PR, Advertising and Coffee

I've just come off a phone call with an electrical contractor who told me had had just spent £800 on advertising which had produced absolutely nothing at all for him in the way of work. As a PR person I'm naturally a believer in PR over advertising, mainly because it tends to take repeated exposure to adverts before they make a difference - unless there is something really new.

I'm always banging on about how your PR needs to have a newsworthy hook, but I would say that the same applies to advertising.

This was brought home to me by a survey I recently took part in. It asked me which coffee brands I had noticed advertising on TV and on buses in the last month. There was only one - kenco - that i could think of, and I had remembered that only because they are bringing out new foil packs of coffee. See - it's new and newsworthy so it caught my eye.

Whether you are advertising, marketing or publicising via a PR campaign, always think - what's new and newsworthy here?