Without beating about the bush – “according to public relations scholarly conventions, publicity is a small part of public relations”.
Read the full thing here.
Further, as someone else put it “publicity is not considered among the higher forms of practice.”
Bollocks.
What is meant by ‘publicity’? In what sense is it not considered among the higher forms of practice? What practice? By whom?
If we are talking about the PR or corporate communications industries, then I would humbly point out that publicity (of some sort, on some level) is the aim of everything that we do – from writing a news release, through the creation of the annual report, via investor relations, to lobbying of public figures.
‘Stunt’ PR is one way of generating publicity (and by ‘stunt’ PR, I include use of celebrity and also the publicising of celebrities themselves through use of their own celebrity)and I firmly believe that it needs to be subject to the ethics of our trade (amongst which are don’t lie, don’t misrepresent, don’t insult, belittle or demean).
But publicity is not ‘among the forms of practice’. Publicity IS the practice. A lot of the high falutin’, self-important practitioners would do very well to remember that.
You know who you are.
thewordmonger 