Public Relations: A Practitioner's Guide (part 14)

Integrated Marketing Communications

 by

 Charles Lamson

Using celebrities as a spokesperson, inserting product placement in movies, sponsoring concerts, and a host of other publicity-seeking techniques are examples of integrated marketing communications---the intersection of public relations and publicity, advertising, sales promotion, and marketing to promote organizations, products, and services. 

Those who decry the fall of advertising and the rise of PR are a bit overzealous. Advertising is not dead yet. Neither is marketing. But it is true that public relation and publicity integrated with these other disciplines are very much the rule in many organizations today.

Therefore, the need for communications cross-training---to learn the different skills of marketing, advertising, sales promotion, and public relations---becomes a requirement for all communicators.

Public Relations vs. Marketing vs. Advertising

What is the difference between marketing, advertising, and public relations?

Marketing, literally defined, is the selling of a service or product through pricing, distribution, and promotion. Marketing ranges from Concepts such as free samples in the hands of consumers to buzz campaigns.

Advertising, literally defined, is a subset of marketing that involves paying to place your message in more traditional media formats, from newspapers and magazines to radio and television to the internet and outdoors.

Public relations, literally defined, is the marketing of an organization and the use of unbiased, objective, third party endorsement to relay information about that organization's products and practices.

With so many media outlets bombarding consumers daily, most organizations realize that public relations can play an expanded role in marketing. In some organizations, particularly service companies, hospitals, and non-profit institutions, the selling of both individual products and the organization itself are inextricably intertwined. 

Stated another way, although the practices of marketing and advertising create a market for products and services and the practice of public relations creates a hospitable environment in which the organization may operate, marketing and advertising success can be nullified by the social and the political forces public relations is designed to confront and, thus, the interrelationship of the three disciplines.

In the past, marketers treated public relations as an ancillary part of the marketing mix. They were concerned primarily with making sure that their products met the needs and desires of customers and were priced competitively, distributed widely, and promoted heavily through advertising and merchandising. Gradually, however, these traditional notions among the marketers began to change for several reasons.

• Consumer protests about both product of value and safety and government scrutiny of the truth behind product claims began to shake historical views of marketing.
•  Product recalls from automobiles to tuna fish generated recurring headlines.
•  Ingredient scares began to occur regularly.
•  Advertisers were asked how their products answered social needs and civic responsibilities.
•  Rumors about particular companies---from fast food firms to pop rock manufacturers---spread in brushfire manner.
•  General image problems of certain companies and industries---from oil to banking---were fanned by a continuous blaze of media criticism.

The net impact of these challenges was that even though a company's products were still important, customers begin to consider a firm's policies and practices on everything from air and water pollution to minority hiring. Beyond these social concerns, the effectiveness of advertising itself began to be questioned.

The increased number of advertisements in newspapers and on the airwaves caused clutter and placed a significant burden on advertisers who were trying to make the public aware of their products. In the 1980's, the trend toward shorter television advertising spots contributed two to three times as many products being advertised on television as there were in the 1970s. and the 1990s, the spread of cable television added yet another multi-channeled outlet for product advertising. In the 21st century, the proliferation of Internet advertising has intensified the noise and clutter.

Against this backdrop, the potential of public relations as an added ingredient in the marketing mix has become an imperative. Indeed, marketing guru Philip Kotler was among the first to suggest more than a decade ago that the traditional four P's of marketing---product, price, place, and promotion---a fifth P, public relations, should be added.

In the 21st century, Kotler's suggestion has increasingly become reality.

Product Publicity

To many, product publicity is the essence of the value of integrating public relations and marketing. In light of how difficult it now is to raise advertising awareness above the noise of so many competitive messages, marketers are turning increasingly to product of publicity as an important adjunct to advertising. Although the public is generally unaware of it, a great deal of what it knows and believes about a wide variety of products comes through press coverage.

In certain circumstances, product publicity can be the most effective element in the marketing mix. For example:

• Introducing a revolutionary new product. Product publicity can start introductory sales at a much higher level of demand by creating more awareness of the product.

•  Eliminating distribution problems with retail outlets. Often the way to get shelf space is to have consumers demand that the product. Publicity can be extremely effective in creating consumer demand.

•  Small budgets and strong competition. Advertising is expensive. Product publicity is cheap. Often publicity is the best way to tell the story. Samuel Adams Boston Lager Beer, for example, became a household word almost solely through publicity opportunities. 

• Explaining a complicated product. The use and benefits of many products are difficult to explain to mass audiences in a brief ad. Product publicity, through extended news columns, can be invaluable.
•  Generating new consumer excitement for an old a product. Repackaging an old product for the media can serve as a primary marketing impetus.
•  Tying the product to a unique representative. Try as it might, the advertising industry cannot escape the staying power of unique mascots who become tied inextricably to products. Consider the following:
•  Morris the Cat was one answer to consumer disinterest in cat food for the 9 Lives Cat Food Company in 1968 and still appears today.
• The Jolly Green Giant has been around so long at General Mills that he now has his own Green Giant Food Company and website.

•  Burger King's King can be seen cavorting on baseball fields and in other venues.
•  But the real "king" is McDonald's standard bearer, Ronald McDonald, who first appeared in 1963 and has since starred on national television, at Academy Awards ceremonies, and around the world. No other iconic figure in history has become more synonymous with any company (Figure 1). 
• Creating an identity. Many organizations cannot afford to blast out expensive advertising but must be heard above the din of thousands of competitors. And no organization has proven better at it than the home of the megalomaniac chihuahua, Taco Bell.

FIGURE 1 The king. Maybe not of "burgers" but certainly of corporate icons.

Third Party Endorsement

Perhaps more than anything else, the leader of third party endorsement is the primary reason smart organizations value product publicity as much as they do advertising. Third party endorsement, as noted, refers to the support given a product buy a newspaper, magazine, or broadcaster who mentions the product as news. Advertising often is perceived as self-serving. People know that the advertiser not only created the message but also paid for it. Publicity, on the other hand, which appears in news columns, carries no such stigma. Editors, after all, are considered objective, impartial, indifferent, neutral. Therefore, publicity appears to be news and is more trustworthy than advertising that is paid for by a clearly non-objective sponsor.

Editor's have become sensitive to mentioning product names in print. Some, in fact, have a policy of deleting brand or company identifications in news columns. Public relations counselors argue that discriminating against using product names does a disservice to readers or viewers, many of whom are influenced by what they read or see and may desire the particular products discussed. Counselors further argue that journalists who accept and print public relations material for its intrinsic value and then remove the source of the information give the reader or viewer the false impression that the journalist generated the facts, ideas, or photography.

Building a Brand

The watchword in business today is branding, creating a unique Identity or position for a company or product.

In more traditional times, it took years for brands like Pepsi, Coke, McDonald's, Hertz, FedEx, and Walmart to establish themselves. Today with the advent of the World Wide Web, thriving internet companies like Google, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, eBay, and AOL have become household words in a historical nanosecond. Using integrated marketing communications to establish a unique brand requires adherence to the following principles.

• Be early. It is better to be first than to be best. Don't believe it? then who was the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic? No, it wasn't Charles Lindbergh flying back! (actually, it was an Australian named Bert Hinkler but nobody remembers him) We remember the first in a category because of the law of primacy, which posits that people are more likely to remember you if you were the first in their minds in a particular category. Whether yours is really the "first" brand is less important than establishing primacy in the minds of consumers.
•  Be memorable. Equally important is to fight through the chatter by creating a memorable brand. With hundreds of participants in categories from bottled water to bathing suits, a brand needs to stand out by distinguishing itself in some way---through uniqueness or advertising slogan or social responsibility or whatever. Creating brand awareness requires boldness.
•  Be aggressive. A successful brand also requires a constant drumbeat of publicity to keep the company name before the public. Potential customers need to become familiar with the brand. Potential investors need to become confident that the brand is an active one. Indeed, more and more, marketers are taking to the streets to spread their messages (Figure 2). the new competitive economy leaves little room for demure integrated marketing communications.
•  Use heritage. Baby boomers and Gen Xers are old. And heritage is very much in vogue. This means citing the traditions and history of a product or organization as part of building the brand. As consumers live longer, an increasing number of citizens long for the "good old days." As society longs for nostalgia, heritage works.
• Create a personality. The best organizations are those that create personalities for themselves. Who is number one in rental cars? Hertz. What company stands for overnight delivery? FedEx. What's the East Coast University that boasts the best and the brightest? Harvard. Or at least that's what most people think. The firm's personality should be reflected and all Communications materials the organization produces.

FIGURE 2 Street Cred. Friendly Ice Cream Corporation took to the streets with free samples in an effort to reinforce brand recognition.

As more and more companies each year attempt to bust through the advertising and marketing clutter by resorting to such marketing devices as banner ads, proprietary Web sites, free classified advertising, e-zines and email marketing, the challenge to create a unique brand becomes that much more difficult. 

*SOURCE: THE PRACTICE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS, 10TH ED., 2007, FRASER P. SEITEL, PGS. 357-364*

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