Because PR can be difficult to control, it is often discredited. According to DickLyles, president and chief operating officer of The Ken Blanchard Companies, afull-service consulting and performance improvement company, "People tendto migrate to things they can control. Even now, when an executive looks at anadvertising message that's exactly what they want to create, with exactly theright positioning and so forth, they say, 'That's the message I want to send.'That's great, even though people may not read it, or people may give it lessvalue and discount it, because it's advertising.... [On the other hand], if you geta well-placed article in a trade journal or you get some ink, people give it morecredibility. The impact is greater, but because it may not come out exactly theway it was intended to come out, [businesspeople frequently] discount it."
The concepts of Branding and public relations are closely intertwined. The jobof public relations is to encourage the public to have positive thoughts about aparticular company, product, service, or individual. Branding is the idea that aparticular set of attributes will encourage the public to have positive thoughtsabout a particular company, product, service, or individual. It's a subtledistinction, but an essential one.
In order to best understand Branding and how it is done, it is necessary toexamine and explain public relations. Many experts on Branding espouse theopinion that public relations are a vital part-if not the most vital part-of theBranding process. Public relations practitioners are particularly well suited tothe Branding concept, since they are well versed in the techniques andpractices that create a public identity very close to the central idea of a brand.
Unlike marketing or advertising, which are essential activities andindispensable to the creation of a brand, public relations is not devoted to atangible object. Advertising executives create television, print, and radio ads;these are concrete, identifiable things. Marketing creates a product-be it aphysical product or a service-and presents it to the public. That is an obvious,noticeable thing; it is not hard to understand.
Public relations does not do either of those things. When properly conceivedand executed, a public relations campaign is next to invisible; the public doesnot know it's there. More to the point, public relations does not create aphysical manifestation of its effort: When PR is done right, it doesn't leave thetrace of a newspaper or magazine ad, a videotape, or an audiocassette that willwin awards-and that can sometimes overwhelm the message being delivered.
What public relations does is to encourage third parties to deliver themessage. Why? Because the third parties are news organizations, printjournalists, and television and radio news programs and talk shows, which bydefinition have more credibility for the general public than an advertisement orthe word of a company spokesperson.
In other words, public relations is meant to generate news coverage. It does sothrough planned events and through news stories (true news stories, it shouldbe emphasized) suggested to reporters and their editors. When a newspaperruns an article about the unusual new promotion being done by a localbusiness, that's public relations. But to the reader of that newspaper, it appearsto be an article generated by the editorial staff of the publication itself.- Thereis no advertisement disclaimer that runs over a PR-suggested news article.That makes sense, because the news editor always has the option of ignoringthe suggestions made by public relations people. Editors and producers willrely on public relations for news leads, but will not simply act as a conduit,presenting the message from the public relations company's client uneditedand unconfirmed. Public relations can suggest, but not control, the messagebeing sent. It is a very difficult tightrope to walk.
For example, in 2000, when the Beatles song compilation 1 was beingreleased by Capitol Records, it presented (believe it or not) a public relationsdilemma: how to promote an album full of songs that the entire targetaudience almost certainly owned in another form already.
The problem was solved in a number of ways. First of all, it was emphasizedthat these were the 27 number one songs the band had produced during itslegendary career. Press releases noted over and over again that these songshad never been compiled on one album before. It was intimated that many inthe group's core audience might not have heard these songs on CD before,having bought them on vinyl records when they were originally released.
But more than anything, the public relations executives managed to generatepublicity for the album with something that no other project could possibleoffer: access to the (at the time) three surviving Beatles for interview. Newsprograms, interview shows, publications, and talk programs were all givenopportunities (albeit brief ones) to interview at least one Beatle, and thereforethe album was mentioned on countless air-waves and in publications for weeksbefore its release, and given very prominent placement.
The album went on to become a smash hit, reaching number one almost 40years after the initial release of some of the recordings. It was yet anothertriumph for a legendary recording group, but it was also something of a coupfor the public relations personnel involved. Yes, they had the luxury of three ofthe most famous faces on the planet, and the ability to use them. But the PRpeople who worked on that project also knew that they had to make somethingthat wasn't necessarily new seem vital and important, and they knew where thenews story in the project was kept. Making sure the news got out was their job,and they did it admirably.
The best part: The public was never aware there were PR people involved at all.What average fans saw on TV was Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and/orRingo Starr. They heard snippets of the songs they had loved for decades. Andthey were told that this was different; it was new; it was unique. That's all thepublic needed to know. The fact that this message had been carefullyconstructed and the interviews painstakingly arranged was irrelevant toconsumers; all they needed to know was that the Beatles were, more or less,back.
Public relations works behind the scenes, but its impact on Branding isenormous. Because PR generates interest, and precisely because it is workingoffstage, it is as valuable a part of the Branding process as can be imagined.And best of all, it's often the, least expensive component in a sophisticatedBranding machine.
As Adam Christing, president and founder of Clean Comedians, a companythat provides meeting planners with G-rated comedians, says, "Public relationstakes the brand and makes it mobile, makes it more visible. It's like taking aband that's been successful in a local neighborhood and taking it out on theroad so more people can experience it."
Of course, when the message is not delivered in the form that was initiallyintended, that means the public relations professional has not done the jobproperly. The mistake can be in the design of the message itself-in particular,if the message that has been designed is a false or misleading one-or in themethod of its delivery. It's a fine thing to have a vital, exciting news story totell, but if the presentation is ineffective, that story win not be told, or win betold in such a way that its original intention is lost.
Public relations is about messages and their delivery, but that isn't all PR is. Incorrelation with Branding, the goal of public relations must always be to createa feeling in the mind of the target audience for which the message is beingtailored. If Branding is about creating an identity for a product, service, orentity (company or individual), public relations' contribution to Branding isabout making that identity friendly and likable for the public--specifically, thepublic for which the message is intended.
Obviously, the feeling most PR aspires to create is a positive one. But theintention is vastly more complex than that: In truth, public relations seeks tocreate and maintain a consistent feeling of familiarity, trust, reliability, andconfidence with the targeted public. If advertising is about getting the public'sattention, public relations is about delivering the message once the attentionhas been commanded. When people express an opinion about a product or acompany, initially they'll say they like or don't like it, without offering furtherexplanation. But when they're given specific questions about their opinions, theeffects of public relations become clear. When products are assignedpersonality traits or attributes by the public-"friendly," "environmentally aware... .. concerned with quality ... .. accessible"-it means that public relations, inconjunction with advertising and marketing, has done its job. But because thepublic is naturally wary of advertising and marketing, and because thosedisciplines are considerably more visible than public relations, it is possiblethat PR makes the most honest, and deepest, impact on the public's psyche.
How is the feeling created? Unlike advertising or marketing, public relationsalms to influence public opinion without being noticed. So efforts made bycompanies to create goodwill through advertising and marketing are effective,but will be met with a higher amount of resistance from the public than apublic relations campaign.
Michael Levine is the founder of the prominent public relations firm Levine Communications Office, based in Los Angeles. He is the author of Guerrilla PR, 7 Life Lessons from Noah's Ark: How to Survive a Flood in Your Own Life.
GuerrillaPR.net is a resource for people that want to get famous in the media, without going broke. http://GuerrillaPR.net |
