PR is an ice-breaker; it's a short cut to reaching your mass audience cost-effectively and it's a powerful tool in the right hands, letting you set the agenda.

We communicate with the outside world all the time whether or not we realise the impact of those touch points. Public relations is about managing those messages. Just as a brand is more than a logo design, so public relations is more than just issuing press releases. It's about getting past the newsdesk and building a rapport quickly with the relevant journalist.

Public relations is actually like Chinese water torture! Don't expect mega coverage for your first press release. It takes time to warm up the journalists and to capture their imagination. The drip, drip, drip effect of regular press release despatches and phone calls to sell the stories will eventually get your company noticed.

It's not free publicity

Some people mistakenly think that public relations is free publicity. The hidden cost is time, spent writing releases and liaising with journalists to interest them in the story. Remember that when you appoint a public relations consultancy, you are not only paying for their time, but you are also plugging into their valuable network of contacts.

It's not spin!

We hate the fact that people now associate public relations with the derogatory word 'Spin', which implies misleading information. Good public relations demands integrity because reputations take years to build but can be destroyed in an instant. If you mislead your customers, you may think you got away with it. However, misinformation comes back to haunt you.

Why Public Relations, not advertising?

Advertising is recognised as a company's own hype about itself, its products and services. A well-written press release is often printed verbatim by a journalist, or maybe they top and tail it with their own copy. However, because it is printed in a newspaper or magazine, Joe Public thinks it has been written by the journalist and that it is truly objective. Figures vary, but the Institute of Public Relations is quoted as saying that editorial is 5 or 7 times more influential than advertising.

Public relations does not replace advertising but you get higher response rates to an advert with editorial alongside it. Forty per cent higher when Virgin Finance was launched in 1998. (source: Marketing Week, March issue)

Is Public Relations cost-effective?

Yes - it can be extremely cost-effective. Public relations is about building relationships with journalists and your publics. Lunch with the right journalist with the right story can result in that all-important call where you are asked to give industry comment on a particular issue.

Or, as has happened with Blue Click PR several times recently, a simple lunch meeting has resulted in clients being offered double page spread articles or regular monthly columns to raise their profile. It cost the client the time with the journalist and perhaps a day or two of our time to tie up copy and pictures. This works out at about a tenth of the cost of the resulting media coverage.

Judge for yourselves whether this is cost-effective.