(2010-10-22) Rao Sales Marketing Pr Culture

Venkatesh Rao on the differences between Selling, Marketing, and PR, and what it means for a company's Culture. Marketers like themselves, salespeople like other people, and PR people like ideas. Each turns his or her personality into a selling strength... Given the same power to tweak an offering, marketers naturally customize, salespeople naturally personalize, and PR people naturally contextualize. All three lead to differentiation... Apple is as pure a marketing-led company as you can hope to find. Microsoft breathes sales. And Google is entirely a PR-constructed narrative.