Many people confuse these two disciplines, which are used to promote a brand or company and position it in the best light possible. When they work together, they can create marketing magic for your business. In short, advertising sells and public relations tells. Here’s the lowdown on advertising and PR from a copywriter’s standpoint.
Advertising or PR
Advertising is paid media—you pay for your ad to be heard or seen in print, broadcast or digital media. TV and radio commercials, print ads and billboards, native ads and sponsored ads on social platforms are among today’s advertisements. An advertising copywriter and an art director (or in some cases, a graphic designer) work together to develop the concepts and ad campaigns in various media. Advertising can be relational, creating an image for a brand; or transactional, selling something now. Experiential marketing may fit in here as well.
Public relations (PR) is earned media—if your story or news release is placed, you have “earned” that placement. PR develops relationships between a company and its audience (customers, stakeholders, employees, the general public). Among common PR activities are news releases, expert byline articles, story pitches, special events, and sponsorships. When these are covered by the media, you’ve earned your PR star. Typically, a writer creates the story pitch or news release; other PR professionals get involved in pitching, event planning and media relations.
Depending on what you do, make or sell, both advertising and public relations can be part of your marketing arsenal—alone or together. If you are hiring a writer or a marketing/PR/advertising agency, make sure to ask about its writers’ strengths and deliverables. Writing a compelling print ad that catches the eye or a radio spot that catches the ear is very different from writing a strategic news release that is truly newsworthy in some way and will get a response from an editor.
Advertising and PR
Taken together, running paid ads and getting some free press can be a powerful way to promote your business with a one-two promotional punch. The rise of digital media has blurred the lines to a great extent.
Major brands with multi-million-dollar budgets create a variety of different types of campaigns—traditional advertising, digital/search marketing, public relations. But for smaller companies, the decision of which direction to take is often one or the other, or finding a full-service marketing agency that can help them do both within their market and at a cost they can afford—a blended marketing approach. That could mean sending out a news release, pitching the company president or product creator for a media interview, writing a company blog post about the product, setting up demos, creating a video to push out on social media, and creating and placing paid ads in relevant publications or channels to promote the new product and announce the launch.
With the way media lines are blurring and marketing activations are crossing over between advertising and PR, there are so many ways to market your company, products or services using any combination of advertising and public relations activities. A marketing consultant or full-service agency with experience in both disciplines can help guide your campaign along the path to greater visibility and market penetration with both earned and paid media.