Advertising vs Publicity in PR Campaigns
Introduction
In today’s competitive marketplace, organizations rely on their public relations departments to manage their overall public image and create interest. The overall public image of any organization can greatly impact whether or not people will by their product, invest in their stock, or want to be associated with the company itself as an employee or vendor. The main purpose of a public relation’s campaign is to promote the organization to its key publics and then develop and manage a positive image between the organization and its key publics. In most cases, organizations will use a public relations campaign to generate publicity for the organization. In some cases, they will use advertising in the campaign to also generate publicity for a product launch. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how LML Technologies used both advertising and publicity to promote the organization’s name change and product branding. I will also discuss the value of unpaid advertising as well as the relationship between advertising and publicity in public relations campaigns.
LML Technologies uses Advertising and Publicity
To Promote New Changes
Prior to January 2002, LML Technologies, the company that I work for, was called Lease Marketing LTD. The company developed and marketed a leasing software application called Lease Link and the company was known in the industry as “Lease Link”. During the year 2001, Lease Link acquired two different software companies. One developed a business development application and the other developed a custom finance application. The reason for the acquisitions was to acquire additional software applications that complimented each other so that the company could package them in a suite environment to sell more systems.
After the products were integrated into a suite, senior management determined that the company could no longer be called Lease Marketing LTD or Lease Link because the applications were now more than just leasing software and the customers would be confused. Even though Lease Marketing LTD name and the application Lease Link are well known in the industry, we needed to rename the company as well as design a new “brand” name for the newly integrated application suite. This was needed to re-establish the company in the industry as more than just a “leasing software” provider. To do this, senior management hired an advertising and public relations firm to design not only a public relations campaign, but an advertising campaign as well.
First, there was a key fact in the marketing strategy. In 1996, there was a turning point in the area of marketing for NBB when Greg Owsley was hired as the Director. Owsley developed a team tha...
Similar to news in its widespread marketing, publicity is another method in which people’s minds are reprogrammed, this time by the merchandisers. Publicity attempts to ingrain concepts and transmit political and commercial messages into the consumer’s minds, in an endeavor to make them buy specific goods. They do this by constantly exposing the people to the products through their repeated displayal on various mediums. Billboards and posters can be found on most highways, and in nearly all cities around the world. Consequently they push ideas at the consumer any time he/she travels on foot, by car, or even uses the public transport systems.
The company has established good relationships with most of its customers which has assisted it to create high level of brand and customer loyalty
The use of social media substantially helps gather all types of fans of a brand or company together and allows them to interact and cooperate with one another, create an identity and communicate their interest for this specific brand or set of products. Take for example Kraft Foods campaign for the one hundredth anniversary for Oreo cookies. “Kraft launched the campaign because of its concern that Oreo did not "own top of mind awareness for men and women age 18-24" (Mitchell). What Kraft did was establish the primary target audience, and implemented a strategy to increase the traffic to their Facebook page. “The results of the year-long Oreo campaign were 231 million media impressions and almost a 200% increase on its Facebook page” (Mitchell). With Kraft’s marketing planned accordingly, it created word-of-mouth awareness,...
Social media marketing is a simple option to add to the current promotional tactics being used by an organization. It is no longer optional; social media is mandatory for nonprofit organizations (Stengel). Studies have shown that many people think social media techniques complement traditional media; even more believe that blogs and social media influence the news coverage in traditional media tactics (Wright and Hinson 2008). There are a number of professionals that believe embracing social media is the only way for public relations to continue in the digital age. For example, Robert J. Key explains, “Public relations in the digital age requires understanding how your key constituents are gathering and sharing information and then influencing them at key points; doing so requires strategies that embrace the digital age” (Wright and Hinson 2008). Larry Weber, a renowned professional in implementing global public relations campaigns, also agrees that the communications world is moving in a drastically digital direction and in order to communicate effectively, one must understand this transformation (Wright and Hinson 2008).
Marketing through Social Media (Exploratory Essay) Throughout the ages there have been many intriguing ways that businesses have portrayed their product or services for accessibility. Recently, businesses have been researching how to market the businesses product through the World Wide Web. With websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, it started becoming popular within the past 20 Years. People have started to rely heavily on the internet over the past decade, whether it be for searching for information on products or people.
With social media’s rise in popularity, consumers were given another platform, a viral one, to discuss companies and their products/services. While the main focus of public relations has always been to promote communication and goodwill, the practice also promotes publicity for their clients. With the growth from traditional tools to more sophisticated tactics like video news releases, webcasts, blogs, and social networking, public relations has been able to transform its effectiveness in just a few short years. Any company that does not include the use of social media, is missing the opportunity to obtain valuable information about their brand while also losing a chance to spread its message on a platform that reaches
In writing the business plan, I determined our target market and our marketing strategy to gain a share of the market. I also had t...
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When studying communications one will realize that different companies or organizations communicate internally and externally with their different target audiences. Therefore, we are exposed to different kinds of corporate publications. These can be internal and/or external publications. Corporate publications intend to communicate or rather aim to convey certain messages to different messages to different target audiences. For example, internal publications are publications aimed for employees and stakeholders, whereas external publications are aimed to communicate with customers. Various companies consist of the company’s profile, corporate image, the business activities, recent marketing and advertising campaigns of the company, the social media and digital strategy and presence and online presence of the company.
In today’s difficult economy who can afford to spend their hard-earned money carelessly? Americans want good quality and low prices, and businesses that advertise their product make saving money possible. Advertising was created for one reason, so businesses could make known their product (Black, Hashimzade, and Myles). Some consumers may argue that advertising is not informative, but that it is manipulative because some advertisements make false claims. Fortunately, there are regulations and consumer rights that promote truth in advertising. Consumers must embrace their rights to keep advertising the way it is meant to be. Advertising is meant to be informative and not manipulative, and consumers play a great role in promoting truth in advertising.
Today, public relations is a complex profession by thousands of thousands of people all the world to practice. Almost all large and small organizations have their own public relations department or they need to outsource their public relations to a company. Public relations practitioners work for schools and universities, companies, governments, professional and trade associations, hospitals, hotels, non-profit charities, and other else more (Grunig, 2001). Therefore, PR is an important department for organizations.
Public relations is everywhere today. It is a practice that has become an important aspect of any business venture. Whether an organization is not for profit, for profit, or governmental, they still need and desire to communicate their purpose within the community and public relations allows this to happen. There are several publics in which the PR practitioner must correspond with and each requires a different means of communication. Internal publics are inside the organizations such as clerks, managers, and stockholders. "External publics are those not directly connected to the organization: the press, government, educators, customers, suppliers, and the community" (Seitel, 2004). Each public plays a key role in the PR of the organization. The many functions of PR can also be categorized based on what purpose they serve the organization.
Too often, a marketing function is misunderstood, because many people do not understand what is meant by ‘Marketing’.
The first advantage of using social media in business is increasing brand awareness. Social media can help business to build their brand awareness by increasing interactions with a business brand. Brand awareness means the total percent of a target people who know the company exists and what the company offers of products or services. When the brand awareness is increased, the possibility of buying is increased. Thus, efforts should be made to make the brand a part of the consciousness of customers. For example, Coca- Cola is one of the best companies that enjoy unusual...