are the things that will
indicate the strengths and weaknesses of a company. It is basically a more in depth
version of market research as it helps companies to understand their audience more
and help them find out about their competition so that they can beat the competition
and succeed.
To carry out market analysis, a company could hire an independent investigator to
look into competing companies and to find out more about what the target audience
wants so you can get a leg up on the competition by finding out exactly want the
audience wants.
Explain marketing strategy using examples.
A market strategy is a way of making a plan so that it can produce sales for a certain
company. Every business should have a market strategy so that they can go and sell
there product to new and targeted customers, to do this they will need to go back to
there analysed information about there target market and then they will have to create
a twist on the product so that it stands out from the crowd. An example of a company
that has used a marketing strategy is „Music Magpie‟ there strategy was to target a
large audience and then pick out different aspects of how they live on a daily basis,
one of there ideas was to target parents, they knew that parents find it hard to work
and look after children so by having extra money it would help the families to get from
A to B everyday. This is a clever strategy as the family market is massive for new
products and business, by the business telling families that they are “easy, free and

2. intelligent” makes it more tempting for the families, they were prefer something to be
fast and easy so that they can get on with it and the other activities that they have
around them. By the company advertising the fact that you can get rid of old stuff for
money is perfect for families because they can make there house safer and neat for
the family and get money in return. For me the best strategy that they have used
within there business Is to connect with the target market personally, they have
produced a campaign called „Free kits‟ that gives children the opportunity to plan
sports and to meet new friends, this puts pressure of parents and will also put
positivity on the business. Because of this parents will use the business to get money
and the business will get the service that it needs.
Why is advertising so important to an organisation? Use examples to help you
explain.
Advertising is important to an organisation because it gets their product and/or
campaign out into the world and creates and raises awareness within societies. By
doing this you are getting people on your side and making profits, as people will be
buying your product or supporting your cause. This way the company will be more
successful and become one of the leading competitors in their specified field.
An example of this could be a charity advert such as Unicef, they advertise very strong
and emotive images and facts to get people to donate to their cause, making them be
able to help solve the problem of which they are campaigning about. However, the
more different your advert is the more it will stand out. Most charity adverts are pretty
much the same so they all seem to blend in together and make less of an impact as
they could.
An example of a product advert that has a huge impact is the Coke adverts, especially
the Christmas advert, one of the most iconic adverts in the world. Coke‟s adverts are
usually inspiring and happy and make you feel good. This way, their advert is more
likely to stick in your head, as it is different to the majority of adverts shown.
Having an advert that sticks in your audience‟s head will make them more likely to go
and buy your product or support your campaign. This will make your company
successful and well known.
What is brand promotion and what methods could you use to promote a brand?
A brand is about a mark on your business, a symbol that represents the whole of what
you are and what you are selling. The design involved with the brand will help it to look
unique and to compete with logos and products. The more competitive your brand is
the more the audience will recognise it that will help raise awareness for your
business. A trademark is when a brand is official registered to that business. Brand
promotion is exactly like this but instead it‟s a method that tries to influence and
brainwash you so you buy something from that business. An example of this would be
Hollister, the target market only buy clothes from this company because it‟s a rich
brand, and it‟s popular and classy to wear. The clothes are only expensive because
the brand is so largely known and successful, the audience is only buying the brand
not the quality of the clothing. Certain methods that company do are spreading there
awareness through different media methods e.g. Kerrang. They are normally known to
be a magazine company that is based on Rock music, they started producing
magazines and once that become successful they branched out into different sections
of media. They now have there own radio station, they sponsor different festivals e.g.
Download festival and Leeds Fest, these are perfect types of brand promotion
because they are constantly telling a mainstream audience about there brand and
what there logo is. Because of this they will raise there awareness and constantly get
people going on there website and listening to there radio or looking at events that are
coming up. It‟s a good way of bringing new and old people into the brand.
PR

3. What are some of the key principals involved in managing the message?
Key principles involved in managing the message include clear communication and
positive outlooks.
Clear communication is important because people need to know what‟s happening,
why it‟s happening and basically all the information someone may need to know about
the situation. For example, if a website is down, a message will be present on the
screen stating that there is a maintenance issue and that the people running the
website are working on fixing it, apologising for any inconvenience caused. This way
people will be more trusting of the company and be more appreciative of being
informed of a situation.
Positive outlooks are important to reassure the customers that everything is going to
be restored back to what it was (if a website is down) and basically just having a good
outlook on anything that happens so that it rubs off on the audience to make them feel
positive about the company.
What is positive publicity? Find an example of it to help explain.
Positive publicity is when someone, group or business etc have been put in a good
light, something that‟s made them stand out for there achievements for either ideas or
getting an award etc. For example a celebrity would get positive publicity if they did a
marathon to raise money for charity or they got a Oscar at a film awards, any thing
that is achievable or helping others would help someone be in positive publicity. If
someone had positive publicity then a mass audience would look at that person in a
good way and would want to research and know more about that person and what
they do. If they received bad publicity then people would suddenly change there views
just because the media e.g. newspapers said so, either way publicity automatically
brain washes you into feeling a certain mood when you find out something about
someone. An example of a person getting positive publicity is Jennifer Lawrence, she
has won a Oscar for the best leading actress in the hunger games, this is positive
publicity because they are putting her in the lime light for being successful and
achieving the highest award when it comes to acting. The audience will automatically
think she is one of the best actresses just because of the award she has received.
In public relations terms, what is spin? Find an example to help you with your
response.
A spin is when multiple facts are argued for different sides of a case. An example of
this is if unemployment figures are high, someone could argue that employment
figures have risen in the past year, adding a positive to the situation but then someone
could argue that unemployment is still too high and more action needs to be taken to
prevent unemployment figure increases, creating an even more negative approach to
the subject.
It is essentially having two different ways to look at a situation; you can either take the
positive or the negative side of things.
A real life example of a spin occurred when Jo Moore sent an email an hour after the
9/11 attacks stating „It‟s now a very good day to get out any thing that we want to
bury.‟ People argue that if the email hadn‟t have gotten out to the public, there would
not have been uproar about it. However, it was still seen as very damaging to the
government and she got fired for the remark.
Why might a person or a company engage in damage limitation? Using an
example will improve your grade.
Someone may engage in damage limitation so that their company‟s reputation or
general reputation is not damaged by anything bad that happens in relation to these
things. This way the person or company will still maintain a good reputation despite
having something bad happen related to them, damage limitation will make it so that
the damage is not as bad as it could have been.
An example of this is when Prime Minister of the time Gordon Brown was out
campaigning for people‟s votes as it was near election time and he called an elderly

4. woman a „bigot‟ without realising he was being recorded and still had his microphone
attached to him. This caused uproar within the papers so to limit the damage that
could have been caused he went back to the town and apologised to the old woman.
However, he still lost the election as a possible outcome of the insult.
What benefit could there be to an organisation to create an event? Use an
example of a marketing or PR event to support your responses.
Creating an event could either be really good, boosting your company even more and
gaining more success or it could have no effect at all. It all depends on how well it is
advertised and promoted and how well it captures the interest of your target audience.
An example of this would be Kerrang. They started out as a magazine and then
branched into television and radio. In recent years, they created an event called „The
Kerrang Tour‟, an event where they get four bands that would feature in their
magazine and send them off on tour together. They get the latest up and coming band
and rank their way up to the hottest act of the year. By doing this tour, the better the
line up is, the better ratings Kerrang gets and the more success they gain.
To host a successful event, an organisation should make it fun, relevant to the
company and advertise it well, making sure their audience gets the right information so
that they can attend and want to attend.
What is lobbying and who is most likely to be influenced by it?
Lobbying is when a person influences another person into making a decision about a
subject. There are many events that involve influencing the government, one of them
in Greenpeace, they are a large organisations that has constantly pressured the
government into making the planet a protected and well looked after environment. In
this case Greenpeace has asked for a person to lobby the government, this person will
try and debate about why we need to protect the environment and what improvements
can be made. This has made several influential steps like producing a „world park‟ in
Antarctica in 1991, they have helped people to receive minerals and oils form that
area, from lobbying and negotiating they have done there goal which was to get
involved with Antarctica and to receive there natural goods. The most influential
groups would definitely be charities, they always want something new to change so
that it helps people in need but also brings new change so that they can develop and
grow as a charity, governments would listen to charities because they are strong in
what they believe and they would have the facts to back up their work.
Fields of marketing and public relations
Media, celebrities and entertainment- Miley Cyrus is a class act when it comes to
playing her cards right through a PR organisation, from her poor single „can‟t be
tamed‟ she has come back with the song „we can‟t stop‟ the fact that the video was
controversial has made the public to constantly talk about her, through her magazine
pictures and music performances she has always done something outrageous to get
the magazines talking and the public. Miley has said that her image isn‟t just about
getting attention, it‟s all about PR and making a bigger and extravagant look of herself,
she said: „To me, a movement is bigger than just a record,‟ this tells people that she
think that her image and style is more important than the record because it‟s her
personality that will be known across magazines and TV interviews. Miley uses four
strategies to make herself constantly noticed which is:
Looking confident and sexy - to cause controversy and attention to her look most of
the time.
Be memorable all the time – this is done by making big scenes a music awards like
the VMA‟s by dancing with a foam finger, this is what people will see when they think
of her.
Social media – this is really important as millions of people around the world use this
sight to look at different celebrities and what they do in their lives. If Miley constantly
posts images or messages about herself then journalists and the public will always
want to know what she is talking about incase it‟s a good story line or controversial

5. e.g. twerking etc.
Finally know your target market – Miley knows her target market well as these are
teenagers who love her stunts and likes her confidence, the only people that don‟t like
it is people that are 40+. They think that she is a bad influence to children for when
they grow up, Miley doesn‟t care because of the fact that her target market is only
young people and she inspires to market herself to that age.
Business- Businesses will use marketing to find out more about their target audience
and their rivals so that they become the best that they can be and beat the
competition. An example of this is when Pepsi tried to get the recipe for leading soft
drink brand Coke so that they could become the bigger and better company. This
example would also come under why a business would need PR as well to deal with
damage limitations after the story hit the media. A business would need PR to
succeed and to limit any bad press they receive and gain more positive press.
Government and public services- Governments use Public relations in different
ways, they would use it to promote new candidates in government to see who can be
the next prime minister so by campaigning for attention and to talk about what ideas
they have then new people will either want to know about the party or see what new
ideas they have instead. Parties makes sure that they travel around different cities so
that they are promote there power and to constantly tell the public about how they can
improve the country and what changes they can bring to people from different
backgrounds. An example of this would be David Cameron (Conservative), Nick Clegg
(Liberal Democrats) and Ed Miliband (Labour); they travelled around the whole country
to find their new voters and old voters so that they can be chosen to be the Prime
Minster. They would use PR to constantly talk about this through newspapers and the
TV, this would keep people in the loop and to understand what is going on within the
three parties and to see if they agree with any police or idea that they have.
Charities and pressure groups- Charities would be the main ones for marketing so
that they can advertise their cause and get the donations to come in so they can help
the situation that they are appealing for. They would also need marketing to find out
what other charities are doing so that they aren‟t supporting a common cause of
charities because if they did this then they wouldn‟t be as successful as supporting a
cause with not many other charities supporting that same cause. Pressure groups may
take the opposite approach to guide the government into making a change because
the more pressure that is added, the more likely the change is going to be made. Both
of these groups need PR in case they receive bad press so that any damage done will
be limited. An example of this could be the charities or pressure groups holding
protests and something bad occurring the event. PR would also promote the good
press received such as a success in pressure groups or events held by charities.
Sports- Sports needs marketing to advertise their events and to sell tickets to fund the
events and make profits. By advertising the event, the audience will be told when,
where and what the event is and also who it‟s between. This will then lead to mass
sales of tickets, leading to success for the arena hosting the event. An example of this
is the Super Bowl, the world‟s largest and most popular sporting event. People from all
over the world travel to see this event. This is also an example of why sports would
need PR as in the 2013 Super Bowl there was a power cut so they would need PR for
damage limitations. Sports in general would need PR to limit negative news on any
bad things that happen (such as injuries) and to promote the good things about clubs
and events (for example, a popular team winning will boost the positives for a club and
their fans).