Public Relations
Another major promotion tool, public relations, consists of activities designed to engage and build good relations with the company’s various publics. PR may include any or all of the following functions:28
Press relations or press agency. Creating and placing newsworthy information in the news media to attract attention to a person, product, or service.
Product and brand publicity. Publicizing specific products and brands.
Public affairs. Building and maintaining national or local community relationships.
Lobbying. Building and maintaining relationships with legislators and government officials to influence legislation and regulation.
Investor relations. Maintaining relationships with shareholders and others in the financial community.
Development. Working with donors or members of nonprofit organizations to gain financial or volunteer support.
Public relations is used to promote products, people, places, ideas, activities, organizations, and even nations. Companies use PR to build good relations with consumers, investors, the media, and their communities. PR is often used to build support for newsworthy company events and actions. For example, a few years ago when CVS Health announced its bold decision to stop selling cigarettes and tobacco products in its stores, even though it meant sacrificing $2 billion in tobacco-related revenues, it knew that the decision would make headlines. But it left little to chance about how the full story would be told. Instead, CVS crafted a comprehensive “CVS Quits for Good” public relations campaign to tell consumers, Wall Street, and the health-care community that the decision would benefit both customers and the company:29
The “CVS Quits” PR campaign kicked off with full-page ads in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and other major newspapers along with multimedia news releases featuring video announcements from CVS’s president and other company leaders. The ads and releases explained that dropping tobacco products “is simply the right thing to do for the good of our customers and our company,” consistent “with our purpose— helping people on their path to better health.” CVS also created an information-packed cvsquits.com microsite along with a #cvsquits hashtag and banners announcing the decision on the company’s many web and social media sites. The “CVS Quits” story was snapped up by major print and broadcast media, creating some 2,557 broadcast mentions and more than 218 million total media impressions. The news also went viral online, becoming a top trending topic on both Facebook and Twitter and generating 200,000 social media mentions and 152,000 shares.
On the day the decision was activated, CVS’s CEO rang the New York Stock Exchange bell and CVS Health executives snuffed out a 50-foot high cigarette at an event in New York City’s Bryant Park. Both events received substantial media coverage. Finally, at the same time that it nixed tobacco products, CVS launched a nationwide campaign to help smokers kick the habit, cementing the company’s message of “helping people on their path to better health” and generating even more positive news.
The “CVS Quits” PR campaign achieved impressive results. On Capitol Hill, eight US senators, 12 House members, and other influential leaders released statements urging other retailers to follow in CVS’s footsteps. CVS’s stock price jumped 9.2 percent in the three weeks following the announcement. And a survey showed that one in four consumers not currently shopping at CVS pharmacies said they would switch their prescriptions there after it quit tobacco. “CVS Quits” was named PR Week’s campaign of the year. “This is a new standard in PR,” said one judge. “Great business decision that led to amazing PR results [that had] a real business impact on stock value, consumer behavior, and brand reputation.”
The Role and Impact of PR
Like other promotional forms, public relations has the power to engage consumers and make a brand part of their lives and conversations. However, public relations can have a strong impact at a much lower cost than advertising can. Interesting brand stories, events, videos, or other content can be picked up by different media or shared virally by consumers, giving it the same or even greater impact than advertising that would cost millions of dollars. Consider recent PR moves by Burger King:30
Public relations moves: Burger King’s quirky, ceramic-headed “The King” mascot pops up in unexpected places—here in American Pharoah’s owner’s box at the Belmont Stakes—sparking media attention and big-time social media buzz.
Gary Gershoff / Stringer/Getty Images
Last year’s Floyd Mayweather–Manny Pacquiao fight in Las Vegas was a commercial-free pay-per-view event.
In yet another clever PR move, Burger King recently issued an invitation to rival McDonald’s to call a cease-fire on Peace Day. In a full slate of online content, as well as full-page ads in The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, Burger King publicly proposed that the chains jointly develop and sell a McWhopper, containing “all the tastiest bits of your Big Mac and our Whopper, united in one delicious, peace-loving burger,” with all the proceeds benefiting the Peace One Day organization. McDonald’s refused, but the gesture generated hugely positive PR for Burger King. Through these and other PR moves, Burger King has found a way to inject itself into daily social media conversations. “Burger King has really found a way to get attention by doing the unexpected and somewhat irreverent,” says one expert. “They’re generating an enormous amount of publicity at a very modest cost.” Says another expert, “If you have the right spark, it will generate more buzz than paid media.”
Despite its potential strengths, public relations is occasionally described as a marketing stepchild because of its sometimes limited and scattered use. The PR department is often located at corporate headquarters or handled by a third-party agency. Its staff is so busy dealing with various publics—stockholders, employees, legislators, and the press—that PR programs to support product marketing objectives may be ignored. Moreover, marketing managers and PR practitioners do not always speak the same language. Whereas many PR practitioners see their jobs as simply communicating, marketing managers tend to be much more interested in how advertising and PR affect brand building, sales and profits, and customer engagement and relationships.
This situation is changing, however. Although public relations still captures only a modest portion of the overall marketing budgets of many firms, PR can be a powerful brand-building tool. Especially in this digital age, the lines between advertising, PR, and other content are becoming more and more blurred. For example, are brand websites, blogs, brand videos, and social media activities advertising, PR, or something else? All are marketing content. And as the use of earned and shared digital content grows rapidly, PR is playing a bigger role in marketing content management.
More than any other department, PR has always been responsible for creating relevant marketing content that draws consumers to a brand rather than pushing messages out. “PR pros are an organization’s master storytellers. In a word, they do content,” says one expert. “The rise of social media [is] moving public relations professionals from the backroom, crafting press releases and organizing events, to the forefront of brand development and customer engagement,” says another.31 The point is that PR should work hand in hand with advertising within an integrated marketing communications program to help build customer engagement and relationships.