HOW TO USE bROADCAST PR TO DISQUALIFY YOUR COMPETITION

If you have read my previous articles, you know that there is a recurrent mantra I constantly repeat This is not because I lack arguments but because I need to do a bit of cleansing in the mind of my readers who have been taught the inconsistent and incomplete association between marketing and advertising. ​

Brands aren’t built with advertising. Brands are built with PR. And marketing isn’t just advertising.

PR builds your credibility in the market and communicates your positioning.
Advertising protects your brand and your positioning from the fierce attacks of your competition.

I could write an entire book about this topic with countless examples, but it would be useless as Al and Laura Ries have already done it in their masterpiece, The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. 

However, I might say that their thesis isn’t quite accurate anymore.

It should be reformulated as follows:

PR builds your credibility in the market and communicates your positioning.
Advertising has become just another form of entertainment.
​It is not guaranteed to help your company sell more. 

This may sound a bit provocative, but think about it.

How many advertising messages do you see on a daily basis?

How many of those messages have a focus on the product?

Most of today’s advertising uses the product as a way to create an entertaining piece of art that doesn’t communicate the differentiating proposition of the product advertised or the reason why that product is the only one you need to solve that urgent, compelling problem that you are facing.

Advertising agencies are now convinced that the success of an advertising video, for example, should be measured by the ability to make your audience emotional.

There is a real issue in this belief: advertising isn’t about selling emotions. Advertising is about selling a product.

Additionally, another misleading belief can be noticed: it is not said that the more advertising you do, the more you sell.

David Ogilvy states it clearly: you need to communicate the right message to the right audience to have them bite the bait.

If your message is irrelevant or incorrect, your advertising can also reduce the likelihood that your potential customers will buy your products or services, thus generating a progressive decline in sales.

The same is true with PR. It is not said that PR will help you sell, if you do it in the wrong way (and when I make public the project I am working on, you will see with your own eyes what kind of mess the PR industry finds itself in right now).

For example, if I am a financial consultant, I do not obtain media coverage to discuss the quality of American tomatoes compared to Tunisian tomatoes.

This might make you laugh, but people really do it.
(This is nonsense, if not totally insane.)
​
The reality is that there is a big difference between those who use the media as a way to gain public relevance, communicate their positioning, and exponentially enhance the credentials of their entrepreneurial endeavour, and those who take the chance of media coverage to simply appeal to their inflated ego.

HOW CAN YOU USE BROADCAST PR TO DISQUALIFY YOUR COMPETITION?

As an entrepreneur, you shouldn’t see getting featured in the media like an opportunity you can exploit to show off, but as a chance to gain public relevance in your field of expertise in order to disqualify your competition.


Media featuring is limited. There is simply not space for everyone.
Media featuring is what everyone would like but few can get.
​
The reason why broadcast media are still the preferred place to use to increase trust and credibility and gain market leadership is because anyone can be on social media, but very few can be in broadcast media.

Broadcast media create a perception of meritocratic hierarchy: if you get an interview on the air, on a TV channel, or in a newspaper or magazine, then what you have to say must be noteworthy, and you must have been invited to discuss the topic because you are an authoritative voice in your field of expertise.

Broadcast media are then built around a structure of hierarchies: there is local TV, regional TV, national TV, the global network; there is local radio, regional radio, national radio, etc.

People might not like hierarchies, but they feel comfortable being led by authorities.

They constantly look for authorities, for people that can show them the way and are in charge.

Broadcast media are like a gala: seats are limited and there is a dress code.

If you do not meet the criteria, you do not get your pass. But if and when you get the pass, you can use the media as an additional distribution channel, one of the very few that increases on an exponential scale the value perception of what you do.

Especially at the very beginning, people buy people when they cannot buy brands.

Your credibility as a spokesperson is going to influence the credibility of your own company and, last but not least, the value perception of your offering.

Media featuring is the way you disqualify your opponents.

The visibility you get, the chance to explain what you do by becoming the spokesperson of your own category, is what many of your competitors would like to have but don’t.

They might overspend you, but you disqualify them with the endorsement of the media.

Your visibility is their obscurity.

By remaining in obscurity, they don’t have a business. They have a hobby.


Fly above the radar!
Brands are built with PR. Strive for PR. ​