When we tell people we work in public relations we often get a polite smile followed by the question "That’s like marketing, right?" Admittedly, PR can be a bit elusive and mysterious because it’s more often than not quite complex. There are so many different approaches that can work towards achieving a similar goal.
Public relations can commonly be confused with marketing and advertising because PR teams work closely with marketing teams, but we typically don’t have the same process or objectives. Marketing is opening a newspaper and seeing a paid advertisement whereas, PR is when you open the paper and read an article profiling a company or discussing a current market trend or predictions surrounding an specific industry with a representative from the company being references or quoted. This form of communicating with the public has been proven to be far more impactful on the opinion of the reader versus a paid ad.
Our clients have specific strategic goals such as raising the public profile of their CEO, generating awareness among a particular demographic or region, launching/securing themselves as thought leaders in their industry, demonstrating their edge/benefit over the competition or strategic management the brand’s messaging and online reputation.
Public relations is about strategically generating messaging and tone. It is crafted awareness created through the intentional generation of media and exposure. Media coverage includes newspaper articles, magazine articles, TV interviews, radio interviews, online articles and blogs, public speaking opportunities and event sponsorship.
The Canadian public relations industry is filled with creative individuals who continue to innovative and push the industry to new limits. Our team executes countless unique and creative tasks to garner media attention and awareness from pitching out stories to reporters, orchestrating PR stunts and hosting exclusive media events to strategic social media and online content creation.
“Advertising is saying you’re good. PR is getting someone else to say you’re good” – Jean Louis Gassee