I heard a small business owner utter these words the other day: 'We are meeting our targets with advertising so we don't need public relations'.
It got me thinking...can advertising and public relations work independently of each other and be successful or should every marketing plan incorporate a combination of both?
Many business owners seem to think that advertising can do all the hard work that is needed to build up the credibility and awareness of a brand. Maybe this is because advertising is so visual and obvious- we see it around us all day, everyday. Public relations is much more subtle and maybe these business owners think that subtle = ineffective.
There is no denying that advertising can do amazing things for a brand. For example, Absolut Vodka has run a highly successful print advertising campaign for the past twenty years and they are now one of the most profitable vodka producers in the world. However, Absolut also has PR that gets the brand noticed. An example is the much talked about 5 meter high ice sculpture of the Absolut Vodka bottle that is a feature piece in a well known ice hotel in Sweden.
In 2003, AT&T, a leading research company in the United States, looked into how advertising and public relations work together. The results showed that not only do advertising and public relations each contribute separate benefits, the two disciplines can be even more effective if managed together.
The results showed that:
'In periods of lighter advertising, public relations activity can compensate by supporting brand loyalty. In periods of heavy positive news coverage, less advertising may be needed.
Advertising and public relations activity each has its own impact on consumers, and these impacts interact to influence perceptions, attitudes and behaviour. More than anything else, an organisation’s news environment determines the impact of its advertising.'
Here are some other interesting blogs on the subject:
Advertising vs. PR- Elif's World
PR vs. Advertising- And the Winner is?So what do you think? Can advertising work independently of public relations, and vice versa? If the answer is no, how do we convince those in charge of marketing budgets that these two tools work better together?
1 comment:
Hi Jennifer;
As I mentioned in my blog I think PR and Advertising should work together. Both of them has advantages and disadvantages. For example; advertising is not measurable (company will put it on newspaper or on TV but they can not know whether if it reached to the target customers or not) whereas when we look at PR, the company will have a specific audience and because of this reason they will know that it reached to the target audience, so it is measurable.
But neither PR nor advertising won't be enough itself. (Especially while copanies are becoming a brand)So they should work together...
Elif Esiyok
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