PR & Advertising: Fraternal Twins

Put an advertising exec and a PR practitioner in the same room, and you’re sure to spark up a lively debate about which is more effective – public relations or advertising. The “sibling rivalry” between these two fields has existed for ages.

I suppose, as a PR girl, I should tell you that my specialty is the best of all marcom fields. The truth is, advertising and public relations are brothers from the same mother. When properly put to use, advertising and PR should work together in harmony as part of an integrated communications plan to achieve the organization’s stated goals.

There’s an old saying in PR along the lines of “Advertising you pay for, PR your pray for.” Well you certainly can’t pay for everything, because that gets expensive (and money doesn’t buy happiness…or consumer trust), but you also can’t always cross your fingers and hope for the best in today’s competitive business market.

So what are the fundamental differences?

According to the Public Relations Society of America, public relations is defined as “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” Advertising, on the other hand, is defined by the American Marketing Association as “the placement of announcements and messages in time or space by business firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individuals who seek to inform and/or persuade members of a particular target market or audience regarding their products, services, organizations or ideas.”

Okay, so let’s break it down:

• Cost: Advertising often involves paid placement, and public relations is often much cheaper.
• Control: Advertising is guaranteed. You purchase it, it’s yours. It’s what you want, where you want it, when you want it, and looks like what you wanted. With advertising, you have complete and total control over the message. A great public relations campaign, on the other hand, can generate an article in your dream publication, but that article may only run once. Public relations, especially media relations, also offers less control over the message. You can do your best to educate, but consumer perception is reality.
• Credibility: People trust people like them. That is to say, if you can get the consumers in your industry – or in the media that your consumers read and trust – talking positively about your company (through PR efforts), that can go a long way farther than you talking positively about your company (advertising).
• Clutter: Most consumers read the newspaper so they can…read the newspaper, not so they can look at the ads. In today’s fast-paced age, many people fast-forward through commercials, skip over ads, route spam to their junk folder, etc. While advertising may have once dominated “eyeball time” before the turn of the millennium, consumer focus (and attention span) has now shifted to relevant content.

But what DNA do we share?

Both advertising and PR want to achieve the same goals – building awareness, shaping attitudes and ultimately affecting behavior. Public relations shapes public perception through open two-way dialogue, transparency and flow of information, whereas advertising shapes public perception through targeted paid placements designed to garner attention and drive sales.

In summary, Advertising and PR are both excellent strategies that should be implemented as part of an integrated communications plan. Now it’s about time we all just got along.

This post was edited July 9, 2019, to update the American Marketing Association’s definition of advertising.