Publicity

Publicity must not be confused with public relations: publicity usual-

ly represents a reward for effective PR. Publicity can be defined as news

carried in the mass media about an organization – its products, policies,

personnel, or actions – at no charge to the organization for media time

and space. Of course, the marketer must bear the costs of preparing such

items as news releases and inducing media editors to print or broadcast

them. In other words, publicity is not “free advertising”.

Publicity offers several advantages as a promotion tool. First, it may

reach people who ordinarily do not pay attention to advertising, sales

promotion, and salespeople. Second, it has greater credibility than ad-

vertising. Third, it is relatively inexpensive and provides coverage that

would cost many advertising dollars.

On the other hand, marketers have to recognize publicity’s limita-

tions. The marketer has very little control over what media editors do

with the publicity materials that marketers prepare. Media people rou-

tinely disregard materials that they do not consider newsworthy – sub-

ject matter that is untimely, uninteresting, and inaccurate. Even if the

materials are judged newsworthy, the marketer has no control over how

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media people edit the content, schedule its appearance in the media,

and so on.

Publicity tools. Marketers try to influence the media by providing pub-

licity materials for submission, but media personnel reject a consider-

able amount of this publicity material. Great care is needed in preparing

publicity materials to help ensure that they will be used by the media.

A news release, usually one typewritten page, contains information

that the organization wants disseminated, along with the name, address,

and phone number of the person whom media personnel should con-

tact. Feature articles are longer and are prepared for specific publica-

tions. Media representatives are invited to the press conferences to hear

about an upcoming major event that marketer hopes will be considered

newsworthy. Letters to the editor are sent to newspapers and magazines

in response to articles that appeared in those media. Radio and TV sta-

tions are given tapes and films for broadcasting.