Public Relations, Sponsorship and Corporate Advertising

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Public Relations, Sponsorship and Corporate
Advertising

• Business 6210, Winter 2008
• Deanne Fisher

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Objectives

• To provide an overview of public relations
• To explore corporate communications
• To examine crisis communications
• To understand marketing public relations

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Definition

• Traditional Definition of PR
• The management function which evaluates public
  attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures
  of an organization with the public interest, and
  executes a program of action (and communication)
  to earn public understanding and acceptance.
• ( Definition by the Public Relation News)

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Advantages and Disadvantages

• Advantages
• Credibility
• Cost
• Avoidance of clutter
• Ability to reach specific groups
• Disadvantages
• Potential for not completing the communications
  process
• Potential for lack of communication with rest of
  IMC program
• Timing not completely controllable
• Inaccuracies, omissions, etc.

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Overview of Public Relations

• Public relations
• Important in relationship marketing
• Credibility builder
• Can be focused on corporate brand or product
  brand
• Types of public relations
• Corporate relations ?
• Crisis management ?
• Marketing public relations ?
• Media relations
• Employee relations
• Financial or investor relations

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PR Strategy and Planning

• Situation Analysis
• Determine and evaluate public attitudes
• Establish a PR plan
• Define PR problems (based on SA)
• Determine relevant PR audiences
• Internal External
• Define messages (worthy of public interest)
• Choose PR tools
• Implement the plan
• Evaluate
• Measures of actual PR activities undertaken
• Measures of audience reception and understanding
• Measures of perceptual and behavioral changes

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Corporate Relations

• Corporate advertising is designed to promote
  the firm overall, by enhancing its image,
  assuming a position on a social issue or cause,
  or seeking direct involvement in something
• Types
• Corporate identity advertising
• Advocacy advertising
• Social issue advertising
• Cause-related advertising
• Event sponsorships
• Corporate mission and vision
• Corporate image and reputation
• Image is created
• Reputation is earned

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Event Sponsorship

• Objectives
• Criteria
• Consistency with brand image
• Access to target audience
• Low risk of sponsor misidentification
• Low clutter
• Fit with other sponsorships, marcoms
• Economically viable
• Ambush marketing
• Evaluation

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Crisis Management

• Crises we can learn from
• Tylenol (1982)
• Exxon Valdez (1989)
• NYC 9/11 (2001)

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Crisis Management

• Advice from the experts
• Be realistic. Crises happen. Plan for them.
• Only designated executives should talk to the
  media
• Explain what happened as you understand it
• Tell what the company is doing to minimize the
  damage
• Express sympathy and concern for injured parties
  and their families
• Do not admit liability without knowing all the
  facts (which can take weeks or months to gather)

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Marketing Public Relations

• Involves an organizations interactions with
  consumers
• Proactive MPR
• Reactive MPR

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Proactive MPR

• MPR adds value to IMC by
• Building excitement before media advertising
  breaks
• Creating advertising news when there is no
  product news
• Introducing a product with little or no
  advertising
• Providing value-added customer service
• Building brand-to-customer bonds
• Influencing opinion leaders
• Defending products at risk and giving consumers a
  reason to buy

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Reactive MPR

• Negative product publicity
• Product defects and failures
• Product tampering
• Rumors
• Conspiracy rumors
• Contamination rumors
• Persistent rumors (all false)
• Procter Gamble
• Kentucky Fried Chicken
• Corona

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Rumors and Rumor Control

• Dealing with rumors Dont overreact
• Alert procedure
• Evaluation
• Decide whether to go public judgment call
• Media campaign (if necessary)

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Corporate Hate Sites

• Get there first
• Buy the URLs for the company name followed by the
  word "sucks.com."
• Fix the problem
• Tell your side of the story
• Sue?
• Does not usually work

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Summary

• PR is highly credible, but not very controllable,
  and, as its name indicates, is focused on
  building and maintaining relationships, an
  essential aspect of IMC
• Corporate advertising is controversial area
  questionably effective but corporate relations
  in general is very important in IMC
• A crisis management plan is important and can
  have huge effects on organizational reputation
• MPR can be both proactive and reactive, and is
  focused on the brand, rather than the organization

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