by PRontheGO for Medium
We asked PR and growth experts to provide our readership of creative founders and tech startup with an overview on the differences between Public Relations and advertising. What is paid vs earned media? What to decide for to reach different business goals? What might be a good mix use for startups and small business owners? Here are their answers:
Alyson Dutch, Owner at Brown + Dutch PR, is a PR Maven with over 30 years of experience in the PR space working in the entertainment and consumer packaged goods spaces.
“PR and advertising are two kinds of marketing methodologies that are part of the marketing umbrella. marketing is 1 of the 3-parts of any business, which I call the POM Principle (P for product, O for operations, M for marketing). Marketing includes many types of methods that must be chosen based on who your customer is, where they hang out and what inspires them. Marketing includes PR, advertising, social media, email marketing, events, search engine optimization, online marketing, guerilla marketing, cause marketing, influencer marketing, Pay Per Click and so many others.. Marketing is everything one does to get a product/service off the shelf / out of obscurity and into the hands of someone who not only wants to buy it — but is inspired to spend their money on it. When used together, they are powerful. If you compared them, one might say that PR is unbiased, advertising is biased. There’s an old adage: “PR you pray for and advertising you pay for.” PR is earned media. Advertising is not, say-whatever-you-want media. PR is objective. Advertising is subjective. With PR, you can get deep into the background inspiration, colors and reasons behind a product. Advertising is very pithy and is more of a statement, than an explanation and consumers tend to not trust it alone without PR to explain why. PR usually gives one reason to feel something about a product and advertising usually is presenting an image. Any type of media could be PR: online, magazine, TV, radio, newspapers, but information flows through the opinion of another human and they provide an opinion. Advertising includes anything that’s paid — online ads, paid posts, influencer fees, ads on TV, print, and definitely influencers. Advertising is controllable, PR is not, but if you have a talented PR practitioner who knows how to position a story, write well and use PR tools as they can be used, you can control it.”
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