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advertising, blue ray, brand awareness, branding, marketing, media, public relations, publicity, starbucks, word of mouth, xerox
Posh Concepts Tip of the Week: Public Relations Builds a Brand not Advertising
Public relations offers many ways of getting publicity for your company, such as the press release, the use of social networking, word of mouth (WOM) and also using the blogosphere which journalists flock to these days. Building a brand is not achieved through advertising, but rather publicity.
A prime example of this is Starbucks who had spent less than $10 million in advertising in its first 10 years. Larger companies like McDonald’s spend more and more on advertising to maintain their brand and keep their position in the consumers’ minds. For older, more established companies, advertising helps to remind the world that they are still around. For a new company, it won’t do much good in the way or “reminding”. This is where publicity and PR come into play.
Reasons (among others) PR works better for the birth of a brand: 
• PR is more reputable and trustworthy than advertising.
• Advertising helps to maintain a brand, not build it.
• A company will (usually) not gain much momentum from advertising early in the brand’s life.
• Advertising costs exponentially more than PR, and advertising’s effects are not as long lasting as those of PR.
Referring again to Starbucks, they rode the PR train until just recently when advertising was needed to maintain their market (and mind) share. PR worked for them for all of the reasons above, and they were able to continue using it. In order to generate publicity and buzz around a brand it first has to be capable of generating publicity. A way to do this: being the first in a category or niche market. For example, Jell-O (now synonymous with gelatin desserts) was the first brand of gelatin desserts, and Xerox (also synonymous with its product: copiers) was the first plain-paper copier. Being first in their categories helped to generate massive amounts of publicity. Now, later in the brands’ life cycles, advertising is needed to maintain the brand.
Another great benefit of being the first: the brands have captured mind share, and have created a new meaning for their names. When a consumer needs a cotton swab or a tissue, they think of Q-Tips or Kleenex, and even call all tissues and cotton swabs as Q-Tips and Kleenexes. This only helps to reiterate the brand and its “quality” for being first. Media is more prone to talk about what’s new, hot, and emerging, rather than what is better. While consumers are usually welcoming of better products, they are more interested in learning about new products. For example, the Blu-ray player is not only supposedly better than the DVD player, it is new (to consumers).
For many years public relations has been seen as a secondary option to marketing and advertising. The combination of the two and the use of PR to bring a brand to life are vital to the well-being of a brand. PR should be used first (and most times over advertising) to help promote a brand and company. Advertising ought to be used to maintain a brand’s already generated publicity.
Though PR is harder to control, and usually the result of outside parties reporting and mentioning your company, you can use the new tools that technology has given to advertisers, PR professionals, and marketers alike. Using these tools, combining PR and marketing efforts, and being a part of your online reputation, PR can build a brand. Posh Concepts uses a synergistic approach to build brand awareness and to maintain the brands attributes throughout its life cycle. For more information visit us at http://www.poshconcepts.net or contact us at 678-600-4316.
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Thank you for your comment, I agree with you advertising, customer service and sales are all important elements of branding when it comes to brand maintenance and marketing. Often times people forget Public Relations activities should be the first step in the process when building your brand. You have to first create awareness, educate and inform building on the brands attributes which creates the reputation in which the market will associate with the brand.
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Interesting post–There are a lot of articles on the difference between PR and advertising, PR and marketing, and the convergence of all three. The bottom line seems to be that yes they are different but being involved in one field requires skills in all three because of the overlap caused by social media and other new ways to get information to consumers and potential clients.