Dr Mohamed Kirat
BY DR MOHAMED KIRAT
Bill Gates once said that he’d spend his last dollar on PR? Why would a man who is already famous bother with PR? Even if you are famous you have to manage your reputation and to work hard on maintaining your fame and your notoriety. You have to communicate on a regular basis with your stakeholders, otherwise you will be considered out. Publicity and public relations are often used interchangeably. But they are, in fact, two very distinct and separate disciplines.
Publicity is “the act of getting ink.” It is the act of attracting the media’s attention and gaining visibility with the public at large. The focus of publicity is getting as much press coverage or “ink” as possible. Marketing strategist Tristan Loo describes public relations as “the strategic crafting of your story. It’s the focused examination of your interactions and tactics and products and pricing that, when combined, determine what and how people talk about you.” It is said that everything begins with a good story, and public relations is about telling it well and touching the lives of many people.
Public relations is all about maintaining your brand’s reputation. Crisis management is also part of PR, and again it shows the difference between publicity and public relations. When things go wrong — and we all know nothing is perfect — it is the PR’s job to limit the damage to their client’s reputation and come up with a plan to bring it back to par. This is known as crisis PR or crisis communications. A crisis PR team may work very closely with a legal team to minimize the public opinion damage. In all, publicity is about getting ink; public relations is about strategically managing your brand’s reputation. Publicity is a tool; public relations is an overall program. Publicity is short term; public relations is long term. It is important to note that getting “ink” doesn’t mean that your brand’s credibility or reputation would be enhanced.
Getting publicity really just means your brand is getting out there. A publicity firm will brag how much ink they got their client. A PR firm will talk about storytelling and being remarkable at spreading the word.
But which is actually better for your business — PR or publicity? You should be doing both. Getting ink should be part of your overall PR strategy. It is important to remember that having a PR strategy in place is far more valuable for your business than simply getting an occasional mention in the papers or on television.
Publicity is one of the many communication channels you can use to shape the way your audience perceives your brand and the credibility associated with it.
One major and obvious factor that differentiates advertising from publicity is that advertising is paid placement and publicity is free editorial placement.
There is another fundamental difference: Advertising is telling consumers how great you are, and publicity is a third party (usually some media outlet) singing your praises. The relative impact and objective of each are very different. Public relations can benefit over time from — and is designed to work in conjunction with — advertising and specific marketing initiatives.
The primary focus of public relations is on the credentials of the medium and the quality of the news value. Because PR usually involves having the media cover a story, these stories can live on long past the immediate impact of advertising. PR takes the value of advertising and builds upon it based on enhanced impact. Editorial is third-party opinion, so the impact is considered three times that of a paid advertisement. For instance, if a half-page ad in the local newspaper costs QR30,000, then a half-page worth of editorial in the same newspaper would be valued at QR90,000.
Recently in the marketing world, the terms “publicity” and “public relations” are often thought of and discussed in the same breath. These terms are also often used interchangeably. However, they shouldn’t be. They are in fact quite different — a difference many people do not fully understand. PR is much broader than marketing, it performs a wide range of activities including marketing. Publicity is simply just one arrow in the quiver that is public relations.
Publicity is the effort to garner media coverage or exposure about a brand, product, event, etc. Its focus is narrow. Public relations, on the other hand, is the higher level development of an over-arching strategy for furthering a marketing or communications goal of an organisation. It is often associated with the term “reputation management.” It is true that publicity is a tool that PR professionals can use, but it is only a single tool among a long list.
If your PR firm is limited to just creating publicity, then you do not truly have a PR strategy. Other aspects of PR (beyond publicity) might include: employees relations, community outreach, corporate social responsibility programming and sponsorships, government relations, grassroots communications and engagement efforts, “public” presentations and other tools used to position the organisation as thought leaders, new media tactics, and many more. So how does publicity equal PR? It doesn’t.
PR can be used to build rapport with employees, customers, investors, voters, or the general public. It carries a strategic or intellectual capacity that involves more than just the flashing of cameras. But if you have to, Say cheese and then say something smart. PR is a long term process that never stops. It’s a daily systematic activity that builds and manages the image and reputation of a person, a company or a whole nation. Still, advertising and publicity are effective tools used widely to reach various stakeholders and audiences.
The writer is a professor of Public Relations and Mass Communication at the College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University.
THE PENINSULA
BY DR MOHAMED KIRAT
Bill Gates once said that he’d spend his last dollar on PR? Why would a man who is already famous bother with PR? Even if you are famous you have to manage your reputation and to work hard on maintaining your fame and your notoriety. You have to communicate on a regular basis with your stakeholders, otherwise you will be considered out. Publicity and public relations are often used interchangeably. But they are, in fact, two very distinct and separate disciplines.
Publicity is “the act of getting ink.” It is the act of attracting the media’s attention and gaining visibility with the public at large. The focus of publicity is getting as much press coverage or “ink” as possible. Marketing strategist Tristan Loo describes public relations as “the strategic crafting of your story. It’s the focused examination of your interactions and tactics and products and pricing that, when combined, determine what and how people talk about you.” It is said that everything begins with a good story, and public relations is about telling it well and touching the lives of many people.
Public relations is all about maintaining your brand’s reputation. Crisis management is also part of PR, and again it shows the difference between publicity and public relations. When things go wrong — and we all know nothing is perfect — it is the PR’s job to limit the damage to their client’s reputation and come up with a plan to bring it back to par. This is known as crisis PR or crisis communications. A crisis PR team may work very closely with a legal team to minimize the public opinion damage. In all, publicity is about getting ink; public relations is about strategically managing your brand’s reputation. Publicity is a tool; public relations is an overall program. Publicity is short term; public relations is long term. It is important to note that getting “ink” doesn’t mean that your brand’s credibility or reputation would be enhanced.
Getting publicity really just means your brand is getting out there. A publicity firm will brag how much ink they got their client. A PR firm will talk about storytelling and being remarkable at spreading the word.
But which is actually better for your business — PR or publicity? You should be doing both. Getting ink should be part of your overall PR strategy. It is important to remember that having a PR strategy in place is far more valuable for your business than simply getting an occasional mention in the papers or on television.
Publicity is one of the many communication channels you can use to shape the way your audience perceives your brand and the credibility associated with it.
One major and obvious factor that differentiates advertising from publicity is that advertising is paid placement and publicity is free editorial placement.
There is another fundamental difference: Advertising is telling consumers how great you are, and publicity is a third party (usually some media outlet) singing your praises. The relative impact and objective of each are very different. Public relations can benefit over time from — and is designed to work in conjunction with — advertising and specific marketing initiatives.
The primary focus of public relations is on the credentials of the medium and the quality of the news value. Because PR usually involves having the media cover a story, these stories can live on long past the immediate impact of advertising. PR takes the value of advertising and builds upon it based on enhanced impact. Editorial is third-party opinion, so the impact is considered three times that of a paid advertisement. For instance, if a half-page ad in the local newspaper costs QR30,000, then a half-page worth of editorial in the same newspaper would be valued at QR90,000.
Recently in the marketing world, the terms “publicity” and “public relations” are often thought of and discussed in the same breath. These terms are also often used interchangeably. However, they shouldn’t be. They are in fact quite different — a difference many people do not fully understand. PR is much broader than marketing, it performs a wide range of activities including marketing. Publicity is simply just one arrow in the quiver that is public relations.
Publicity is the effort to garner media coverage or exposure about a brand, product, event, etc. Its focus is narrow. Public relations, on the other hand, is the higher level development of an over-arching strategy for furthering a marketing or communications goal of an organisation. It is often associated with the term “reputation management.” It is true that publicity is a tool that PR professionals can use, but it is only a single tool among a long list.
If your PR firm is limited to just creating publicity, then you do not truly have a PR strategy. Other aspects of PR (beyond publicity) might include: employees relations, community outreach, corporate social responsibility programming and sponsorships, government relations, grassroots communications and engagement efforts, “public” presentations and other tools used to position the organisation as thought leaders, new media tactics, and many more. So how does publicity equal PR? It doesn’t.
PR can be used to build rapport with employees, customers, investors, voters, or the general public. It carries a strategic or intellectual capacity that involves more than just the flashing of cameras. But if you have to, Say cheese and then say something smart. PR is a long term process that never stops. It’s a daily systematic activity that builds and manages the image and reputation of a person, a company or a whole nation. Still, advertising and publicity are effective tools used widely to reach various stakeholders and audiences.
The writer is a professor of Public Relations and Mass Communication at the College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University.
THE PENINSULA
