If there is one thing that would magnify the difference between advertising and Lakeland public relations, it’s the tools that they use to reach their end goals. Public relations, you would notice, uses well-crafted strategies and tools that are grounded in research and experience. They are not bought. There’s no airtime or space to be purchased. What PR firms have done is to build trust between them and the platforms that they use—whether it’s traditional media, new media, or a market research firm.

Public relations uses a lot of different techniques to get the message across to their intended audience. And what is great about these tools is that there is no limit to the audience they can reach. They may be targeting a specific market, but who’s to say that some other market won’t be watching the same news and interview, or accidentally attending an outreach program organized by the PR firm?

Writing speeches, press releases, and blogs

Perhaps, PR is most known for coming out with speeches, articles, press releases, and blogs that answer the issues affecting the PR firm’s clients. These speeches and press releases will be published in newspapers and magazines, and aired in radio and TV stations that the target audience tune in to. These are not published as is, but sent to journalists covering the particular issue, so they could incorporate the “client’s” views into their articles. They will be passed on as legitimately extracted views from the client. They would not look like advertising at all, though the goal is the same—to promote a business, a product, a service, or a personality.

A speech, on the other hand, will directly address the issue at hand. An event will be made accordingly, where the speech will be delivered by the client. The intention of the speech will be to clear whatever issue the client is going through but it would not be crafted in a way that the audience will understand that the message was defined by the issue. Albeit, the speechwriter or the PR firm will build the message in such a way that it would bring out the desired outcome without having to be obvious about it. The true color of the speech’s goals is in the meaning of the words, and not the words themselves.

Everything that a PR firm does is to build the reputation of its client—whether it’s in answering the issues faced by that client or espousing a campaign that client is spearheading. Every method used and platform chosen is geared towards a successful campaign.