From Marketing to PR

I began my educational journey with Business Marketing at Mohawk College but felt that I needed something more to give myself something a little extra under my belt. Marketing was a great experience and I learned so much about the business world and how closely it relates to my every day life. From knowing how to set up a retail store based on the way people walk around the store, to how to advertise a product and sell yourself as a presenter. 

Now I continue my journey at Mohawk College and move into Public Relations. Although very similar to marketing, it is a completely different program in itself. I wanted to discuss those similarities and differences that I've noticed within the programs and how I've moved from marketing to PR. 

Similarities: 

• Similar concepts and assignments - for example: creating an IMC plan, branding assignments, and learning about marketing itself in the PR program
• The main goal for both is to create a unique brand identity, boost awareness, increase web traffic and of course, generate relevant content which is what we discussed in both programs

Differences:

• Marketing is lot more narrowed of a program in the sense that for the IMC plan for example, marketing goes in depth with executive summaries, target marketing, budget, timeline, competitors, etc., whereas PR only discusses the basic topics of an IMC plan
• Easier language and writing for the non-university levels in assignments in PR

BUT they both go hand in hand so I found that learning each program more specifically was a great asset. 

I'd like to say that my journey from switching from Marketing to PR was quite easy. Knowing certain concepts and the general idea of how the behind the scenes of a business works definitely helped a lot when learning the same sort of concepts and generalisations in the new program. 

I did found some struggles though. Trying to write at a lower level felt hard to me because I was so used to writing lengthy essays, and huge report papers that had extremely difficult vocabulary and proper referencing. Having multiple little assignments, rather than for example 3 large ones definitely helped me in writing at a lower level because the requirements were so basic in the sense that my professor Tim would request for certain headings and specifically just to answer the question given in the assignment. It made it easier for me. 

I appreciate Mohawk College and I definitely think that going back for another year and transitioning from Marketing to PR really gave myself an advantage when looking into careers.