Publicity is the word that is used in the context of marketing and companies all over the world want to have positive publicity for their companies in the eyes of the world. Publicity in simple words refers to that form of marketing where the company has no role in marketing as it is done by the third party not related to the company and hence it can also be called natural or organic marketing as it is not created by the company but it is created by the outside world. In order to have a better understanding about publicity, one should look at some of the important characteristics of publicity –
Characteristics of Publicity
Free of Cost
The first and foremost characteristic of publicity is that it is free in the sense that companies do not have to pay anything for doing publicity which is the case with other forms of marketing like advertising, sales promotion, branding, and so on. In simple words the adage that there are is no free lunch in economics does not apply to publicity as publicity is free marketing done by third parties and not the company.
Trust Factor
In case of publicity since a third party is doing marketing for the company, the trust factor is high as far as consumers are concerned when one compares it with advertising or other forms of marketing because in case of advertising it is the company itself that is promoting their product while in case of publicity other people and not the company itself which is promoting the product. In other words in the case of a student when you are doing well in your class and you tell your parents about it then chances are they will not believe you 100 percent but when your class teachers say good things about you to your parents then they will believe them this is nothing but a case of publicity.
Lack of Control
In the case of publicity, the company does not have any control over the nature, place, and way of publicity as opposed to advertising where the company has complete control over. In simple words advertising is more like a manually driven vehicle where you have complete control of the vehicle while publicity is like a self-driving vehicle that runs automatically without the help of humans.
Non-Recurring
Publicity is non-recurring in the sense that it does not get repeated rather it happens rarely as publicity is not under the control of the company while in the case of advertising the company runs an advertising campaign regularly as it under the control of the company and the company can run an advertising campaign for an indefinite period of time if it has the required budget for an advertising campaign.
Positive and Negative
Publicity can be positive as well as negative as there is no vested interest in publicity and hence the goal of the company should be to ensure that they do not get negative publicity as negative publicity can damage the reputation and hard work done by the company overnight.
Unplanned
Publicity cannot be planned rather it happens unlike advertising and other marketing methods where there is a lot of planning involved. In simple words publicity is like a lightning just lightning strikes suddenly in the same way publicity of a company can happen anytime and instantly.
As one can see from the above that publicity has many unique characteristics and that is the reason why companies despite having so many marketing tools at their disposal love to have the publicity of a company’s products due to its unique features and advantages.