When PR turns to advertising
PR pros have many tactics up their sleeves. Sometimes, it’s necessary to take the leap from world of earned media to paid media in order to guarantee the placement and accuracy of communications messages.
Advertising goes beyond pushing product. It is often used to fulfill regulatory requirements such as public notification of stock transactions and class action notices. It is also used in advocacy campaigns an image building.
This is where the line starts to gray. The PR pro often gets involved when you’re up against crisis PR issues. For example, a enviro statement from Exxon after an oil spill. Or, a safety message from Ford after a recall.
A more recent example was discussed in the NYT, which highlighted Citgo’s move to “Play Offense, Defense, or Sit Out the Game.”
Here’s an excerpt:
When a potentially image-destroying event occurs in the middle of an image-building campaign, what should a company do? Ignore it? Concentrate on it exclusively? Or address it briefly, then go back to image building?
Those were the choices that the Citgo Petroleum Corporation, a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela, faced in late September after Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, stood before the United Nations and likened President Bush to the devil. Not long after, a news agency reported that 7-Eleven Inc. had dropped Citgo as a supplier, intimating that the move was linked to Mr. Chávez’s remarks. Rumors of a consumer boycott of Citgo stations soon percolated through the blogosphere.
No matter that none of it was true. “We did not drop Citgo; our contract simply expired on Sept. 30 as planned,” said Margaret Chabris, a 7-Eleven spokeswoman, who said that 7-Eleven would probably sell its own branded gasoline. Citgo sales did not fall off markedly either.
Nonetheless, in mid-October, Citgo ran a full-page ad in the form of a letter from Feliz Rodriguez, its chief executive, in USA Today, The New York Times and several other newspapers. The letter, with the headline “Citgo Sets the Record Straight,” clarified the timing on the 7-Eleven contract, and discussed Citgo’s track record as a big employer of Americans, a reliable supplier of gasoline and an exemplary corporate citizen.
To put it into a context, PRpulp stumbled across a a speech from The Washington Post’s Marc H. Rosenberg from back in 2002 titled “Control, Control, Control: Advocacy Advertising and Public Relations” that might be of interest.
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