Text 5 The Difference between Advertising and pr

Advertising VS Public Relations…which is better? Many people don’t even know the difference between advertising and public relations!

Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support, influencing opinion and behavior. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between a business and its public(s).

Advertising is paid communication through a non-personal medium in which the sponsor is identified and the message is controlled. It can also be defined as the business that specializes in creating publicity. Every major medium is used to deliver messages: television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, the internet, and billboards.

No matter how interesting an advertisement might be, it is recognized as a self-serving communication. The only implication here is that someone paid to have a message filtered directly to a consumer. There is no third-party endorsement before it reaches you. Public relations afford the credibility of indirect third-party endorsements. This means you are not paying to get advertising placed, but a publication is freely giving space to a story about your company. Anyone can buy visibility, however PR plays a critical role in sorting out the hype. Advertising exposure is often proportional to the amount of money spent on the advertisement. Whether your ad sits on a billboard overlooking the highway or plays during prime time television, advertising will consume your budget faster than a well-positioned, well-written press release.  For small companies, public relations is the better method for direct and personal communication with a target audience. For larger companies with a sufficient budget, advertising along with public relations may be the right combination for success. 

Public relations has an advantage over advertising in several key areas:

Flexible strategies – a PR campaign is a living, dynamic process and can be re-shaped in mid-stream if necessary. Companies have more flexibility to adjust and change the focus of their messages over the course of a campaign.

Flexible resources –A public relations consultant is well-versed in multiple elements, e.g. strategy development, writing, media relations and etc. But an advertising team might consist of strategists, writers, designers and media placement specialist. Removing or weakening any one element results in a weakening of the overall campaign.

Longer lifecycle – a properly executed PR campaign not only brings short-term results, but long-term relationships which yield benefits over time. By comparison, the life cycle of advertising is defined by placement schedules which inevitably show diminished returns when extended.

Time to market – PR campaigns tend to have a shorter turn-around time than advertising campaigns. Communications professionals can re-use information from one campaign to the next. More resources can be devoted to initial strategy, cutting the overall delivery time.

Public relations can almost be regarded as a bigger activity than advertising because it relates to all the communications of the total organization, whereas advertising, although it may cost more than public relations, is mainly limited to the marketing/sales function.

Public Relations embraces everyone and everything, whereas advertising is limited to selling and buying tasks such as promoting goods and services, buying supplies and recruiting staff. Public relations has to do with the total communications of an organization; it is therefore, more extensive and comprehensive than advertising. Advertising may not be used by an organization but every organization is involved in public relations at some level.

Researchers concluded that advertising and public relations activity each has its own impact on consumers, and these impacts interact to influence perceptions, attitudes and behavior. A distinct difference between PR and advertising is their extent of message control. Today more savvy marketing professionals understand that advertising and public relations work hand-in-hand to produce desired results to break into a new market or to introduce a new and unknown product or service.

Questions:

1. What is the aim of PR?

2. What is the aim of advertising?

3. What are the key areas where PR has an advantage over advertising?

4. What do the terms “Flexible strategies” and “Flexible resources” mean?

5. What do the terms “Longer lifecycle” and “Time to market” mean?

6. Is there a third-party endorsement in advertising before it reaches you?

7. What is the better method for small companies for direct and personal communication with the audience?

8. Why is PR regarded as a bigger activity than advertising?

9. Why should marketing professionals use both advertising and public relations to produce desired results?

10. What is the distinct difference between PR and advertising?