People are like magazines. Some are intellectual, some are informational, some are ignorant, and some are creative. Magazines are sold based on their content. Just like people are sold or persuaded based on their opinions or values. That is why it takes people of different professions to capture the attention from a variety of audience members. No matter how you get these people to consider the product, the company wants to be seen. This is where the difference in public relations and marketing are relevant.

Public Relations is the profession of planned release of information based on an individual or an organization. Even though the goal is still to persuade a client, it is through trusted and information based tendencies. PR is set in place to notify customers in a truthful setting based on the key factor that it is earned media. When a company is mentioned in a third party organization, such as the news, it is not because they paid to be mentioned but because they gained an importance to be mentioned. For example, an article was posted by UN News due to the recent outbreak of covid-19 and UNICEF’s contribution to helping the people of Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, the Philippines, Syria and South Sudan. UNICEF paid nothing but their efforts to help the less fortunate to get this article published. PR is solely based on the relevant news to attract clients, which is why it is free. The well informed and intellectual people that I mentioned would most likely be the key clients in this PR case.

Marketing and advertising on the other hand are based on persuasion through paid and visual based media. Although advertising is a step in the process of marketing, their goal is the same. They both want to gain publicity of a product and company by data and research to communicate why the audience should show interest in this product. We can use UNICEF as an example of marketing too by looking at these advertising photos. Just by this series of photos there is very little information given about the company. These advertisers use emotion and visuals for a gain of customer support. But by looking at these photos, does the viewer trust this organization? In marketing there is skepticism in the ads exposed to the public because many people see it as a scam. But, there are people that can be considered “suckers” because they are easily persuaded by these ads. The Audience members that are more influenced by a visual or emotion could be the people I mentioned before that are more uneducated or creative.

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The reason for me comparing people to a magazine is to capture the idea of someone being sold on an idea. I find myself uninterested in magazines that are intellectually based, such as Harper’s Magazine but more interested in fashion based magazines such as Vogue. Which is why I would be easily persuaded by an advertisement rather than a PR article. There is a difference in information that is put out because there are people that are easily persuaded and people that need factual evidence to contribute to a company. The difference is so relevant because of the audience or customer. There would be no company without this customer, which is why there is relevance to making your product or company seen.