Full Frontal PR Report
Laura Mead, Account Executive

They are constantly compared to one another. They are both essential to your business. They are (in boring textbook terms) an integral part of your marketing mix. They are public relations and advertising.

How are they situated in your company? Are they like fraternal twins, or two sordid siblings who need to understand how best to support each other in good and bad times? More importantly, though, how do they work together to get your message out in today’s marketplace? We have all read recent reports on a slowly recovering economy (poor thing), but do we know that ad dollars still suffer? So, how does this affect public relations, and thus your business at large?

As an advertising major I learned that PR is the free—and wholly credible—form of advertising. Textbooks will tell you that it is how people feel about products, corporate issues and personalities. At RLM, we like to sum it up as “Buzz.” As Michael Prichinello and Richard Laermer discuss in their book Full Frontal PR, the main goal of PR is to make sure your product/service and company are top of mind with all relevant industry press and subsequently the public. This is buzz. It’s easy, right?

I wouldn’t say so.

Think of PR as a part of a larger project (i.e. an excerpt of a story.). It is, therefore, harder to control the message. The glorious upside is that it is often more cost-effective and more tangible than advertising. The challenge is getting the right message to the public—that’s a big challenge. It requires a deft approach to pitching and a no-holds-barred determination to influence the press in order to ensure the proper story angle is the final one.

With advertising, you have full control over your message. Simply put, it is a paid form of sponsorship in an effort to influence an audience through one or more communications channels. Advertising gives the sponsor more control over its content, a target audience and, of course, the media schedule. Given their respective natures, advertising requires more visual creativity, whereas PR requires more written and verbal lucidity to break through the noise. You got to have both elements to create a strong initial awareness of a product or service and you have to be able to constantly reinforce existing impressions of the intended message.

Apple’s fabulous iPod is an example of someone working it: You know how hard it is to miss those advertisements; silhouetted figures against a neon backdrop dancing their hearts out. Simplicity at its best! But it’s not only the ads that have consumer demand on the rise whilst Apple struggles to average the good ole supply and demand curve. According to Ad Age, Apple has managed to secure 6,000 iPod and iTunes (online music store) articles in major publications worldwide by simple everyday PR buzz. Impressive…

As long as your message is consistent throughout both parts of the marketing mix, that consumer-gotten message is reinforced time and again. One should never solely rely on either of these two because they are equally important, bred and born together like the metaphoric fraternal twins. They differ in many ways. But like siblings when they work together they are at their best. It’s a balancing act.

And perfecting the complement—that’s an art.