According to the Ries’s book, advertising messages tend to be of limited effectiveness when used alone in marketing campaigns because consumers question, discount or simply ignore them. Filtered by media gatekeepers, public relations seems far more authentic to consumers. Unlike advertising, PR catches consumers off-guard because it is perceived as credible. When used effectively, PR can break through the clutter of commercial hype, and leave customers clamoring for a new product or service.

Dayall goes on, “PR is measurable. You measure it by setting what your [placement] targets are. You measure whether you’ve got placement in those places.” In this scenario, PR practitioners are left asking themselves how much placement of a story in USA Today or El Diario is worth, and whether the placement is worth the same amount as a story in Forbes or a spot on a breakfast chat show.

Not surprisingly, a special relationship has evolved between PR and the media — especially newspapers. Because they reach their readers daily, newspapers are a preferred medium for PR build-up and promotional campaigns. Newspapers are also perceived to have more credibility than broadcast media — if only because people tend to place value on that for which they pay.

Media gatekeepers — editors and reporters — are trained to recognize hype, and are expected to keep the media from being flooded with promotional information. According to Douglas P. Starr, Professor of Journalism at Texas A&M University in College Station, “Any PR professional could fool any reporter into publishing a less-than-factual press release, but it is difficult to imagine that happening to that reporter more than once or twice. Two things would happen: The reporter would refuse to accept press releases from that PR professional, and that PR professional would be fired as ineffective,” he says.

But the media has credibility problems of its own. Says Matthew P. Gonring, vice-president of global marketing and communications at Rockwell Automation in Wisconsin, “Many would argue that the traditional mass media has been marginalized with the erosion of trust in major institutions.” He continues, “Business news has lost credibility by helping create the ‘bubble’ in the economy and not looking carefully and objectively at the ethics and business practices of corporate America.”

Professor Laurie J. Wilson of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, is concerned that pressures on the print media to provide 24-hour coverage — in direct competition with online news venues — may result in sloppy editorial practices. “Real-time news capabilities have led to shoddy journalism including single sourcing, failure to check facts and even made-up stories,” she says. A Gallup Poll conducted in October 2003, several months after reporting scandals at the New York Times made national headlines, found that only 54 percent of the American public retained a great deal or fair amount of trust in the mass media (New York Post, October 9, 2003).

As PRSA fellow Wallace notes, “It takes personal contact and skilled marketing to get a story placed in the New York Times or any other high quality newspaper, magazine, or network news show.”

Although public relations strategist Shelley Peng of Deloitte & Touche concedes that it might be possible to place an item in the Times that was not particularly newsworthy — or even true — she insists that the kind of marketing her company specializes in wouldn’t work that way. “We’re working with the truth. We’re not political PR.” For a company that succeeded so well in promoting its Bullfighter software — a program that promises to eliminate the jargon in your communications material from the experts in jargon themselves — we are left to conclude that what the news media likes is a good story coupled with a good product or service. This would appear to serve the brand, the media source and the consumer all equally well.    

[19-Jan-2004]