Value-Added Public Relations: The Secret Weapon of Integrated Marketing

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Marketers who inform their customers gain credibility for all of their communications messages. That's why public relations is the secret weapon of integrated marketing communications. Today's sophisticated and skeptical consumers know when they are being informed and when they are being "sold to." PR closes the marketing credibility gap because it is the one marketing communications tool devoted to providing information, not salesmanship. It makes every other marketing effort more effective. Value-Added Public Relations is a groundbreaking book because it examines the many ways that public relations adds value to integrated marketing. In two sections Thomas L. Harris, a leader in marketing public relations, analyzes the relationship between product brand building and corporate brand building. Using dozens of case histories, Harris shows how some of the nation's most successful marketers have used public relations techniques to give added power and persuasion to all of their messages. Part I includes twenty chapters devoted to the ways in which public relations adds value to IMC programs, followed by a list of "Lessons Learned." Part II provides a comprehensive guide to writing an integrated marketing communications plan. Chapters detail a five-step plan for writing a situation analysis, setting objectives, developing a strategy, devising tactics, and measuring results. Detailed descriptions of more than fifty tactics involving all media--from mass media to newer technologies that enable marketers to communicate directly with consumers--are featured. Most important, the book shows that the results and value of marketing public relations are measurable and critical to the success of integrated marketing programs.