The difference between PR and publicity

Most PR firms do publicity, not PR.

Publicity is the act of getting ink. Publicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, and make a commotion. Sometimes publicity is helpful, and good publicity is always good for your ego.

But it's not PR.

PR is the strategic crafting of your story. It's the focused examination of your interactions and tactics and products and pricing that, when combined, determine what and how people talk about you.

Regis McKenna?was great at PR.?Yes, he got Steve Jobs and the Mac on the cover of more than 30 magazines in the year it launched. That was just publicity.?The real insight was crafting the story of the Mac (and yes, the story of Steve Jobs).

If you send out a boring press release, your publicity effort will probably fail, but your PR already has.

A publicity firm will tell you stories of how they got a client ink. A PR firm will talk about?Storytelling?and being remarkable and spreading the word. They might even suggest you don't bother getting ink or issuing press releases.

A regional ad campaign created as a customer apology after the?UK unit of KFC?ran out of chicken made international news. The campaign blended earned, paid, and owned media with spicy humor, self-awareness, and a cleverly crafted apology that stopped just short of being NSFW.

When it found itself in the embarrassing position of having no chicken for customers, KFC took on a humble, yet suitably British-flavored tone in its response. To soothe ruffled feathers, it posted cheeky notes on the doors of shuttered restaurants apologizing for “teething problems” with a new supplier. A web page enabled UK customers to access updates about stores in their areas. Then the UK chain cooked up an extraordinary ad that ran in two daily newspapers. For most brands, the logo is sacrosanct, but KFC scrambled its initials in a shocking?“FCK”?headline that grabbed everyone’s attention and made the whole campaign work. It delivered on all fronts

— as an apology to customers and franchise owners, as a creative expression of frustration, and a show of brand personality. It’s a useful reminder that, through creativity and quick decision-making, it’s possible to turn bad publicity into good PR.?

In my experience, a few people have a publicity problem, but almost everyone has a PR problem. You need to solve that one first. And you probably won't accomplish that if you hire a publicity firm and don't even give them the freedom and access they need to work with you on your story.

It’s important to understand the difference between publicity vs PR so that you don’t talk about one when you actually mean the other. Publicity is the part of PR that focuses on media coverage. PR encompasses an assortment of other responsibilities, from crisis management to charity involvement.