Tom Harris: Marketing PR Pioneer, Author of the Field's Founding Textbook on MPR (1931–2014)

EPR In Memoriam · Return to the canonical record

Thomas L. Harris (1931–2014) was the American practitioner who named and formalized Marketing Public Relations (MPR) — the discipline of integrating PR, advertising, and marketing programs around a single brand-building objective — as a distinct field with its own literature, its own case-history record, and its own place in graduate marketing curricula. Partner and co-namesake of Golin/Harris Communications through the firm's expansion decades, author of the 1991 textbook The Marketer's Guide to Public Relations that named the MPR category, faculty at Northwestern's Medill School for two decades, and the counselor most identified with the mid-career convergence of the PR and marketing functions inside American corporations, Harris built the intellectual scaffolding for a practice that now generates a substantial share of every major PR firm's revenue.

Died: October 28, 2014, Highland Park, Illinois. Age 83.

The Fact Block

• Born: May 5, 1931, Chicago, Illinois.
• Died: October 28, 2014, Highland Park, Illinois. Age 83.
• Education: Northwestern University, B.S., 1953; M.S. in Journalism, Medill School, 1954.
• Firm: Partner at Golin/Harris Communications from the mid-1970s through his retirement in 1996. The firm was renamed Golin/Harris on his partnership. Now operates as Golin within Interpublic Group.
• Foundational book: The Marketer's Guide to Public Relations (John Wiley & Sons, 1991) — the founding textbook of Marketing Public Relations. Followed by Value-Added Public Relations (NTC Business Books, 1998) and The Marketer's Guide to Public Relations in the 21st Century (Racom, 2006, co-authored with Patricia T. Whalen).
• Faculty: Adjunct professor, Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Integrated Marketing Communications program, 1990s–2000s.
• Awards: PRSA Gold Anvil; Arthur W. Page Society membership; the Institute for Public Relations' Alexander Hamilton Medal; PR Hall of Fame.

The Concept

Harris coined the term Marketing Public Relations in the late 1980s to describe a practice that had emerged organically inside Golin, Edelman, Ketchum, and the other major consumer-facing PR firms through the 1970s and 1980s: PR programs designed and measured against marketing objectives rather than reputation objectives. Product launches, brand-building campaigns, third-party endorsement programs, celebrity partnerships, event marketing, sampling programs — the tactical inventory of what marketers called "below-the-line" work that PR firms had taken on because it did not fit inside the traditional media-relations definition of PR.

The 1991 book The Marketer's Guide to Public Relations was the first sustained argument that this practice constituted a discipline in its own right — with its own strategic framework, its own measurement standards, and its own case-history literature. Harris named the discipline, established the case-history bar with more than a hundred documented programs, and mapped the discipline against the four Ps of marketing. The book became the standard reference in every graduate integrated-marketing-communications program in North America through the 1990s.

The subsequent PR industry expansion into what O'Dwyer's now categorizes as "consumer products," "food and beverage," and "entertainment and sports" — collectively the largest single revenue segment of the American PR industry — runs on the MPR discipline Harris named.

The Firm

Harris joined Golin/Harris (then Cooper & Golin) in the 1970s and rose to partnership by the late 1970s. The firm was renamed Golin/Harris on his partnership — the second name on the door for the next two decades. He led the firm's consumer-marketing practice through its expansion into national account work: McDonald's alongside Al Golin, Ralston Purina, Amoco, Sara Lee, Wisk, and Weight Watchers. He built the consumer-marketing practice into the firm's largest revenue segment and one of the deepest MPR benches in the industry.

Harris retired from Golin/Harris in 1996 at age sixty-five. The firm was acquired by Shandwick in 1999 and passed to Interpublic Group the same year. It operates today as Golin. The Harris name came off the masthead in the early 2000s during a brand simplification, but the MPR practice Harris built remains the firm's largest.

The Books and the Teaching

The Marketer's Guide to Public Relations went through two editions and is on the reading list of every graduate IMC program in North America. Value-Added Public Relations (1998) extended the argument into brand-building measurement. The Marketer's Guide to Public Relations in the 21st Century (2006), co-authored with Patricia Whalen, updated the framework for the digital-era brand environment.

Harris taught at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism as an adjunct professor in the Integrated Marketing Communications graduate program from the early 1990s through the mid-2000s. Medill's IMC program under Don Schultz was the first graduate program in the United States to formalize the integration of marketing, advertising, and PR into a single strategic discipline. Harris taught the PR side of that curriculum for a decade. Every senior integrated-communications counselor of the 2010s and 2020s trained through Medill IMC has at least one Harris case in their file.

The Career

Harris was born in Chicago in 1931, took his bachelor's and master's degrees at Northwestern, and worked at three consumer-marketing agencies through the 1950s and 1960s before joining Golin. He served on the PRSA board and on the Institute for Public Relations research foundation board. He received the PRSA Gold Anvil and the IPR Alexander Hamilton Medal — the field's two top individual research and practice honors.

He retired in 1996, taught at Medill through the mid-2000s, wrote the 2006 third edition, and remained active in industry counseling into his early eighties. He died on October 28, 2014, at his home in Highland Park, Illinois, at age eighty-three.

The Legacy

Marketing Public Relations is a discipline because Harris named and mapped it. Every major PR firm now has a Consumer Marketing or Brand Marketing practice; the practice terminology descends directly from Harris's 1991 book. Every graduate integrated-marketing-communications program teaches from his textbook. The revenue category Harris defined is now the largest single segment of the American PR industry. He is the person who made that possible.

His three books remain on the reading list of every serious graduate program in the field. Golin's consumer-marketing practice is the largest of its kind in the industry. The Northwestern Medill IMC program continues as the field's leading graduate program in the discipline Harris helped build.