On advertising and promotions

IN the broad field of marketing, sub-marketing fields like public relations, sales, advertising and promotions utilize events to achieve its goals.

A single event can (and actually should) serve more than one sub-marketing field.
Events can be tools for promoting a product, can have advertising, can increase sales and can boost a company’s image.

Although certain companies have different organizational structures (some companies have departments labeled sales and marketing where public relations, advertising and promotions fall under it; others have marketing and communications departments separate from sales yet incorporate public relations, advertising and promotions in it) the common factor among these companies is they recognize and use events as tools.

In creating events, the important thing to remember is the prime purpose. Is it primarily meant to increase sales or is its main goal simply to boost corporate image?

Once you’ve indentified the prime purpose, other corollary points can be considered. In the course of creating an event with the prime purpose of selling a product for example, your company is offering a free service beneficial to your target market that in turn enhances your company’s image.

One example of such event is Marco Polo Plaza’s Power Meetings & Theme Parties Corporate Fair. The prime purpose is to sell the venue, in this case Marco Polo Plaza, to clients for their meetings and parties.

The corporate fair event ingeniously achieves this by offering showcases and lectures to clients for free. For two whole days, Marco Polo Plaza’s Corporate Fair featured an open house where its Grand Ballroom and function rooms were set up in various themes so meeting planners and party organizers gain ideas.

The Manila Room, for example was fitted with the spa theme. The Sinulog Room showcased native concepts and the Asian Room offered Asian themes.

The Grand Ballroom was transformed into an inspiration of the beautiful city of Venice. These were set up with the help of Cebu’s prime eventologists Teresin Mendezona, Ritchie Mendoza of Event Makers and Debbie Huang of Simple Wishes.
Free seminars included a lecture on “Stress Management” by Cory Quirino, a wellness authority and “Putting a Wow Factor into Your Events” by Rita Neri, the country’s top special events planner.

The event was a raving success. Events planners and corporate marketing personnel who are Marco Polo Plaza’s regular clients and potential clients filled the function rooms eager to learn the tricks of the trade, learned from experts and went home inspired to do more creative events for their own companies.
Naturally, the success of the corporate fair both planted the seed of future sales deals and boosted the hotel’s image for hosting it.
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April May Tudtud-Ramos is an out-source corporate publicist since 1999. She is also an Advanced Communicator of Toastmasters International affiliated with the Queen City Toastmasters Club. For comments send e-messages to apriltudtudramos@yahoo.com.

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PRs and Event Organizers

CONTRARY to common belief PRs or public relations consultants are not event organizers and vice versa. Although a PR practitioner can do event organizing as part of his efforts at promoting publicity.

As a PR specializing in publicity I usually tap the expertise of a full-time event organizer for my clients’ needs. That way, events will be in the hands of experts and my concentration with publicity efforts will remain unhampered.

For clients who have little budget and shriek at the cost of hiring event organizers, I do my share – but still more on a consultancy basis and most of the legwork done by the clients themselves. Most of the events that I do handle, with close coordination with my clients, are press and broadcast media conferences. Even with product launchings, I prefer to tap out-source event organizers.

Cebu abounds with event organizers more than publicists. These event organizers have their own preferred expertise as well. Some organizers specialize in concerts, some in fashion shows. Others specialize in trade shows and conventions. Some others do weddings and debuts, others contests – beauty contests, students contests, etc.
In this highly dynamic era, specialty is the name of the game. Being a jack-of-all-trades more and more makes one a master of none. So I have high regard for experts in their own chosen field. Event organizing requires a lot of legwork and manual labor. From planning to implementation and after-event work, event organizing is tedious to say the least.

Event organizing requires knowledge in stage management and direction. Choreography even plays a key role here. Stage decoration is another aspect and props creation is definitely not my cup of tea. The technical aspect is another thing – lights, sounds, wirings, cables – they all get jumbled up in my hands alone. There are plenty of people who can do much better.

Event organizing is very sensitive as well. One small act of neglect or omission can spell disaster. That’s why experience is a treasure here, thus more experienced event organizers are true gems.
And where does publicity come in? By making these high-costing events worthwhile. More often than not companies expend lots of time and money organizing events that fail to achieve the desired result. This can be avoided by a thorough and well-coordinated publicity plan.
In fact, events should be supports for successful publicity programs – not the other way around.

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April May Tudtud-Ramos is an out-source corporate publicist since 1999. She is also an Advanced Communicator of Toastmasters International affiliated with the Queen City Toastmasters Club. For comments send e-messages to apriltudtudramos@yahoo.com.

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Publicity and advertising, what’s the difference?

IN my line of work, I always encounter people who still confuse publicity with advertising. It is this confusion that usually creates misunderstandings and it would take some time to educate them on the differences between the two. I have summarized a few general yet crucial differences.

Advertising is pictures. Publicity is words.

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” Such mantra moves the world of advertising. Advertisements are mostly visual and words are there simply to reinforce it. In publicity, it’s the opposite. Publicity is achieved through verbalization, in news articles, features, essays.

Advertising goes full blast. Publicity builds up slowly.

Most advertising experts prefer a barrage of advertisements over a short period of time to achieve name recall. In print advertisements, the least frequency would probably be three times a week. In radio, at least eight spots per day daily.

This is done somewhere within a week to a month up to three months before a launching of a product or service. In publicity, build-up is slow. New brands are introduced piece-meal with some success in public acceptance gained in at least three years of consistent, well-planned publicity.

Advertising is massive. Publicity is personal.

Advertisements hit the public in general with the focus centered on reaching as many people as often as you can.

Publicity has the more personal approach, searching to hit a more direct target––a niche market, a specific audience. Publicity relies hardly on the classic word-of-mouth. After successfully reaching one viable person, this person relates the message to his family and friends.

Advertising is paid. Publicity is free.

Placing an advertisement in print or broadcast or even the internet is paid. Newspapers base ad rates per column inch or centimeter; broadcast per second or per spot; internet dependent on the site carrying the ad.

Advertisements are the life-blood of the media industry with most media outfits solely relying on ad sales for its existence. Publicity on the other hand is free. You rely on the editors’ and news managers’ discretion on whether your articles or media releases do come out, when they come out and how they come out.

Publicists are there mainly to supply a news reporter’s need for finding news, or to serve as a source good for interesting features and human interest stories. The advantage of publicity is its credibility with people preferring to believe news stories more than paid ads.

Publicity and advertising can work together. In fact they should. Advertisements gain more meaning with words and ideas previously established in the mind through publicity. That’s why it’s important for companies to let their advertisements correlate with their publicity efforts.

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FITCH

The PR support
By : APRIL MAY TUDTUD-RAMOS
A LOT of companies these days are losing thousands of pesos worth of publicity opportunities each month. How? By placing ads without the support of publicity. To remind you the difference between the two, advertisements are paid and done in graphic-centered lay-outs while publicity is free and generated through stories.
Companies here in Cebu rely on the placement of ads to generate marketing exposure for their products or services. And that’s it. What they don’t know is; they could have supported such ads with news stories either through company created press releases or coverage done by members of the media.

When I handled a certain client, I encouraged them to maximize publicity in conjunction with the ads they intended to place. Their concentration was one newspaper loaded with oversized ads that failed to make the most of its space. I advised them to cut the size but to increase the frequency spread out in more suitable days of the week then spread out to more than one paper.
I introduced them to publicity management focused on press releases tailor-fit for individual sections in each paper – articles with business angles on the business pages; features of human interest for the lifestyle pages; and more generic informative press releases for the community pages.

Actually the dilemma of untapped publicity is multi faceted. First, you have to reassess your ad layouts and copies. One observation I have with print ads here in Cebu is that ninety percent of them are mere announcements, not true advertisements. What I mean is; there is clearly no graphic planning to speak of – the ads are mere text announcing an event or sale or sales and marketing promotion.
Maybe, from the looks of those ads, they are home-made. I would still advice the expertise of a good advertising agency in planning a company’s advertisement program. For companies who can’t afford them, find a good graphic artist and guide him towards the slant that you need.

Then plan your publicity in relation to your ad campaign. Remember not to fall again for Myth number 3 - PR is Advertisement & Promotions. Public Relations and its sub-specialty publicity are not advertising and vice versa. Neither is publicity inferior to advertising. In fact, it could be the opposite in this over-communicated era.
Honestly, do you believe the ads you hear or see these days? If you do maybe not hook, line and sinker. More often than not, you don’t even bother to read the copy. You just skim through it and look for more interesting stories.
I read an article entitled “The Power of Publicity” in the Toastmaster magazine dated September 2008 and in the sub-heading Publicity vs. Advertising it said: “…traditional advertising is becoming less and less effective, we are now hit with up to 5, 000 advertisements every day. Radios come with scan and seek buttons and TiVo allows consumers to fast forward through annoying chatter and ads… Most people focus on the stories…good stories… that’s why an article – a story – and its life-changing benefits is more effective than an advertisement.”
Hey, I’m not downplaying the role of advertising. That is the lifeblood of every media outfit. All I’m saying is don’t downplay the role of publicity. Le the two work together – and believe me the returns are endless.
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April May Tudtud-Ramos is an out-source corporate publicist since 1999. She is also an Advanced Communicator of Toastmasters International affiliated with the Queen City Toastmasters Club. For comments send e-messages to apriltudtudramos@yahoo.com.

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