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15. Advertising & PR

MKT201 - AE

March 31, 2025

BELC N175 - 6:15 PM

Nicola DiFusco, MFA

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Learning Objectives

15.1 Define the role of advertising in the promotion mix.

15.2 Describe the major decisions involved in developing an advertising program.

15.3 Define the role of public relations in the promotion mix.

15.4 Explain how companies use P R to communicate with relevant publics.

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KRAFT HEINZ: From Brand Attributes to Brand Love, an Advertising Revolution

Kraft Heinz’s new lifestyle positioning and advertising for Velveeta and its other brands celebrates indulgence rather than apologizing for it. “Respect the drip,” advises Velveeta.

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Learning Objective 1

Define the role of advertising in the promotion mix.

Discussion Question

What are the four important advertising decisions that marketers must make?

Learning Objective 1 Summary

Advertising—the use of paid media by a seller to inform, persuade, and remind buyers about its products or its organization—is an important promotion tool for engaging customers and communicating the value that marketers create for customers. American marketers spend more than $170 billion each year on advertising, and worldwide spending exceeds $518 billion. Advertising takes many forms and has many uses. Although advertising is employed mostly by business firms, a wide range of not-for-profit organizations, professionals, and social agencies also employ advertising to promote their causes to various target publics. PR—gaining favorable publicity and creating a favorable company image—is the least used of the major promotion tools, although it has great potential for building consumer awareness and preference.

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Advertising (1 of 2)

Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.

Companies must do more than simply create customer value. They must also clearly and persuasively communicate that value to target customers. In this chapter, we take a closer look at two marketing communications tools: advertising and public relations.

You already know a lot about advertising; you are exposed to it every day. But here we’ll look behind the scenes at how companies make advertising decisions.

Although advertising is used mostly by business firms, a wide range of not-for-profit organizations, professionals, and social agencies also use advertising to promote their causes to various target publics. In fact, the 49th largest advertising spender is a not-for-profit organization—the U.S. government, which advertises in many ways. For example, the Centers for Disease Control spent $48 million on the second year of an anti-smoking advertising campaign titled “Tips from a Former Smoker,” showing people who have paid dearly due to smoking-related diseases.

Advertising is a good way to engage, inform, and persuade; whether the purpose is to sell Coca-Cola worldwide, help smokers kick the habit, or educate people in developing nations on how to lead healthier lives.

For nearly 20 years, G E I C O’s advertising and charismatic gecko have creatively and relentlessly driven home the brand’s value proposition: “15 minutes could save you 15 percent or more on car insurance.”

Thanks in large part to an industry-changing, big-budget advertising program, featuring an enduring tagline and a likeable but unlikely spokeslizard, G E I C O has muscled its way to the number-two position in its ultracompetitive industry.

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Advertising (2 of 2)

Figure 15.1 Major Advertising Decisions

Marketing management must make four important decisions when developing an advertising program (see Figure 15.1): setting advertising objectives, setting the advertising budget, developing an advertising strategy (message decisions and media decisions), and evaluating advertising campaigns.

Long Description:

The flowchart shows the following information:

• Objectives setting: Communication objectives; Sales objectives

• Budget decisions: Affordable approach; Percent of sales; Competitive parity; Objective and task

• Message decisions: Message strategy; Message execution

Media decisions: Impact and engagement; Major media types; Specific media vehicles; Media timing

• Advertising evaluation: Communication impact; Sales and profit impact; Return on advertising.

Arrows point from Objectives setting to Budget decisions to Message decisions and Media decisions to Advertising evaluation.

Don’t forget—advertising is only part of a broader set of marketing and company decisions. Its job is to help com-municate the brand’s value proposition to target customers. Advertising must blend well with other promotion and marketing mix decisions.

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Learning Objective 2

Describe the major decisions involved in developing an advertising program.

Discussion Question

Why has measuring advertising effectiveness become so important? What types of advertising results do marketers measure and what are the issues related to this assessment?

Learning Objective 2 Summary

Advertising decision making involves making decisions about the advertising objectives, budget, messages and media, and evaluation of the results. Advertisers should set clear target, task, and timing objectives, whether the aim is to inform, engage, persuade, or remind buyers. Advertising’s goal is to move consumers through the buyer-readiness stages discussed in Chapter 14. Some advertising is designed to move people to immediate action. However, many of the ads you see today focus on building or strengthening long-term customer engagement and relationships. The advertising budget depends on many factors. No matter what method is used, setting the advertising budget is no easy task.

Advertising strategy consists of two major elements: creating advertising messages and content and selecting advertising media. The message decision calls for planning a message strategy and executing it effectively. Good messages and other content are especially important in today’s costly and cluttered advertising environment. Just to gain and hold attention, today’s messages must be better planned, more imaginative, more entertaining, and more rewarding to consumers. In fact, many marketers are now subscribing to a new merging of advertising and entertainment, dubbed Madison & Vine. The media decision involves defining reach, frequency, impact, and engagement goals; choosing major media types; selecting media vehicles; and choosing media timing. Message and media decisions must be closely coordinated for maximum campaign effectiveness. Finally, evaluation calls for evaluating the communication and sales effects of advertising before, during, and after ads are placed. Advertising accountability has become a hot issue for most companies. Increasingly, top management is asking: “What return are we getting on our advertising investment?” and “How do we know that we’re spending the right amount?” Other important advertising issues involve organizing for advertising and dealing with the complexities of international advertising.

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Setting Advertising Objectives (1 of 3)

An advertising objective is a specific communication task to be accomplished with a specific target audience during a specific time.

Comparative advertising: Microsoft and Apple have taken direct aim at each other in their advertising time and again over the years.

rvlsoft/Shutterstock

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Setting Advertising Objectives (2 of 3)

Informative advertising is used when introducing a new product category to build primary demand.

Persuasive advertising is important with increased competition to build selective demand.

Reminder advertising is important with mature products to help maintain customer relationships and keep customers thinking about the product.

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Setting Advertising Objectives (3 of 3)

Table 15.1 Possible Advertising Objectives

Informative Advertising	Blank
Communicating customer value	Suggesting new uses for a product
Building a brand and company image	Informing the market of a price or design change
Telling the market about a new product	Describing available services and support
Explaining how a product works	Correcting false impressions
Persuasive Advertising	Blank
Building brand preference	Persuading customers to purchase now
Encouraging switching to a brand	Creating customer engagement
Changing customer perceptions of product value	Building brand community
Reminder Advertising	Blank
Maintaining customer relationships	Reminding consumers where to buy the product
Reminding consumers that the product may be needed in the near future	Keeping the brand in a customer’s mind during off-seasons

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Setting the Advertising Budget

Factors to Consider

Stage in product life cycle
Market share
Competition

Advertising budgets: Each year, dozens of advertisers spend lavishly to showcase their ads during the Super Bowl. But do the returns justify the outrageous costs?

Photoraidz/Shutterstock; CharacterFamily/Shutterstock; h_f_a/Shutterstock; 360b/Shutterstock

Some specific factors that should be considered when setting the advertising budget.

A brand’s advertising budget often depends on its stage in the product life cycle. For example, new products typically need relatively large advertising budgets to build awareness and to gain consumer trial. In contrast, mature brands usually require lower budgets as a ratio to sales.

Market share also impacts the amount of advertising needed: Because building the market or taking market share from competitors requires larger advertising spending than does simply maintaining current share, low-share brands usually need more advertising spending as a percentage of sales.

Also, brands in a market with many competitors and high advertising clutter must be advertised more heavily to be noticed above the noise in the marketplace. Undifferentiated brands—those that closely resemble other brands in their product class (soft drinks, laundry detergents)—may require heavy advertising to set them apart. When the product differs greatly from competitors, advertising can be used to point out the differences to consumers.

No matter what method is used, setting the advertising budget is no easy task. How does a company know if it is spending the right amount? Some critics charge that large consumer packaged-goods firms tend to spend too much on advertising and that business-to-business marketers generally underspend on advertising.

Companies such as Coca-Cola and Kraft have built sophisticated statistical models to determine the relationship between promotional spending and brand sales, and to help determine the “optimal investment” across various media. Still, because so many factors affect advertising effectiveness, some controllable and others not, measuring the results of advertising spending remains an inexact science. In most cases, managers must rely on large doses of judgment along with more quantitative analysis when setting advertising budgets.

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Developing Advertising Strategy (1 of 13)

Advertising strategy is the strategy by which the company accomplishes its advertising objectives and consists of:

Creating advertising messages and brand content
Selecting advertising media

An advertising strategy consists of two major elements: creating advertising messages and selecting advertising media.

In the past, companies often viewed media planning as secondary to the message-creation process, which often caused friction between creatives and media planners.

Soaring media costs, more-focused target marketing strategies, and the blizzard of new online, mobile, and social media have promoted the importance of the media-planning function. The decision about which media to use for an ad campaign is now sometimes more critical than the creative elements of the campaign.

Also, brand content and messages are now often co-created through interactions with and among consumers. As a result, more and more advertisers are orchestrating a closer harmony between their messages and the media that deliver them.

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Developing Advertising Strategy (2 of 13)

Creating the Advertising Message and Brand Content

Advertising clutter: Today’s cord-cutting consumers have a rich new set of information and entertainment options. Advertisers can no longer force-feed the same old cookie-cutter messages and content to captive consumers through traditional media.

Rasulov/Shutterstock

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Developing Advertising Strategy (3 of 13)

Creating the Advertising Message and Brand Content

Merging advertising and entertainment:

Brand integrations—also known as branded entertainment, involve making the brand an inseparable part of some form of entertainment or content.
Native advertising—advertising or other brand-produced online content that looks in form and function like the other natural content surrounding it on a web or social media platform.

Advertisers can no longer force-feed the same old cookie-cutter message content to captive consumers through traditional media. Unless ads provide information that is interesting, useful, or entertaining, many consumers will simply skip by them.

To break through the clutter, many marketers have created new avenues for reaching consumers with more engaging messages.

Today’s viewers are no longer captive audiences. They have a rich new set of information and entertainment options— the internet, content streaming, social and mobile media, tab- lets and smartphones, and others. Consumers are increasingly becoming “cord cutters”—skirting cable and satellite subscriptions in favor of often ad-free internet-based or wireless streaming. Today’s consumers can easily skip, mute, block, or avoid T V and digital content they don’t want to watch.

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Developing Advertising Strategy (4 of 13)

Creating the Advertising Message and Brand Content

Message and content strategy: The first step in creating effective advertising content is to plan a message strategy— the general message that will be communicated to consumers.

Identifies consumer benefits
Follows from company’s broader positioning and customer value creation strategies

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Developing Advertising Strategy (5 of 13)

Creating the Advertising Message and Brand Content

The creative concept is the compelling “big idea” that will bring an advertising message strategy to life in a distinctive and memorable way.

Characteristics of the appeals:

Meaningful
Believable
Distinctive

The highly acclaimed film The L E G O Movie was pretty much a 100-minute product placement for iconic L E G O construction bricks. The sequel offered product placement opportunities for other brands, such as a L E G O version of the Chevy Silverado.

Barry King/Alamy Stock Photo; W E N N Rights Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

Message strategy statements tend to be plain, straightforward outlines of benefits and positioning points that the advertiser wants to stress.

At this stage, simple message ideas become great ad campaigns. Usually, a copywriter and an art director will team up to generate many creative concepts, hoping that one of these concepts will turn out to be the big idea. The creative concept may emerge as a visualization, a phrase, or a combination of the two. The creative concept will guide the choice of specific appeals to be used in an advertising campaign.

Advertising appeals should have three characteristics. First, they should be meaningful, pointing out benefits that make the product more desirable or interesting to consumers.

Second, appeals must be believable. Consumers must believe that the product or service will deliver the promised benefits. Appeals should also be distinctive. They should tell how the product is better than competing brands.

Brand integration has now spread beyond T V and movies into other media such as video games, comic books, Broadway musicals, and even pop music. In fact, brand integration has played a central role in some productions

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Developing Advertising Strategy (6 of 13)

Creating the Advertising Message and Brand Content

Message execution occurs when the advertiser turns the big idea into an actual ad execution that will capture the target market’s attention and interest. The creative team must find the best approach, style, tone, words, and format for executing the message.

Distinctive advertising appeals: Wolverine sets its Cat Earthmovers footwear apart through its association with the well-respected Caterpillar brand. Cat Earthmovers boots are “born from bulldozers.”

Courtesy Young & Laramore and Cat Footwear

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Developing Advertising Strategy (7 of 13)

Message Execution Styles

Slice of life
Lifestyle
Fantasy
Mood or image
Musical
Personality symbol
Technical expertise
Scientific evidence
Testimonial or endorsement

The message can be presented in the following execution styles.

Slice of life shows one or more “typical” people using the product in a normal setting.
Lifestyle shows how a product fits in with a particular lifestyle.
Fantasy creates a fantasy around the product or its use.
Mood or image builds a mood or image around the product or service, such as beauty, love, intrigue, serenity, or pride. Few claims are made about the product or service except through suggestion.
Musical shows people or cartoon characters singing about the product.
Personality symbol creates a character that represents the product.
Technical expertise shows the company’s expertise in making the product.
Scientific evidence presents survey or scientific evidence that the brand is better or better liked than one or more other brands.
Testimonial evidence or endorsement features a highly believable or likable source endorsing the product. It could be ordinary people saying how much they like a given product.

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Developing Advertising Strategy (8 of 13)

Creating the Advertising Message and Brand Content

Message execution also includes:

Tone

Positive or negative

Attention-getting words
Format

Illustration
Headline
Copy

Novel formats can make an advertisement stand out. This Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans ad compels readers to flip the ad, where they get the brand’s “Go Waitless” message.

Quicken Loans

Novel formats can help an advertisement stand out. In this Quicken Loans ad, the flipped image captures the audience’s attention.

The advertiser must choose a tone for the ad. The advertiser must use memorable and attention-getting words in the ad. Finally, format elements make a difference in an ad’s impact as well as in its cost. A small change in an ad’s design can make a big difference in its effect. In a print ad, the illustration is the first thing the reader notices—it must be strong enough to draw attention. Next, the headline must effectively entice the right people to read the copy. Finally, the copy—the main block of text in the ad—must be simple but strong and convincing. Moreover, these three elements must effectively work together to persuasively present customer value.

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Developing Advertising Strategy (9 of 13)

Selecting Advertising Media

The major steps in advertising media selection:

Determining reach, frequency, impact, and engagement
Choosing among major media types
Selecting specific media vehicles
Choosing media timing

Engaging the right consumers with the right media: The adidas “Here to Create Legend” Boston Marathon campaign created ultrapersonalized highlight videos for each of 30,000 marathon participants, identified by R F I D chips on their adidas bibs, and made available online within hours.

Marcio Jose Bastos Silva/Shutterstock

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Developing Advertising Strategy (10 of 13)

Reach is a measure of the percentage of people in the target market who are exposed to the ad campaign during a given period of time.

Frequency is a measure of how many times the average person in the target market is exposed to the message.

Impact is the qualitative value of a message exposure through a given medium.

Engagement is a measure of things such as ratings, readership, listenership, and click-through rates.

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Measuring customer engagement rate on social media.

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Performance measures for social media networks linked to inputs or costs, as seen by a brand manager.

Exposure

Education (already in the funnel)

Ready to buy

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Developing Advertising Strategy (11 of 13)

Table 15.2 Profiles of Major Media Types

Medium	Advantages	Limitations
Digital, mobile, and social media	High selectivity; low cost; immediacy; engagement capabilities	Potentially low impact; high audience control of content and exposure
Television	Good mass-marketing coverage; low cost per exposure; combines sight, sound, and motion; appealing to the senses	High total costs; high clutter; fleeting exposure; less audience selectivity
Newspapers	Flexibility; timeliness; good local market coverage; high believability	Short life; poor reproduction quality; small pass-along audience
Direct mail	High audience selectivity; flexibility; no ad competition within the same medium; allows personalization	Relatively high cost per exposure; “junk mail” image
Magazines	High geographic and demographic selectivity; credibility and prestige; high-quality reproduction; long life and good pass-along readership	Long ad purchase lead time; high cost; no guarantee of position
Radio	Good local acceptance; high geographic and demographic selectivity; low cost	Audio only; fleeting exposure; low attention (“the half-heard” medium); fragmented audiences
Outdoor	Flexibility; high repeat exposure; low cost; good positional selectivity	Little audience selectivity; creative limitations

As summarized in Table 15.2, the major media types are television, digital and social media, newspapers, direct mail, magazines, radio, and outdoor. Each medium has its advantages and its limitations. Media planners want to choose media that will effectively and efficiently present the advertising message to target customers. Thus, they must consider each medium’s impact, message effectiveness, and cost.

As discussed in the previous chapter, it’s typically not a question of which one medium to use. Rather, the advertiser selects a mix of media and blends them into a fully integrated marketing communications campaign. The mix of media must be reexamined regularly.

As mass-media costs rise, audiences shrink, and exciting new digital and social media emerge, many advertisers are finding new ways to reach consumers. They are supplementing the traditional mass media with more-specialized and highly targeted digital media that cost less, target more effectively, and engage consumers more fully.

Today’s marketers want to assemble a full mix of paid, owned, earned, and shared media that create and deliver engaging brand content to target consumers.

In addition to the explosion of online, mobile, and social media, cable and satellite television systems are thriving. Such systems allow narrow programming formats, such as all sports, all news, nutrition, arts, home improvement and gardening, cooking, travel, history, finance, and others that target select groups.

Advertisers can take advantage of such narrowcasting to “rifle in” on special market segments rather than use the “shotgun” approach offered by network broadcasting. For example, ads for a Spanish language channel would run in only Hispanic neighborhoods. Another example may be that only pet owners would see ads from pet food companies.

Finally, in their efforts to find less costly and more highly targeted ways to reach consumers, advertisers have discovered a dazzling collection of alternative media. These days, no matter where you go or what you do, you will probably run into some new form of advertising.

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Developing Advertising Strategy (12 of 13)

Selecting Advertising Media

Selecting specific media vehicles involves decisions presenting the message effectively and efficiently to the target customer and must consider the message’s:

Impact
Effectiveness
Cost

Marketers have discovered a dazzling array of alternative media, like this clever “Use Only What You Need” park bench campaign urging Denver city residents to use less water.

Courtesy of Denver Water, 2021

Media planners must also choose the best media vehicles—specific media within each general media type. For example, television vehicles include Modern Family and A B C World News Tonight. Magazine vehicles include Time, Real Simple, and E S P N The Magazine. Online and mobile vehicles include Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube.

These days, you’re likely to find ads—well— anywhere. Taxicabs sport electronic messaging signs tied to G P S location sensors that can pitch local stores and restaurants wherever they roam. Ad space is being sold on parking-lot tickets, subway turnstiles, gas pumps, A T M s, municipal garbage cans, and even police cars, doctors’ examining tables, and church bulletins. In its clever, long-running “Use Only What You Need” campaign urging city residents to use less water, Denver Water plastered its logo and slogan on everything from bus tails and sandwich- board-wearing conservation ambassadors to barrel- shaped sculptures and abbreviated park benches.

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Developing Advertising Strategy (13 of 13)

Selecting Advertising Media

Deciding on media timing: When deciding on media timing, the planner must consider:

Seasonality
Real-time responses

Media timing:

1-800-Flowers.com

and other online flower companies advertise all year long but boost spending substantially during winter holidays and other special occasions.

1-800-Flowers.com

Media timing: Today’s social media let advertisers respond to events in real time.

An advertiser must decide how to schedule the advertising over the course of a year. The firm can vary its advertising to follow the seasonal pattern, oppose the seasonal pattern, or be the same all year. Most firms do some seasonal advertising. Similarly, although online flower companies like 1-800-Flowers or Teleflora advertise all year long, they boost spending substantially during the winter holidays and other special occasions such as Mother’s Day. “Christmas/Hanukkah, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day are the holy trinity for the floral industry,” notes one analyst.

Long Description:

Text reads: Mother's Day is Sunday, May 9th. Mom means love; for women who inspire, gifts to match. Mother's Day flowers and gifts. 1-800 flowers dot com.

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Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness and Return on Advertising Investment (1 of 3)

Return on advertising investment is the net return on advertising investment divided by the costs of the advertising investment.

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Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness and Return on Advertising Investment (2 of 3)

Communication effects indicate whether the ad and media are communicating the ad message well and can be tested before or after the ad runs.

Sales and profit effects compare past sales and profits with past expenditures or through experiments.

Advertisers should regularly evaluate two types of advertising results: the communication effects and the sales and profit effects.

Measuring the communication effects of an ad or ad campaign tells whether the ads and media are communicating the ad message well. Individual ads can be tested before or after they are run. Pre- and post-evaluations of communication effects can be made for entire advertising campaigns as well.

However, sales and profit effects of advertising are often much harder to measure. For example, what sales and profits are produced by an ad campaign that increases brand awareness by 20 percent and brand preference by 10 percent? Sales and profits are affected by many factors other than advertising—such as product features, price, and availability.

One way to measure the sales and profit effects of advertising is to compare past sales and profits with past advertising expenditures or to use experiments to test the effects of different advertising spending levels. More complex experiments could be designed to include other variables, such as differences in the ads or media used.

However, because so many factors affect advertising effectiveness, some controllable and others not, measuring the results of advertising spending remains an inexact science. Managers often must rely on large doses of judgment along with quantitative analysis when assessing advertising performance.

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Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness and Return on Advertising Investment (3 of 3)

Sales effects are easier to measure with digital advertising.

The digital environment is friendly to experimentation.
Marketers can manipulate content across customer groups with readily measurable results.

Managers must still rely on judgment along with quantitative analysis when assessing advertising performance.

Sales effects are often easier to measure with digital advertising. The digital environment is very friendly to experimentation. With online and mobile media, marketers can quickly and easily manipulate content across customer groups with readily measurable results. They can run multiple experiments in the digital space—also called A/B testing—to identify and refine which content works best.

Still, because so many factors affect advertising effectiveness, some controllable and others not, pretesting ads and measuring the results of advertising spending re- mains an inexact science. Managers often must rely on large doses of judgment along with quantitative analysis when assessing advertising performance. That’s especially true in this content-hungry digital age, where large quantities of ads and other content are produced and run on a real-time basis. Thus, while companies carefully pretest traditional big-budget media ads before running them, digital content is often refined on the fly.

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Other Advertising Considerations

Organizing for advertising

Agency versus. in-house

International advertising decisions

Standardization or Adaptation

International advertising: No matter where in the world you go—here India—I K E A’s advertising portrays I K E A’s “better home” themes of creating a better life for everyday people through quality furniture at affordable prices.

Used with permission of Inter I K E A System B.V.

Organizing for Advertising

Different companies organize in different ways to handle advertising. In small companies, advertising might be handled by someone in the sales department or large companies may have advertising departments whose job it is to set the advertising budget, work with the ad agency, and handle other advertising not done by the agency. However, most large companies use outside advertising agencies because they offer several advantages.

�An advertising agency is a marketing services firm that assists companies in planning, preparing, implementing, and evaluating all or portions of their advertising programs. Today’s agencies employ specialists who can often perform advertising tasks better than the company’s own staff can.

International Advertising Decisions

International advertisers face many complexities not encountered by domestic advertisers. The most basic issue concerns the degree to which global advertising should be adapted to the unique characteristics of various country markets. Some advertisers have attempted to support their global brands with highly standardized worldwide advertising, with campaigns that work as well in Bangkok as they do in Baltimore.

Standardization has drawbacks because it ignores the fact that country markets differ greatly in their cultures, demographics, and economic conditions. Thus, most international advertisers “think globally but act locally.” They develop global advertising strategies that make their worldwide efforts more efficient and consistent. Then they adapt their advertising programs to make them more responsive to consumer needs and expectations within local markets.

And no matter where you go in the world—whether it’s Indiana or India—I K E A’s advertising portrays

International advertising: No matter where in the world you go— here India—I K E A’s advertising portrays I K E A’s “better home” themes of creating a better life for everyday people through quality furniture at affordable prices. the I K E A lifestyle. According to I K E A, “a better home creates a better life. So we work to create better homes, every day, through the products and solutions we offer.” In turn, I K E A’s advertising worldwide drives home its global positioning themes of creating a better life for everyday people through quality furniture at affordable prices.

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Learning Objective 3

Define the role of public relations in the promotion mix.

Discussion Question

What are the roles and functions of public relations within an organization?

Learning Objective 3 Summary

Public relations, or P R—gaining favorable publicity and creating a favorable company image—is the least used of the major promotion tools, although it has great potential for building consumer awareness and preference. P R is used to promote products, people, places, ideas, activities, organizations, and even nations. Companies use P R to build good relationships with consumers, investors, the media, and their communities. P R can have a strong impact on public awareness at a much lower cost than advertising can, and P R results can sometimes be spectacular. Although P R still captures only a small portion of the overall marketing budgets of many firms, it is playing an increasingly important brand-building role. In the digital, mobile, and social media age, the lines between advertising and P R are becoming more and more blurred.

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Public Relations (1 of 4)

Public relations consists of activities designed to engage the company’s various publics and build good relations with them.

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Public Relations (2 of 4)

Press relations or press agency involves the creation and placing of newsworthy information to attract attention to a person, product, or service.

Product publicity involves publicizing specific products.

Public affairs involves building and maintaining national or local community relations.

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Public Relations (3 of 4)

Lobbying involves building and maintaining relations with legislators and government officials to influence legislation and regulation.�Investor relations involves maintaining relationships with shareholders and others in the financial community.�Development involves public relations with donors or members of nonprofit organizations to gain financial or volunteer support.

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Public Relations (4 of 4)

The Role and Impact of P R

Lower cost than advertising
Stronger impact on public awareness than advertising
Has power to engage consumers and make them part of the brand story

Public relations can have a strong impact on public awareness at a much lower cost than advertising can. When using public relations, the company does not pay for the space or time in the media. Rather, it pays for a staff to develop and circulate information and manage events. If the company develops an interesting story or event, it could be picked up by several different media and have the same effect as advertising that would cost millions of dollars.

When using public relations, the company does not pay for the space or time in the media. Rather, it pays for a staff to develop and circulate information and manage events. If the company develops an interesting story or event, it could be picked up by several different media and have the same effect as advertising that would cost millions of dollars. What’s more, public relations has the power to engage consumers and make them a part of the brand story and its telling.

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Learning Objective 4

Explain how companies use P R to communicate with relevant publics.

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Major Public Relations Tools

News
Videos
Special events
Written materials
Corporate identity materials
Public service activities
Buzz marketing
Social networking
Internet

The power of public relations: A simple statue with a big message, backed by an imaginative P R campaign, has had a larger and more lasting impact than even the most memorable Super Bowl ad, probably at a lower cost.

quietbits/Shutterstock

Public relations uses several tools. One of the major tools is news. P R professionals find or create favorable news about the company and its products or people. Sometimes news stories occur naturally; sometimes the P R person can suggest events or activities that would create news.

Another common P R tool is special events, ranging from news conferences and speeches, brand tours, and sponsorships to laser light shows, multimedia presentations, or educational programs designed to reach and interest target publics.

Public relations people also prepare written materials to reach and influence their target markets. These materials include annual reports, brochures, articles, and company newsletters and magazines.

Corporate identity materials can also help create a corporate identity that the public immediately recognizes. Logos, stationery, brochures, signs, business forms, business cards, buildings, uniforms, and company cars and trucks all become marketing tools when they are attractive, distinctive, and memorable.

Finally, companies can improve public goodwill by contributing money and time to public service activities.

Web and social media are also important P R channels. Websites, blogs, and social media such as YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Storify, and Twitter are providing new ways to reach and engage people. As noted, storytelling and engagement are core P R strengths, creating buzz marketing which plays well into the use of online and social media.

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AI’s Impact on Marketing