PR versus Advertising

Guest post by: Wendy McWilliams
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Thought Leadership - By Wendy McWilliams

This is a HUGE subject, but for the purpose of this article, I will just cover what I believe are a few salients points to remember when considering public relations and/or advertising in your marketing campaign. I would point out that most advertising agencies now have their own PR teams because they see the benefits of offering both services to their clients.

PR provides a platform to build brand credibility whereas advertising can build brand awareness. Third party endorsements, one of the favoured ways to create credibility, used to be the sole domain of the PR Department, but then the ad guys thought they'd do the same. You see these ads with testimonials all the time now, but you can't get away from the fact that the company paid for the ad to be there. With PR, the endorsement is run by the media source who has checked (we hope!) the statements and publishes at their expense because they think it is a good story. So on the credibility stakes, PR wins hands down.

PR is also ahead when it comes to free editorials. Of course, the story has to be newsworthy for it to make it but when you consider the cost of a full page advert for the same space, you can see the benefits. Quite a number of publications now offer advertisers free editorial for running an ad and DON'T put advertorial on top of their editorial, which is a bit deceptive. I believe this will eventually diminish the respect their readers have for the magazine, as the editorials become just like a page from the company brochure without any news content at all.

Advertising provides control: you get what you want and what you've paid for. This is crucial if you have an event and want to promote it ahead of time. Advertising is guaranteed and if done correctly will generate leads or members or visitors or whatever you want to attract. PR can be provide some degree of control: for example, if you have a magazine or newspaper sponsor an award or event, they guarantee to cover it before, during and after.

Advertising can be expensive whereas a PR program is usually much less. However, advertising does allow a company to get really creative in its approach, whereas PR relies to a major extent on the medium it is using to communicate its messages. And of course advertising can continually promote brand imaging, whereas this is much harder with PR. But that's where creative PR photography can be employed.

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Thought Leadership - By Wendy McWilliams

About the Author: Wendy McWilliams

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Wendy McWilliams has more than 25 years experience in leading public relations consultancies in London (UK) , Sydney and Melbourne (Australia). Wendy established WMC Public Relations in 1992 < http://www.wmcpr.com.au > after she saw the need for a flexible, proactive and cost effective PR company that offered a personal level of service. Wendy and WMC PR is well placed to undertake the full gamut of public relations requirements for large and small private and public sector organisations. If you go to
http://www.wmcpr.com.au/services you can see the full range of services provided. And on this site http://www.wmcpr.com.au/clients-case-studies/ you can read some case studies.
Click here to visit Wendy's website.

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