Advertising and Public Relations
Advertising
Advertising is paid, non-personal communication by an identified sponsor, through mass media, to persuade a target audience. Types: product and institutional, commercial and social (public service), classified and display, print, broadcast, outdoor and digital.
- AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
- USP: the unique selling proposition, the one benefit that distinguishes the brand.
- Copy structure: headline, sub-head, body copy, slogan or tagline, logo, call to action.
- ASCI Code (1985): advertisements must be truthful, decent and safe; surrogate advertising is prohibited; advertorials and paid content must be labelled.
Public relations
Cutlip, Center and Broom define PR as the management function that builds and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organisation and the publics on which its success depends. Publics are internal (employees) and external (customers, media, government, community).
- Tools: press release, press kit, press conference, media tour, annual report, house journal, events, CSR, crisis communication.
- Publicity is unpaid coverage; PR is the wider planned relationship-building; advertising is paid space.
- The Public Relations Society of India, founded in 1966, sets professional standards.
Worked example
A new FM station in Kozhikode. AIDA advertisement: headline Kozhikode, meet your new morning (Attention); body listing local news, traffic and music (Interest); a free first-month trial (Desire); Tune to 91.2 FM today (Action). The PR route would instead be a press release, a preview for the press inside the studio and a launch press conference.
Traps
Calling PR free advertising. Treating publicity as a synonym for PR. Ignoring the labelling rule for advertorials. Writing an advertisement with no target audience and no call to action.