By Peter Boyes, Director Boyes PR
I’ve
been involved in marketing communications in one way or another for the best
part of three decades. When I first moved from full time medical journalism
into health care public relations many years ago, my mother, who had been in
newspapers all her working life, asked me “So what’s the difference between
advertising and public relations?” I’m not sure I can have explained the
difference too well since she still refers to something as being good PR when it
is actually a paid for advertisement.
There
are any number of clients too who will remark on the advert we got them on TVNZ
or in the New Zealand Herald, when it is really a news story we placed in the
editorial part of the TV show, radio programme, newspaper or magazine.
So,
just to make sure that our clients are on the same page as me on this, I
thought it would be useful to write a reminder about some of the very basic
differences between advertising and PR.
Bought
or Earned
Advertising
is where an organisation pays for space in which to promote its brand and
messages. Like all marketing communications this requires a cumulative
approach. I’m of the view that it takes at least ten ‘touch points’ or
encounters before a potential customer is prepared to act on a brand offer. One
advert won’t do much for your service or product, which is why you usually hear
people talk about an advertising campaign, which should run with a reasonable
degree of exposure over a period of time. There again, an advert placed in a
publication without foundation awareness of the brand is unlikely to be effective.
Advertising alone, without other complimentary marketing communications is
going to have limited penetration.
PR – Public relations activity is designed to get publicity
for an organisation company or service or product through news releases,
feature story pitches and developing your spokesperson’s profile as a
commentator on issues of interest as well as growing relationships with journalists.
At the heart of this activity is the power of third-party endorsement and
credibility for your offering. Very often we will position that offering
within as a trend or human-interest story, rather than a product promotion. Our
stories get published on their merit, which is why we refer to them as “earned”
media.
Supping
with the Devil
Clearly, if you are signing the cheque for the
advert, you have complete control over what appears. But your potential
customers know that you have paid for the space and are inclined to be
sceptical about what you say because of that. Advertising can work, of course,
but people may resist the messages because they assume they are biased.
When
the media agrees to take up a story from a public relations pitch there is no
control over what they will do with it or what will eventually be published. An
experienced PR person will be able to enhance your chances of good coverage by message
training, preparing your spokesperson for interviews and identifying the best
quotable quotes. Most times this works out well but I’ve said it before and
it’s worth repeating, when you sup with the devil you really do need a long
handled spoon. And even with that, on occasion, your eyebrows will get singed.
The
Internet Never Forgets
It used
to be that once an advertising campaign had run that was it. The development of
the internet however now means that a campaign can live for much longer through
postings on YouTube, Facebook or Pinterest. The more conversations a campaign
generates the deeper and more pervasive the internet memory of the campaign
will be; the longer it will persist in Google Search Results. Although visual
elements alone will not enhance the search results unless they have been
properly optimised.
Public
relations is even more enduring. Its direct contribution to an evolving
conversation through a wide range of web tools means that your messages can
live forever. The US Library of Congress is now archiving every public
tweet. Once our articles are published, no matter if that is
via a newspaper, magazine, radio or television station, they usually shows up online
and will be indexed by the show search engines. Every single story we
have produced for our clients is still available via Google and points back to
their websites. In this way the Internet has extended the life of a marketing
communications campaign indefinitely. We often get queries from media following
up a story months after the initial publication or asking to speak to our
spokespeople because we have such a prominence in online news.
Creativity
in Marketing Communications
We
work with some great advertising copywriters and creatives. Through different
media such as TV or radio commercials, print adverts, social media pop ups, microsites
or Facebook ads, creatives use interactive elements, gamification (fun games)
and other techniques to persuade us. A successful advert attracts through the
use of language and a clear call to action. A really effective call to
action will motivate customers to buy your service or products. The best copywriters
can create slogans that will carry on selling to people for years to come and even
get us to incorporate a jingle, phrase or image in our everyday speech.
Remember we owe our present day look and feel of Santa Claus to the popularity
of an early twentieth century Coca Cola advertising campaign.
The
creativity involved in PR is of a somewhat more subtle nature. A good PR
practitioner needs to understand what will make news. They will be analysing the
news every day, scanning for possible angles and evaluating trends. There is a
delicate art to anticipating events and sensing what is going to be of interest
to the media and the wider public. Then a creative spark is required to turn
that insight into something that will ignite attention. When that happens the
resultant publicity far exceeds anything that can be directly purchased.
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