Promotion

Promotion, a counterpart of publicity, is used by an organization to gain awareness, increase awareness, and foster positive thoughts and opinions about an organization, product, service, or issue. Whereas publicity is often aimed at achieving short-term awareness, promotion typically builds and changes audiences' and markets' views over time. Newson, Turk, and Kruckeberg defined promotion as going “beyond press agentry into opinion making. Promotion tries to garner support and endorsement for a person, product, institution or idea” (2004, p. 4).

Publicity and promotion are among the most important functions of public relations. Each employs typical and specialized strategies and tactics. Publicity tends to be limited to media relations, whereas promotion “involves special activities or events designed to create and stimulate interest in a person, product, organization or cause” (Newsom, Turk, & Kruckeberg, 2004, p. 400). In this sense, publicity is probably often a subset of promotion.

Two masters of promotion are featured in this encyclopedia: P. T. Barnum and Samuel Insull. Both realized that they needed continuous strategic communication to build and advance a market and to develop a customer base for their businesses. Barnum continually used media messages and events to keep public attention focused on his circus and his display of unusual items, animals, and people. Thus, he might publicize the arrival of a huge elephant and feature its name: Jumbo. People were attracted to novelty, as they are today, but today people might tune in to television to see an elephant. In Barnum's day, they had to travel to see the elephant, and it had to be taken to them. As the elephant traveled across the country, Barnum worked to get media comments and reports, which he could use in the next town to attract crowds to his show. Ever the showman and promoter, Barnum even took advantage of Jumbo's death. When Jumbo was struck by a train and killed, Barnum used that tragedy as a photo opportunity. Images can be seen on the Web today of people standing around and sitting on the massive beast, which was eventually stuffed and put on display.

Another master promoter, Sam Insull, knew that the fledgling electricity industry would fail without customers. The more customers, the more likely it would succeed. His efforts then were no different from those used to promote automobile sales by gaining media attention for cross-country races. He promoted the virtues of electricity over gas to illuminate houses. To do this, he featured homes that had electricity and asked neighbors to stroll by them to see how wonderful this innovation was.

Promotion, like publicity, occurs in a competitive environment. Voices compete in a public bazaar against one another for market share, brand equity, and favorable evaluation. Publicity can arise because of what reporters or other critics say about an organization and its personnel, executives, mission/vision, policies, products, and services. This publicity can be positive or negative. Negative publicity needs to be addressed by various strategies. Some change strategies are communication [Page 651]based, and others may require improvements in the organization—in its personnel, plans, policies, products, or services.

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