Public Relations Comes of Age

Public Relations Comes of Age*


David Robinson
Haas School of Business,
University of California, Berkeley


Public Relations (PR) is no longer synonymous with “disaster management” and the
emergence of a number of innovative techniques makes it timely for managers to reconsider
PR as a full-fledged part of their firms’ marketing communications strategies. In the familiar
Marketing Mix (for simplicity, referred to as the “Four P’s of Marketing”) mangers are
encouraged to group their decision making into the areas of Product, Price, Place (a
mnemonic for “channel of distribution”) and Promotion (Figure 1).

The Five Elements of the Promotional Mix
The Marketing Mix
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
Integrated Marketing Communications
Mass
Direct
Personal
Sales
Public
Media
Promotion
Selling
Promotion
Relations


Promotion includes any activity that a firm uses to communicate with customers and it’s
useful to further define a “Promtional Mix” (Armstong & Kotler, 2004, p. 399) of five
elements: Mass Media Advertising, Direct Promotion, Personal Selling, Sales Promotion and
Public Relations. Thinking about these five elements separately encourages marketers to
consider a broader range of promotional activities than simple spending more money on
“advertising.” Mass Media Advertising—TV and print advertisements and internet
banners—is indeed the tip of the promotional iceberg. Direct Promotion encompasses
material mailed directly to customers and prospects and recently has come to include e-mail.

* Business Horizons Forthcoming; Please do not copy

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Personal Selling using a professional salesforce or the salespeople of retail channel members
is typical for high-ticket consumer durables such as cars and household appliances and is
essential for most business-to-business capital goods such as the sale of airplanes or
manufacturing machinery. Sales Promotion—a temporary change in the price/quantity offer,
such as: “Buy one, get one free!”—is ubiquitous in consumer packaged goods purchased in
grocery stores and is very effective at generating a short term increase in unit sales, often at
the expense of current period profitability and sales in future time periods. Public Relations,
the fifth element, has often been considered as an after-thought, but successful marketing
managers no longer wait around for disaster to strike before consulting with their PR
counsel. Modern Public Relations embraces a cornucopia of legitimate techniques to
promote a firm, its brands and its products beyond traditional advertising.

A strategic approach to marketing begins with an understanding that strategy always involves
making choices: Successful firms focus their resources as much by choosing which market
opportunities to avoid as which to target. Similarly, a managerial approach to the Promotional
Mix that is truly strategic will be one that makes choices among the many possibilities. For
example, very early in the product life cycle the firm’s promotional objective may be solely to
generate interest in the category (“Have you thought about getting a satellite phone?”) rather
than generating sales per se. Different promotional techniques achieve different promotional
results: awareness, brand recognition, brand preference, product choice, customer loyalty
and so on. An important part of management of this Promotional Mix is to make sure that
all elements of a firm’s communication strategy are coordinated. A familiar example of a
failure in this approach is to go into a retail store in response to an advertisement and find
that the sales staff know nothing about an advertised sales price offer. Strategic thinking
includes adopting the philosophy of Integrated Marketing Communications: Making sure
that activity in one of the five elements is harmoniously coordinated with the others
(Schultz, 1993).


Public Relations May be More Effective than Advertising

The limitations on Mass Media Advertising are well known. The readership of daily
newspapers is shrinking (Angwin & Hallernan, 2005), especially among those generations
whose members grew up accessing information from the Internet. Advances in digital
composition have made it very easy to start new magazines (the National Directory of
Magazines lists more than 10,000 non-scientific periodical titles). While this means that
advertising can be narrowly targeted to niche audiences (Godin, 1999, p.29), such as people
who crochet as a hobby, it makes it harder to reach new customers such as people who
would be interested in taking up crochet as a hobby.

TV networks can no longer deliver 85 percent of all viewing households as Ed Sullivan
could command for his variety show in the 1950s. Cable and satellite TV have led to the
fragmentation of media—with many more channels, fewer viewers are watching each one
(Leonard, 2004). Worse, from the advertisers’ point of view, the most desirable customers
may not be watching TV at all, choosing to spend their leisure time online, gaming or
watching commercial-free programming. Digital video recorders permit consumers to “zap”

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commercials by skipping ahead. Those media which do carry advertisements are increasingly
cluttered (Kotler & Armstrong, 1996, p. 500) so the impact of each Mass Media Advertising
expenditure is diminished.


Traditional Public Relations
TRADITIONAL PUBLIC RELATIONS ACTIVITIES
activities (see adjacent Text

Box) were characterized by
Issuing press releases
rather passive relations with
Fact finding for press inquiries
members of the press. PR
Coordinating spokespeople to respond to the press
professionals nurtured good
Providing public speakers
relationships with reporters,
Factory tours
hoped to be called for a
Lobbying
quote when there was a
Investor relations
good story to be told, and

issued press releases
Organizing publicity events such as “Grand
describing product releases
Opening” ceremonies
and staff promotions.

However, marketing

managers now have a much
broader array of PR activities that can be used as a proactive part of the Promotional Mix.

The Scope of Modern Public Relations

Before the emergence of modern PR activities, marketing academics used to define Public
Relations as: Any non-paid communication between the firm and its public constituencies.
However, most marketing managers would take issue with “unpaid”: External Public
Relations counsel are likely to charge substantial fees and many worthwhile PR activities
(such as event sponsorship) require expenditures of many millions of dollars from a firm’s
promotional budget. This leads to a rather artless contemporary definition that is
nonetheless accurate:

Public Relations is the part of the Promotional Mix that involves communication
between the firm and its public constituencies other than paid mass media
advertising and direct promotion (mail and e-mail). Public Relations activities seek to
promote “Word of Mouth” and increase Media Mentions of the firm and its
product.

The long-term goal of any successful Public Relations activity is to encourage positive
consumer perceptions of the firm, its brands and its products. From a myriad of PR
activities that will be described below, the effect of a successful PR campaign can be
identified in two intermediate results: Word of Mouth and Media Mentions. These two
vectors are interrelated—positive print articles result in friends talking, friends talking
suggest story ideas to reporters—the specific effect of the various tactics will vary with a
greater weight on Word of Mouth or Media Mentions as the intermediate result.


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Word of Mouth

“Word of Mouth” is the promotional dream of most marketers. If a firm is lucky enough to
have it, consumers tell each other about the firm’s products, and the most satisfied
customers volunteer as ambassadors for the brand. Word of Mouth is particularly effective
as a promotional communication because each message comes from a trusted source—a
friend, family member or acquaintance.

Not too long ago, a marketing manager whose work I respect commented: “There’s not too
much we can do about Word of Mouth—we figure, if it happens, that’s great.” However,
Renee Dye’s (2000) influential article defined Word of Mouth as a legitimate promotional
goal and suggested several techniques, such as creating artificial shortages of in-demand
products, to produce what she called “buzz”. The recently formed Word of Mouth
Marketing Association (www.womma.org) seeks to promote best practices in the field
amongst its members. Andrew and Jack Kaikati (2004) recently reviewed a number of
“stealth marketing” techniques (such as paying people to talk up the brand) which have been
employed to directly promote Word of Mouth. Word of Mouth is particularly desirable as
the intermediate goal if there is a narrow group of customers for a product or if the firm is
trying to seek the attention of opinion leaders and early adopters. For example, if a firm
developed a new product to aid autistic children, while media mentions on morning TV
news shows would be nice to have, this would be over reaching (most families watching the
shows would be uninterested in purchase). A more strategic approach would be to focus on
developing Word of Mouth within autism parent associations and support groups.

In modern Public Relations there is a broad set of legitimate public relations activities that, if
successful, will naturally promote Word of Mouth, and an additional, related benefit, Media
Mentions.

Media Mentions

For more than a decade, every Thursday the Wall Street Journal has published a column,
“Personal Technology” by its reporter Walter Mossberg. Each week, Mr. Mossberg reviews
new technology gadgets that are offered to the market. He is an authoritative critic who
doesn’t hesitate to say when a bright idea lacks the execution to be ready for broad adoption
Conversely, when he says a product is the “best in my opinion for most non-tech users” the
product is guaranteed to be a hit. No technology marketer could spend any amount of
money to purchase any number of full page advertisements in the Journal that would be
remotely as effective as Mossberg’s thumbs up or thumbs down.

This is just one example of the power of what are technically called “editorial mentions.”
This term does not mean a discussion on the opinion pages of a newspaper, but any
reference to the firm (in a positive way) as part of the text of an article or on a radio or TV
show. For example, when CBS technology correspondent, Larry Magid, calls in to a radio
show and mentions that he is using Vonage ™ VoIP telephony, many consumers who have
been considering this new communications device will be motivated to subscribe. The good
news for marketers is that, just as much as they crave positive editorial mentions, content

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providers are looking for something to discuss, and there’s a considerable cachet in being the
first to discover a hot new product.

Like Word of Mouth, Media Mentions don’t just happen. There is an active give-and-take
process between members of the media who are seeking new stories and new angles on old
stories and commercial firms that are looking for positive mentions of their products. In
traditional PR, a firm might issue a press release with written description of a product and
send it to as many media contacts as possible. Today, this would be considered a rather
passive approach to achieving Media Mentions. The modern approach is to say that Both
Word of Mouth and Media Mentions are the result of a broad range of specific, proactive
Public Relations activities.

Modern Public Relations Activities

Although conventional Public Relations activities, such as the routine dissemination of Press
Releases, have their place, the new wave of PR activities can be grouped in four general
areas: Event Sponsorship, Stunt Marketing, Charitable Donations and Placement [Figure 2].


Public Relations Activities
Public
Press Release,
Relations
Speeches and interviews
Event Sponsorship
Stunt Marketing
Charitable Donations
Product Placement
Editorial Mentions
Word of Mouth



As with any promotional technique, only some of these activities will be appropriate for each
promotional need. For example, the launch of a breakthrough new product is a good match
to a Stunt Marketing approach, while an established firm seeking to adjust its image in a
particular local community might better use a strategic campaign of charitable donations.



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Event Sponsorship

Almost every major sporting event in the US now has a commercial sponsor: the Buick
Open golf tournament, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl in football and the SAP Open Tennis
tournament are examples of annual sporting events that give name recognition to corporate
partners. In general, the sponsor receives multiple mentions of the corporate name on
signage and in press and

broadcast reports and a
EFFECTIVE EVENT SPONSORSHIP
generally favorable context

(attending sporting events
Have a strategic plan and choose events that
is a leisure activity and
match the firm’s promotional goals
everyone shares in the joy
Calculate the return on investment, compare with
of the winner).
alternatives

Avoid clutter, “we’d also like to thank”
Not all sports event
Negotiate tie-ins up front
sponsorship expenditures
Make a contract for the naming rights
will necessarily have a
Make a long-term, multi-year commitment with
positive promotional
options to renew sponsorship
effect. For example, every

year more than 70,000
Coordinate mass media advertising
runners take part in the
Conduct “Internal Promotion” to engage
Bay to Breakers race in
members of the firm
San Francisco. The event
Be alert for hijacking of the event’s image
is a combination of a
Plan for the downside—an ineffective event or
serious road race with top-
incident
class athletes, and a
Monitor effectiveness with tracking studies
community parade in

which people in bizarre
costumes run or walk. In

2002 the official race t-
shirt was printed with the
names of more than two-dozen corporate sponsors, including both Bank of America and
Wells Fargo, two banks that are in head to head competition. While many managers may
experience a competitive argument to make sure a firm has a presence (the other guys are
listed, we should be too) it’s hard to see how the overall reputation of either bank was
improved by whatever they paid for this name recognition. (The event now has a single, lead
sponsor and is known as the Albertsons Bay to Breakers race, after the grocery store chain.)

The contrast between an incidental mention on a cluttered t-shirt and marquee billing leads
to some practical recommendations for sports event sponsorship. First and foremost, the
event a firm chooses to sponsor should be related to the firm’s strategic goals. For example,
the Round the World Sailing Race used to have the sponsorship of the British brewer,
Whitbread (sailors and those who would like to own ocean-going yachts are not especially
beer drinkers, nor is beer-drinking a typical nautical activity) but has recently taken on
sponsorship from a Ford car division and has become the Volvo Ocean Race (Volvo
benefits from associations of individualism, courage and endurance, and incidentally has a
marine engine division). Marketing managers should be especially suspicious of proposed

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sponsorships that happen to match the personal hobbies of the Chief Executive Officer—
just because the CEO likes watching or playing tennis does not align the sponsorship of a
tennis tournament with a firm’s strategic goals.

As part of the managerial decision for sponsorship, firms compare the multi-million price
tag for marquis sponsorship with the equivalent advertising cost of achieving the same
number of exposures to target consumers. Typically the advertising cost would be six to ten
times the cost of sponsorship. However, sponsorship deserves a critical appraisal. While it’s
true that the cost per exposure is less than for advertising, it’s not clear what a company
gains from a mere mention of its name in a positive context. Without additional tie-in
promotion, mention of the firm’s name does not communicate any product benefits nor
does it give consumers a reason to buy. Although not all promotional budgets will
accommodate the multiple millions required to be a lead sponsor, a mere listing as a
corporate sponsor in a long list is probably not worth much—and the donation should
match.

In return for a substantial financial commitment, firms that engage in sports event
sponsorship receive a commitment that signage, press releases and announcer commentaries
will all include the firm’s name. Sponsors will also typically negotiate for the rights to
peripheral advertising (within broadcasts or on billboard adjacent to the stadium) to prevent
the event being hijacked by a rival firm. Once a company has identified an event that is a
good match for its strategy, it is prudent to execute a multi-year sponsorship agreement with
rights to renewal (assuming the event continues to be a good match for the firm’s interests).
On the other hand, a case can be made that after many years the sponsorship becomes taken
for granted (see the example of Texaco, below) so continuing sponsorship should be
critically compared with other possible uses of the promotion expenditure.

Firms that make good use of event sponsorship will use an Integrated Marketing
Communications approach and make sure that contemporaneous mass media advertising
ties in to the event. There are many opportunities to engage the firm’s own employees,
particularly sales force members, in contests for which the prize is a trip to the event. The
maximum effect of sports event sponsorship will occur when the other elements of the
promotional mix fill in the gaps in the communication and advocate specific product
features and brand associations.

Before turning to non-sporting events that are opportunities for sponsorship, the now-
frequent practice of corporate purchase of stadium naming rights deserves examination.
Although firms vie with each other for the opportunity to spend millions of dollars to name
a sports venue, the positive benefit from this expenditure is hard to see. Naming a baseball
stadium “PacBell Park” probably did little for the reputation of Pacific Bell which was the
dominant local telephone carrier with probably close to 100 percent name recognition. That
fans liked the new stadium and the local team did well did not hurt Pacific Bell, but probably
lead to no measurable marketing payoff. (As with a number of stadiums, this deal was
further complicated when, after a few years under the PacBell name, the corporation decided
to go with the brand name of its parent company, SBC, and the stadium was renamed “SBC
Park” to further diminish any promotional effectiveness.)


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Many of these naming rights deals have backfired when the naming company has foundered:
Enron Field in Houston, now named for Minute-Maid, and Adelphia Coliseum in Nashville,
now simply “The Coliseum”. Presumably the attraction to naming rights is that it gives a
firm a local presence and announces that the firm has achieved success. This would account
for 3Com’s purchase of the naming rights to San Francisco’s famously frigid Candlestick
Park. Consumers had little understanding the name, and the naming rights alone did not
convey product benefits. In another example from Candlestick Park of the ineffectiveness of
naming rights, when 3Com’s naming rights expired, the facility was renamed “Monster
Park”—not for the well-known online jobs bulletin board, but for the company that makes
Monster Cables. It’s likely that the firm’s $6 million expenditure will do little for the sales of
cables and indeed any positive name-recognition would seem to accrue to Monster.com—
the other company. In sum, stadium naming rights can be considered in the universe of
sponsorship, but most often will reward corporate vanity more than corporate strategy.

In addition to sporting events, firms can consider sponsoring cultural and civic events, each
with their own potential positive associations. For example, American Express has many
years of commitment to ballet performances such as the American Ballet Theatre.
Presumably ballet patrons are a good match to the type of customer American Express seeks
to attract. As in the case of sports sponsorships, firms will gain little benefit from throwing
money into the pot with many other corporate donors, and should insist on naming rights,
signage and other recognition while coordinating mass media advertising and employee
participation. While a long-running commitment makes sense, there is a danger of being
taken for granted. For example, Texaco sponsored live broadcasts of the Metropolitan
Opera every year from 1940 to 2004. While this undoubtedly contributed to Texaco’s
corporate image with the very small segment of its customers who listen to the opera, it’s
unlikely that sales of its gasoline were in any way diminished when it abandoned the
sponsorship.

Civic events are the newest opportunity for sponsorship. With the high cost of insurance
and security, civic groups have a new willingness to sell full naming rights. For example,
Southwest Airlines moved from being a donor to the marquis sponsor of what is now called
“The Southwest Airlines Chinese New Year Parade and Festival” in San Francisco. On the
surface, this is a good fit if Southwest seeks to improve its image in the city, or with Chinese
Americans, but most likely has benefits in reminding consumers outside California that San
Francisco is an exciting tourist destination, and Southwest can fly you there.

As attractive as event sponsorship may be, a couple of notes of caution are in order. First, a
firm that spends good money to sponsor an event should commit to tracking studies to
make sure the even is viewed favorably and that the firm has achieved its promotional goals
(awareness or positive image for example). Second, before committing to a sponsorship, the
firm should analyze the potential risks. For an arts organization, there’s always the possibility
that the institution will run out of funds and be forced to cancel a season. In civic and sports
events where there are large crowds, there is always the possibility of some unknowable
tragedy, such as a fan riot or terrorism attack. Such occurrences are rare, but they should be
foreseen and a mitigation strategy should be prepared.

In a closing note to this discussion of event-sponsorship, we can add the additional element
of experiences to the consideration of events (Kotler & Keller, 2005, p. 591).Several firms

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include experiences as part of their promotional mix by substantially expanding the scope of
their factory tours (Kerwin, 2004).


Stunt Marketing*

An alternative to sponsoring an existing event is to create a pseudo-event for the sole
purposes of attracting press coverage—a “stunt.” For example, each Fourth of July,
Nathan’s Coney Island Hot Dogs stages a hot dog eating contest that achieves international
media exposure (especially since the winner in this uniquely American extravagance has for
the last five years been a Japanese national, Takeru Kobayashi). In advocating a place for
Stunt Marketing as a legitimate tool in the promoter’s tool-kit, one has to be aware that the
reaction of most professional marketers is that stunts include the good, the bad and the
downright ugly. In the latter
category, local radio stations

from time to time run a
THE PERFECT STUNT
promotion of the following

sort: “What’s the craziest
Grabs attention by something novel
thing that you would do to
Achieves some good social purpose
win this car?” and
Provokes a positive emotional response, such as
contestants eat light bulbs,
curiosity or laughter
tar and feather themselves
Reaches the target audience
and so on.
Comes early in the product life cycle

Is simple and elegant
However, there are plenty of

good examples (see Esfahani,
2005). In November, 1999,

CarOrder.com spent more
than $1 million to pay the
tolls and subway fares of New York commuters in an event called a “random act of
kindness”. The expenditure was a fraction of the cost that the fledgling on-line automotive
site would have spent to achieve name awareness by mass media advertising, and the story
was picked up nationally and internationally by a broad range of media. In December 2004,
in a story picked up by media all over the world, the British hotel chain Travelodge offered
free rooms on Christmas Eve to any couple named Mary and Joseph (Reuters, 2004).

Stunts achieve break-through awareness, but like other modern PR tools, they are limited in
scope: They do not provide an opportunity to convey complex information about product
benefits. For that reason, they are best suited to the early part of a product life cycle. To be
newsworthy, the stunt must be something unexpected and this requires constant innovation.
For example, when Ben & Jerry’s ice cream began its westward expansion towards becoming
a national brand, the firm had a stunt that involved arriving at a randomly chosen company
and serving free ice cream to all the staff. Though newsworthy in its day, free ice cream
would not make it as “filler” on local TV news these days.

* I am grateful to David Applegate for discussions on this topic.

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In addition to matching the promotional task (awareness) a stunt should attract people in the
target group (commuters were a good match for CarsDirect.com). An ideal stunt is one that
achieves some reasonable social purpose, typically giving away something to a group of
people who are appreciative. Stunts that are merely self-serving have a tendency of
backfiring on the firm’s image. For example, Snapple (a maker of fruit drinks) attempted to
set the record for the world’s largest frozen popsicle flooded Union Square in New York city
with sticky goo when it turned out not to be sufficiently frozen. Similarly, in Chicago, IBM
was accused of vandalism when it hired an agency to stencil “Peace, Love and Linux” on city
sidewalks.

In sum, Stunt Marketing comes with risks but can be considered as a breakthrough activity
that can promote Word of Mouth and Media Mentions. It should be used infrequently and
fully integrated with a much broader promotional campaign.


Charitable Donations

Almost all corporations give away money to charitable causes. In many firms this activity
falls under the office of the president or an arms-length foundation. The firm’s goals for
charitable giving are to be a
good corporate citizen, and

in a general way, promote
STRATEGIC CHARITABLE GIVING
the firm’s image in the

community. Fair enough,
Focus the firm’s donations in a few areas
but often this leads to
Involve more than money—encourage employee
fragmented, unstrategic
participation
giving and a wasted
Match the recipient charity to the firm’s
legitimate opportunity for
promotional objectives
promotion. For example, a
Consider inventing a charitable cause
firm that gives $5,000 to a
Make name recognition contractual
breast cancer awareness
Follow up and audit if necessary
drive and another $5,000 to
Schedule regular reviews of effectiveness
support a pediatric AIDS

walk might do better if it
focused on one or other of

the events, where the
attendees, volunteers and
committed charity members
were most likely to match the target group for the firm’s products.

Too often charitable giving is scattershot and reactive to a plea (Grow, 2005). The result is
that the firm’s name is listed without embellishment in a long list of corporate sponsors:
“We’d also like to thank . . .” Keith Epstein (2005) notes the shift to more concentrated (and
often more generous) giving that better matches a firm’s strategic goals. For example,
McGraw-Hill has increased donations to programs that teach financial literacy—a good

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