Advertising vs Public Relations

Media Relations, Healthcare Public Relations, Entertainment PR firms, Healthcare Public Relations, Communication Agency are all necessary for the survival of a business.

Advertising and Public Relations are the two important jobs for promoting products and services offered by the company. Advertising is totally focused on promotion of products or services with an aim to encourage target audience to buy. PR is specialized in communication with the public and media.

The key difference between Advertising and Public Relations.

     1.      Advertising is a technique of planning to get public attention to products or services, mainly through paid announcements. Public Relations are a practice of strategic communication that aims at building a mutually beneficial relationship between the company and the public.

     2.      Advertising is a purchased or paid media, while public relations are an earned media.

     3.      Advertising is done to promote product or services, with an aim to induce the intended audience to buy. On the other hand, public relations aim at maintaining a positive image of the company in the media.

     4.      In advertising, the placement of the ad is guaranteed, but there is no such guarantee of placement in case of public relations.

To understand the differences, consider different situations and how you approach them differently through advertising or public relations.

     1.      Paid Space or Free Coverage

·        Advertising: The Company pays for the ad space or airtime and knows exactly when the ad will air or be published.

·        Public relations: Your job is to get free publicity for the company. From news conferences to press releases, you're focused on getting free media publicity for the company and its products or services.

     2.      Shelf Life

·        Advertising: Because you pay for space or airtime, you can run your ads over and over for as long as your budget allows. An ad generally has a longer shelf life than a single press release.

·        Public relations: You submit a news conference about a new product, or a trend story only once, and the PR exposure you receive is circulated only once. A journalist won't publish the same information three or four times.

     3.      Special Events

·        Advertising: When an event is sponsored by a company, u simply can't pat your back for taking out the ad and portraying to be a great company. This is where your PR department steps in.

·        Public relations: If you're sponsoring an event, you can send out a press release and the news media might pick it up and give you positive press exposure.

Advertising and public relations are two distinct areas; they differ in terms of publicity, primary audience, repetition and transparency of functions. Whether it is a large enterprise or a small enterprise, whether it is public or private, the enterprise has to establish advertising and a public relations department so that they can display their advertisements through different means and cause awareness amongst the public.