What’s the difference between marketing, PR & communications?

Welcome to the first issue of Online Academic, a newsletter helping researchers navigate the media world.

This newsletter, I hope, will be an amalgamation of tips, common questions and insight from industry professionals around the ever-changing world of media and communications. Specifically it's for those in Higher Education in the UK, so if you’re an academic, a postgraduate researcher or work in comms in the sector, this is for you. Though all are welcome. You can find out more about Online Academic on this post.

I’m starting OA with a few explainers to help lay the ground work. I’ve spoken to hundreds (maybe thousands) of researchers — from MA/PG researchers through to experienced Professors — and knowledge of the media world is incredibly varied. So I’m going with the maxim I use with my team at work (who are probably sick of me saying this) - never presume knowledge, always assume intelligence. So to start with, some of these explainers may seem a bit basic but I hope there are still a few nuggets in there or things to think about you may not have considered before.

Here’s a scenario - you’ve had a paper accepted, the results are big and you know it’s going to create some waves in the research community and you think it might have scope for public attention too. So who do you contact to make that happen? You’ll likely have heard about 'the comms team' or marketing or any other similar sounding term - but what do they do and why are they helpful for you?

Well, let’s start with some of those definitions to find out — starting with media relations.