PR: It’s your father-in-law
[Author’s note: Paull’s latest post has stirred me into creating a series of metaphors of PR. This is the first of that series.]
I’ve been reading a lot of books by Jack Trout lately. Jack writes books on the marketing strategy of positioning, which is what our agency’s philosophy is based on. It’s a fascinating concept, and while I don’t agree with everything he says, Mr. Trout (and co-author Al Ries) wrote some incredible things. One of the things I don’t care for is that he tends to use the terms “publicity” and “PR” synonymously as if PR is nothing but publicity. Granted, many PR people only do publicity work, and many non-PR people only see the publicity side of PR work, but that’s certainly not all there is to it. Ask most PR professionals and they’ll surely agree with me. The ones who disagree are uneducated buffoons. What? Who wrote that? These prankish fingers.