Should You Pay for PR Placements?

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  yaryna12/18/07 Report as spam
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  PR doesn't equal media placements

  This is ridiculous. Does the author of this blog truly believe that PR is all about media relations? In this case, this blog is 50 years behind.

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  jongreer12/18/07 Report as spam
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  Hardly...

  Thanks for reading the blog. Check out some other posts and you'll see that it's not just about media relations, or that PR = media placements. There was a WSJ story yesterday about this subject so I thought it was something we ought to talk about.

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  Carthy12/27/07 Report as spam
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  RE: Should You Pay for PR Placements?

  I suppose a correlation could be made between PR pay-for-placement arrangements and lawyers working on contingency fees. (i.e. they collect their fees only if there's a settlement or a win in a lawsuit.) Many complain that this practice, which is common in the U.S. but not so in Canada, has turned the U.S. into a society of litigators, because plaintiffs have no risk and it fosters desperate lawyers who are willing to take on any case in order to squeeze a few bucks from an insurance company. Could the comparison be drawn to PR - with money hungry agencies willing to attempt to place any story no matter how un-newsworthy it is? Pity the poor journalists, if so. And by extension the PR practitioners with legitimate stories to pitch, who can't break through the clutter to get through to journalists.

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  dennis.wengert@...01/04/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Should You Pay for PR Placements?

  It doesn't make sense to pay for placement in a media source that doesn't meet the demographics needed by the business to get new customers. Make sure your media plan is correlated with your overall marketing plan for increasing sales. If you're going to be paying for placement, make sure the placement is targeted toward your desired customer base.

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  InsideEdgePR05/09/08 Report as spam
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  RE: Should You Pay for PR Placements?

  I am a publicist in the Chicago area considering offering pay for placement, though I'm leery that it will breed conflict---disputes over how much a given placement was worth. If anything, I may offer it one time to a prospective client, at a nominal rate, to give them a glimpse at the potential benefit of working with my agency.