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Advertising and Public Relations: Get the mix right
What is the role of advertising and public relations
in the marketing mix?
Should you consider more of one and less of the other
for your business?
Is it possible for the two disciplines to work together
for your benefit?
If you are a marketing manager, those questions will
be constantly to the forefront of your thinking.
If you are a business owner or manager, or you run
a not-for-profit organisation, you might be only just beginning
to consider such issues.
Many small-medium business people (and some in larger
corporates) think about marketing only in terms of advertising.
Yet there are other elements which can make advertising more effective,
or which in some situations can save that part of the budget entirely.
Recent research for AT&T in the United States has
confirmed what most marketers always thought — not only do
advertising and public relations each contribute separate benefits,
the two disciplines can be even more effective if managed together.
PR saves on advertising
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.
On the negative side, the findings are equally provocative:
Heavy advertising cannot compensate for bad news coverage. Not only
is advertising in such circumstances a waste of money, it can make
matters worse by focusing consumers’ attention on the company.
The researchers concluded that 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.
In times of normal news coverage (mostly positive with
some negative) advertising and public relations work together. Increasing
advertising has a positive impact on attitudes.
In times of widespread and extremely positive news
coverage, the positive impact of increasing advertising is much
less.
In times of widespread of extremely negative news coverage,
increasing advertising has no positive incremental impact and may
even have a negative impact.
While the research have implications for all organisations,
more work is needed to determine how widely they apply.
Advantages in a PR approach
But when business people seek justification for how
their marketing dollar is spent, public relations has an advantage
in several key areas:
- Flexible strategies
— a PR campaign is a living, dynamic process and can 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 —
PR campaign resources can be adjusted to meet the bottom line without
disrupting a campaign’s effectiveness. A public relations consultant
is well-versed in multiple elements, e.g. strategy development,
writing, media relations. But an advertising team might consist
of strategists, copy writers, designers and media placement specialists.
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 of advertising is defined by placement schedules which
inevitably show diminished returns when extended.
- Time to market —
PR campaigns tend to have a shorter turnaround time than advertising.
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.
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