The thin line between PR and Advertising

As I’m sure most of you will have seen by now, television channel TNT unleashed an action-packed video that spread like wildfire across the web recently.  To launch the channel in Belgium, they lured in unsuspecting members of the public by planting a large red button and a sign saying ‘push to add drama’ in the middle of a city centre. They filmed the following actions (and reactions): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=316AzLYfAzw Now I don’t want to rake over old coals but, at least in our office, this video has sparked debate and has highlighted the ever-diminishing line between advertising and PR. What TNT has done here is at the core just a great PR stunt, of that I have no doubt. However, after being filmed and edited into a neat and highly entertaining package, shared across the globe and racking up millions of views, couldn’t this actually be considered a viral ad? This video represents the new media species, the tricky grey area between PR and advertising that came forth with the digital age. Is technology at fault for blurring the boundaries between these two professions? It certainly allows for greater possibilities in the world of public relations and, in the past, the difference between advertising and PR was clearer Typically, when it comes to advertising, you have control over your message – where it goes, what it says, for how long and in what size. On the other hand, in public relations you lose this control. The media will (or maybe it won’t) present your message as it chooses to. For all intents and purposes this remains to be true, but technical advances enforce the need for multi-media, multi-faceted content and branding. What goes for ads here is the same for PR. When you put such ads or PR examples on the internet there’s no way of telling where they’ll crop up or for how long. Either could be tweeted and retweeted for weeks or they could be forgotten shortly after you upload. If you come across an advert in a magazine, it’s quite clear to anyone scanning the page that it is just that; an advert. PR is a more subtle art; getting clients and brands mentioned in the copy (which is what readers are after in the first place). There’s a difference in consumer perception. It’s ‘buy us’ vs (seemingly) ‘non-biased’. Again, this changes when you introduce such practices to YouTube for example. As with the video mentioned previously, how can we tell if it was filmed purely with the intention to get it pinging around cyber-space as a viral ad? Does the fact that the video got news coverage mean it was just a great PR stunt that was professionally caught on video and uploaded to YouTube? If the consumer can’t tell the difference, and PR people and advertisers still aren’t sure themselves, is this a problem? Are we doing each other’s job? We all know that a target audience exists for a reason; we wouldn’t want to be aiming our efforts in the wrong direction. There’d be no point trying to get an article about a teen clothing line in a motoring magazine, say. But that said, with everyone having their individual quirks and interests, maybe there’s a car enthusiast out there with a penchant for fashion. This is where the internet breaks down such barriers. There’s so much more scope now, it’s almost as if ‘the internet’ is a demographic itself. Videos like this are always getting passed around by a variety of consumers of all shapes, sizes and category. And it doesn’t seem to matter who the content was created by or for what purpose.