Advertising vs. Public relations:
Differences and Similarities:
- Overview
Public Relations and Advertising can easily be confused with each other.
First, it is important to remember that they are both essentials in the process of marketing.
Concerning Advertising, we should never forget the main goals of an ad which is to raise awareness about products or even services in order to generate profits.
Advertising agencies must find a way to convince consumers to buy a specific product. Therefore, an ad has to tell the consumer why he needs the product, how it will benefit his life and where he can get it. Advertising is most of the time stated as being the most important part of marketing but without a good marketing strategy advertising would have difficulties to reach their objectives.
PR can also be called the “Jack of all trades” and can be applied to every aspect of marketing. A PR department often have several responsibilities such as press releases, news conferences, company newsletters, public speaking, television and radio interviews, trade shows, event management, corporate identity and many others. Most of the time the PR department is in close relations with customers.
Therefore, Advertising and Public Relations relate together to form a unique organisation. They work as team in order to find the best marketing strategy.
- Need more precisions?
The main differences between the both are:
- The extent of message control: when publishing an advertisement you control what message is communicated. However, in PR when the message is sent to the media it often becomes uncontrollable.
- Shelf Life: Most of the time, commercials have a shorter life than press release.
- Implied Endorsement: Advertising do not get as much credibility as PR.
- Costs: Advertising budget is way higher than PR.
- Convergence affecting Advertising and PR:
Due to the cultural convergence of media production and consumption; advertising and public relations must adapt themselves to a new media environment.
They both have to re-evaluate their roles in order to stay competitive. They are not anymore only sources of content for the media, they also became publishers of this content.
- A futuristic approach:
After decades of investments in Research and Development, the evolution of new technologies put in our hands some powerful new forms of creation, management, distribution and consumption of intellectual work.
- - Advertising:
Apparently, changes have affected advertising more than any other marketing function. Convergence and more precisely media convergence will change and are already contributing to a new way of communicating. For instance, the convergence of television and Internet open a wide range of new potential opportunities for advertisers to target consumers.
- - Public Relations:
The techniques of public relations need to change. They need to extend their new value to additional audiences in order to keep their credibility.
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