Advertising Posing as PR: Why They Want to Be Like Us (and What to Do About It)

This is a really good article. Too long to post here, but below is an intro with a link to the full article. Enjoy!

Advertising Posing as PR: Why They Want to Be Like Us (and What to Do About It)
By Matt Shaw, Vice President, Council of Public Relations Firms

It turns out that when advertising grows up it wants to be public relations.

There is mounting evidence that the public relations toolbox is being pilfered on a regular basis—and it's not necessarily being called public relations by the perpetrators.

Last year, more than half of our members reported facing competition from other marketing services firms, in everything from crisis work to blog creation to managing events.

On this matter, I heard a genuine cautionary tale from one of our members just the other day.

It involved an ad agency pitch for a large client, and his firm was given the rare opportunity to watch the pitches. Three ad agencies presented that day, and three agencies trotted out … you probably guessed it: buzz generation, publicity, influencer outreach, blogging, viral online activity; you name it, they did it. The "earned media"—what we might think of as the public relations part of the recommendations—took up the first half of one agency's presentation, before they even got to advertising creative.

This is a long way from the PR tactics occupying the last three slides of a 50-slide advertising capabilities presentation.

Read the rest here