PR vs. Marketing: What’s the Difference?

If you’re launching any kind of artistic project, be it a book, an art gallery exhibition, or an album or EP, you’ll hear a lot of jargon thrown around about PR, marketing, social media, online presence, and so on and so on. It might sound a little overwhelming. Where do you start? What’s the most important peice of the puzzle? How does it all work together?

While I can’t cover everything in one article (unless I made this 200 pages long, which nobody wants), I am going to cover one of the key distinctions: PR vs Marketing.

Here it is in a nutshell: Marketing is paid media. PR is earned media.

You might be asking, “Okay, sure, Carly, but what does that actually mean?”

Let’s walk through it together.

With marketing and advertising (paid media), you’re generally paying a site or vendor (like Facebook, Amazon, or magazines with print ads) to advertise your project.

You might put together a digital ad and pay a little bit of money for every person who sees it, or you could pay a higher set price for a print ad. Either way, you’re paying a certain amount of money for an algorithm, a radio show, or a magazine to put your project in front of people.

There are some advantages to promoting your project this way: if you pay for a slot on an advertising platform or even on a radio show, you’re guaranteed to get that slot. You’ve already laid the money down. Your ad is going to run no matter what. You also have some control over how the ad is set up and what it says or looks like.

But let’s be honest, there are limits to what advertising can do. You probably know this: every once in a while, you’ll see an ad that hits you at just the right time and in just the right way, and you go buy the thing. Maybe you really need anti-cavity toothpaste, and Instagram feeds you an ad with a 20% off coupon for a brand you’ve wanted to try. You’ll probably get the toothpaste.

Outside of that specific scenario, though, how many ads do you just scroll past on a daily basis? I don’t know about you, but I mute the TV when the commercials come on. I skip the TikTok ads as fast as humanly possible. Yes, I’m seeing them, but am I really paying attention?

We live in an attention economy. Unless you’re actually getting and holding your potential customer’s attention, it’s likely they won’t actually buy your book, see your exhibit, or stream your song. That’s where PR (earned media) comes in.

Instead of paying for an ad, you’ll contract with a publicist who has relationships with podcasters, radio hosts, magazine editors, and journalists who they think would get excited about your project. The publicist pitches your project to media outlets they know and trust, telling them how great your work is and why they should pay attention. Media outlets need good content, so they’ll invite the artists onto their show or set up an interview for their newspaper based on the merit of the project, not because the artist paid them to do it.

Instead of a faceless ad, you have a real person: whether they’re a writer, speaker, influencer, or podcast host, with their own following and credibility, endorsing your project and giving you the opportunity to talk about your work. That’s why it’s called earned media. The journalist wants to talk to you because your project is so amazing, not because you gave them money to run an ad.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to promoting your project. For some people, advertising is the right call. For some, it’s PR. Most of the time, it’s a carefully balanced combination of both. If you’re wondering if a PR campaign is the right next step for you, book a call with me and let’s get the conversation started.

That’s all for now!

Thanks for reading.

Carly