The Role Of Public Relations In Branding

Because PR can be difficult to control, it is often discredited. According to Dick
Lyles, president and chief operating officer of The Ken Blanchard Companies, a
full-service consulting and performance improvement company, "People tend
to migrate to things they can control. Even now, when an executive looks at an
advertising message that's exactly what they want to create, with exactly the
right positioning and so forth, they say, 'That's the message I want to send.'
That's great, even though people may not read it, or people may give it less
value and discount it, because it's advertising.... [On the other hand], if you get
a well-placed article in a trade journal or you get some ink, people give it more
credibility. The impact is greater, but because it may not come out exactly the
way it was intended to come out, [businesspeople frequently] discount it."

The concepts of Branding and public relations are closely intertwined. The job
of public relations is to encourage the public to have positive thoughts about a
particular company, product, service, or individual. Branding is the idea that a
particular set of attributes will encourage the public to have positive thoughts
about a particular company, product, service, or individual. It's a subtle
distinction, but an essential one.

In order to best understand Branding and how it is done, it is necessary to
examine and explain public relations. Many experts on Branding espouse the
opinion that public relations are a vital part-if not the most vital part-of the
Branding process. Public relations practitioners are particularly well suited to
the Branding concept, since they are well versed in the techniques and
practices that create a public identity very close to the central idea of a brand.

Unlike marketing or advertising, which are essential activities and
indispensable to the creation of a brand, public relations is not devoted to a
tangible object. Advertising executives create television, print, and radio ads;
these are concrete, identifiable things. Marketing creates a product-be it a
physical product or a service-and presents it to the public. That is an obvious,
noticeable thing; it is not hard to understand.

Public relations does not do either of those things. When properly conceived
and executed, a public relations campaign is next to invisible; the public does
not know it's there. More to the point, public relations does not create a
physical manifestation of its effort: When PR is done right, it doesn't leave the
trace of a newspaper or magazine ad, a videotape, or an audiocassette that will
win awards-and that can sometimes overwhelm the message being delivered.

What public relations does is to encourage third parties to deliver the
message. Why? Because the third parties are news organizations, print
journalists, and television and radio news programs and talk shows, which by
definition have more credibility for the general public than an advertisement or
the word of a company spokesperson.

In other words, public relations is meant to generate news coverage. It does so
through planned events and through news stories (true news stories, it should
be emphasized) suggested to reporters and their editors. When a newspaper
runs an article about the unusual new promotion being done by a local
business, that's public relations. But to the reader of that newspaper, it appears
to be an article generated by the editorial staff of the publication itself.- There
is no advertisement disclaimer that runs over a PR-suggested news article.
That makes sense, because the news editor always has the option of ignoring
the suggestions made by public relations people. Editors and producers will
rely on public relations for news leads, but will not simply act as a conduit,
presenting the message from the public relations company's client unedited
and unconfirmed. Public relations can suggest, but not control, the message
being sent. It is a very difficult tightrope to walk.

For example, in 2000, when the Beatles song compilation 1 was being
released by Capitol Records, it presented (believe it or not) a public relations
dilemma: how to promote an album full of songs that the entire target
audience almost certainly owned in another form already.

The problem was solved in a number of ways. First of all, it was emphasized
that these were the 27 number one songs the band had produced during its
legendary career. Press releases noted over and over again that these songs
had never been compiled on one album before. It was intimated that many in
the group's core audience might not have heard these songs on CD before,
having bought them on vinyl records when they were originally released.

But more than anything, the public relations executives managed to generate
publicity for the album with something that no other project could possible
offer: access to the (at the time) three surviving Beatles for interview. News
programs, interview shows, publications, and talk programs were all given
opportunities (albeit brief ones) to interview at least one Beatle, and therefore
the album was mentioned on countless air-waves and in publications for weeks
before its release, and given very prominent placement.

The album went on to become a smash hit, reaching number one almost 40
years after the initial release of some of the recordings. It was yet another
triumph for a legendary recording group, but it was also something of a coup
for the public relations personnel involved. Yes, they had the luxury of three of
the most famous faces on the planet, and the ability to use them. But the PR
people who worked on that project also knew that they had to make something
that wasn't necessarily new seem vital and important, and they knew where the
news story in the project was kept. Making sure the news got out was their job,
and they did it admirably.

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