Public relations VS Advertising
It may not have been as successful as I want to, but I’m glad I was able to experience to handle my own business. That was many years ago. And base on that experience, choosing between advertising and public relations is among the many things to consider when launching a new product or services. Both are quite different from each other but mostly are misjudged being as one and the same. Generally, business owners go for advertising campaigns; however with the expansion of technology on various schemes, getting best PR services has far benefits over advertising.
Citing one main difference: Advertising is a paid media, where charges are incurred for providing space. And since you’re paying for the space, you have creative control on what goes into that ad. And that ad will run over and over for as long as your budget allows; whereas in public relation, it is a free publicity that is gained by publicizing in news conferences to press releases for promotion of product/services. No control over how the media presents the information as it can be spread to as many media as possible. Consumer wise: A public relation piece holds a neutral opinion, as a reader knows, that he is reading or viewing general piece of article while in advertising it is a piece with a targeted opinion with a strong statement for selling a product.
Bottom line, though advertising and public relations works for a client, at certain level public relations keeps an upper edge over advertising.
