"What is more likely to make you spend your money at a certain restaurant a good ad or a good review? Eric Yaverbaum, President of Jericho Communications.
No doubt PR can be more powerful than any commercial ad even in a peak time. At the same time PR can ensure that your message has been delivered to your target audience without increasing advertising budget. Also publicity promotes client products, services and plans but in the guise of editorial, feature or news materials which gives more credibility and therefore not skeptical. In fact, most of what we see in the media is an action of public relations programs. For both PR firms/managers and the media it is a sort of strategic partnership. The publicists make some events for their clients a newsworthy and provide such news to journalists as ideas and information which are very valuable to the later. For this reason it is win-win partnership once there is a profound understanding to successful public relations. This requires choosing different set of activities to produce unique mix of value and simple fit among activities and consistency between each activity and the overall strategy to ensure compatible themes, tones and quality across all communication media to prevent unnecessary duplication of work across functions of the client. This strategic fit is fundamental to the sustainability of the competitive advantage and to the progress of an organizations plan.
In Saudi Arabia the media is cooperative with PR firms more than any time before. Lately the economic growth has been reflected positively on the advertising spending dramatically. This has made most of advertisers eligible for extra editorial coverage as a promotion. On the other hand, press in Saudi Arabia is heading the new school of the successful story rather than taking the role of the watchdog.
As mentioned above, PR is legitimate and powerful news as long as it alerts the media with newsworthy events and strategically planned. However, from my experience in the PR industry in Saudi Arabia, clients are mostly interested in quantity and number of published items. The need for such number of press items increases during crises and whenever the client has damage needs to be repaired. During the process of landing a contract with most of the clients either in private or public sector, all worries are funneled down to one conclusion "Can you publish in all newspapers whenever it is needed". The strategy mentioned above regarding the strategic fit among activities and the overall strategy is not much of an interest with most of the clients. I have been always trying to convince PR seekers to take it serious and to make sure that if their activities are not consistent and not coordinated with all relevant parties, publicity will play the role of damage reparation and no more. To avoid this and to deliver a message that speaks the successful stories and plans of the clients, they need a maximum transparency and coordination with the PR firm or department. Few organizations pay attention to consistency and quality, the rest are worried about quantity of press items or media publicity in general whenever the client needs without any earlier coordination. In another words, PR is part of the contingency plans they have for any prospective failures or public gaffes. In Saudi Arabia PR firms needs to know what is the client objective. If it is about quantity, to win the contract the main focus should be on how strong you are with the media with some guarantees that you can publish any time and under any circumstances, otherwise, the contract is not yours.
