Marketing - What is Publicity?

As marketers, we do a lot of things to promote our company, our brand, and our product

One tool that we have in our promotional strategy is publicity. So what is publicity

Well, publicity is any unpaid, non-personal communication about a product, brand, or idea

So there are two key things to this definition. One is we don't typically pay for publicity

That's a big difference between other strategic tools like advertising. The other key to this definition is that it is non-personal

So that means we're not really targeting individuals or even a specific audience a lot of times

We just want the message to get out. So how do we take advantage or create publicity

One way is through media coverage. So we can let the media know what going on with us what we doing and that sort of thing and we hope that they pick up the story and put it out there for us So again that a way that without paying we can get our message out Another way that we use publicity is through what called public relations

This is where we communicate with the general public and we try to create a positive sort of relationship or image for ourselves with the public

So this can be sponsorship of certain events or charitable causes that we get involved with

Those are the kinds of things that we do to improve our public relations

And lastly, publicity as compared to advertising is typically more general. So we're not talking about a specific product usually or some new aspect of our brand

We're mostly just trying to improve our image. So we want to keep it general and just about the company or about the brand

So in a nutshell, that is publicity