| Publicity Facts FAQs
What is Public Relations?
What does Brownstone Public Relations do?
How does Pubic Relations differ from advertising or marketing?
More about how Pubic Relations differs from advertising and marketing.
What is Public Relations?
At the most basic level, public relations (PR) simply means managing relations with ones public(s). A public is any group of people who are important to the well-being of a person, group or business. For example, a companys publics might include customers, employees, investors, and local communities. A non-profit organizations publics might include members, donors, volunteers, and society at large.
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What does Brownstone Public Relations do?
Brownstone Public Relations is a full service public relations agency. Services include:
Publicity
Writing/editing, distributing PR materials and correspondence
Media relationssecuring interviews and appearances
Research, which includes monitoring public actions/attitudes and results of PR activities, and what the competition is doing
Special events, such as open houses, hospitality parties and trade shows
Public speaking to include speeches, presentations before groups, or managing speakers bureaus
Production of communication materials such as letters, press releases, media alerts, brochures and sponsorship packages
Counseling on best approach to reach clients publicity & public relations goals
Media Training for presentations appearances and interviews br
Crisis Management
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How does Pubic Relations differ from advertising or marketing?
There is a fine line between public relations, advertising, and marketing. The line is blurry because all three appear to be selling something and all three overlap in some ways. The goal is the same- all are designed to influence the perceptions, actions, and/or behaviors of a group of people.
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More about how Pubic Relations differ from advertising and marketing.
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Theres a famous saying that illustrates these differences.
If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign that says, Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday, thats advertising.
If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk him into town, thats promotion.
If the elephant walks through the mayors flowerbed, thats publicity.
If you can get the mayor to laugh about it, thats public relations.
And if you planned the elephants walk, thats marketing.
The difference is that they each use a different tactic for achieving a pre-determined goal. Advertising is easily identifiable. Paid advertisements such as signs, billboards, flyers, newspaper ads, or television commercials promoting a product/service or announcing an event (e.g. the sign on the elephant) are intended to be seen by a large number of people. They clearly communicate who is behind the communication and who stands to gain by the promotion. (Promotion is anything used to attract attendees to an event or influence buying decisions.)
Marketing involves coming up with strategies to influence customers to buy. Marketing would have been used in this case if the circus Marketing Director arranged for the elephant to walk through town and the flowerbed in order to increase ticket sales. As you can see from this example, advertising and promotion often play a strong role in support of marketing.
While marketing focuses on communicating with customers and potential customers, public relations focuses on building relationships with all the publics of an organization. Some of these publics will be customers. When a public relations program makes people feel good about doing business with a company, people are more likely to be influenced by the companys marketing program.
However, public relations consultants are concerned even with publics that are not customers. For example, while the mayor himself may not be interested in attending the circus, his involvement can help attract more people to attend. As a public relations consultant, you might convince the mayor to go along with your plans because he wants to make more tax revenue by attracting attendees to the circus or because he wants to appear to be a good sport for the next election.
One area of public relations is publicity, which means having information appear as a new item or feature story in the media. In this case, you could get publicity for the circus by inviting the media to report on the elephant walking through the mayors flowerbed. When information appears as news, it is perceived as more credible than a paid advertisement. In this case, the circus would gain more publicity.
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The most effective form of selling takes advantage of public relations as well as marketing and advertising. For example, a newspaper that wants to build its readership may advertise on TV and radio, while its marketing department analyzes reader buying habits, and the editor uses public relations by making speeches to community groups.
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