Advertising or Public Relations – Take Your Pick!

Bill Gates once said, “If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on Public Relations”. Every second company you see is hiring a PR agency or an Advertising agency for its marketing. Both of the aforementioned put their heart and soul into making you famous, into making you a brand, but why do they then carry two different names? You may be an entrepreneur or an established business man; this is something every professional of the industry needs to know.

In the words of Edgar A. Shoaff, “Advertising is the art of making whole lies out of half-truths”. Whereas PR is telling the truth and working with principles. You may call them two sides of the same coin. Advertising involves creating announcements that have been paid for, and promoting them for the purpose of brand creation. PR on the other hand, is a strategically defined process of handling media relations of a company and maintaining the brand’s reputation in market.

Advertising is saying you’re good. PR is getting someone else to say you’re good.Somebody who pays to get the advertisements of his product/service printed, does so with the aim of promoting it further. But PR is done to build mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and the public. The procedure is, your company does something that you want the public to know, therefore your PR agency frames a press release and sends it across to different media houses. The catch here is that the journalists will publish only what they think is worthy, and not something that you think the public should know. So you’ll get that public acclaim only if you’re good enough. Also, the public will trust it more than the advertisements because it comes through a third person and thus seems verified.

There’s an old saying that advertising is what you pay for, while public relations is what you pray for. To put it in simpler words, you earn the gift of good and maintained public relations.

                        The author of this opinion article is Ms. Sristi Sharma at PR Professionals