How Public Relations Differs from Advertising
How Public Relations Differs from Marketing
How Public Relations Supports Marketing
- Although publicity and advertising both utilize mass media for dissemination of messages, the format and context are different
- Publicity—the information about an event, an individual or group, or a product—appears as a news item or feature story in the mass media
- Advertising, in contrast, is paid space and broadcast time that organizations and individuals typically contract with for things like full-page ads or one minute infomercials
- Advertising works almost exclusively through mass media outlets, whereas PR relies on a number of communication tools (i.e. brochures, slide presentations, special events, etc.)
- Advertising is addressed to external audiences—primarily consumers of goods and services; PR presents its messages to specialized external audiences (stockholders, vendors, community leaders, environmental groups, and so on) and internal publics (employees)
- Advertising is readily identified as a specialized communication function; PR is broader in scope, dealing with the policies and performance of the entire organization, form the morale of employees to the way telephone operators respond to call.
- Advertising is often used as a communication tool in PR, and PR activity often supports advertising campaigns. Advertising’s primary function is to sell goods and services; the PR function is to create an environment in which the organization can thrive. The latter calls for dealing with economic, social, and political factors that can affect the organization.
- Advertising’s major disadvantage is cost
- Because of the high costs, companies are increasingly using a tool of PR—product publicity—that is more cost effective and often more credible because the message appears in a news context
How Public Relations Differs from Marketing
- PR is distinct from marketing in several ways, although their boundaries often overlap
- Both deal with an organization’s relationships and employ similar communication tools to reach the public
- Both have the ultimate purpose of assuring an organization’s success and economic survival
- PR and marketing have different perspectives on worldview
- Ex: “Public relations is the management process whose goal is to attain and maintain accord and positive behaviors among social groups on which an organization depends in order to achieve its mission. Its fundamental responsibility is to build and maintain a hospitable environment for an organization.”
- Ex: “ Marketing is the management process whose goal is to attract and satisfy customers (or clients) on a long-term basis in order to achieve an organization’s economic objectives. Its fundamental responsibility is to build and maintain markets for an organization’s products or services.
- In other words, PR is concerned with building relationships and generating goodwill for the organization; marketing is concerned with customers and selling products and services
- Marketing and advertising professional tend to speak of “target markets,” “consumers,” and “customers.”
- PR professionals tend to talk of “publics,” “audiences,” and “stakeholders”
How Public Relations Supports Marketing
- Some argue that public relations could be the fifth “P” in the marketing mix strategy (price, product, place, and promotion)
- Eight ways PR activities contribute to marketing (Dennis L. Wilcox from his text Public Relations Writing and Media Techniques)
- Developing new prospects for new markets, such as people who inquire after seeing or hearing a product release in the news media
- Providing third-party endorsements—via newspapers, magazines, radio, and television—through news release about a company’s products or services, community involvement, inventions, and new plans
- Generating sales leads, usually through articles in the trade press about new products and services
- Paving the way for sales calls
- Stretching the organization’s advertising and promotional dollars through timely and supportive releases about it an its products
- Providing inexpensive sales literature, because articles about the company and products can be reprinted as informative pieces for prospective customers
- Establishing the corporation as an authoritative source of information on a game product
- Helping to sell minor products that don’t have large advertising budgets