Advertising or
Publicity?
What’s the difference? The average TV viewer, radio listener, or
newspaper reader would probably say, 'There isn’t one. They’re both
the same thing.'
But they’re not. Not by a long way. And knowing the difference can put
a lot of money in your pocket. Not knowing the difference can mean
taking a lot out with little in return.
Here’s an example:
Although I’ve spent most of my adult life in broadcasting, I’ve also
been a restaurant owner. My wife and I owned and operated a chain of
Subway Sandwich Shops for nearly ten years.
We were the first franchisees in South Texas to open a property inside
a convenience store. Almost anything that’s a 'first' is likely to
draw media attention. So I pitched the story to a reporter at the San
Antonio Business Journal, telling him that 'strategic alliances'
between operations like Subway and Texaco were a growing trend (a
trend is another automatic media attention-grabber) and the Business
Journal could show itself to be out front by doing a feature.
About two weeks later, Dianne and I showed up on the front page of the
Business Journal, with sandwiches in our hands and a huge Subway sign
in the background.
It was great publicity because it was free. I calculated that if we
had bought a similar amount of advertising (not free) space, it would
have cost around eight thousand dollars.
This success story and others like it resulted from a single phone
call to a reporter. It generated thousands of dollars worth of free
publicity without a dime being spent on advertising.
And that’s the difference between advertising and publicity. Anyone in
the media will be happy to sell you advertising.
Publicity is free.
In other words, as one of my friends in the public relations business
once told me,
'Advertising is what you pay for. Publicity is what you pray for.'
Not only is publicity free, but it is also more believable than
advertising. People believe a news story more readily than they
believe an advertisement. Even if we had spent the eight thousand
dollars I calculated the space in the San Antonio Business Journal
would have cost for the story on our Subway franchise, we probably
wouldn’t have gotten the same response. Readers, viewers, and
listeners skip over or tune out advertisements. They tend to give more
credibility to something they read as a news story or hear as a
human-interest story.
Advertising or publicity?
While advertising is a necessity for many
businesses, those who learn how to get free publicity will save
thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of dollars and get their
message across with added credibility.
George McKenzie is a 30-year veteran of TV and radio journalism. He's been
everywhere from a small-town station in Pennsylvania to the major network news
programs.
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