Good Advertising, Bad PR?

Marketers, wake up! Yes, your job is to drive sales, but you should be doing that through responsible communication with your target market! Remember that old adage "the customer comes first"? Companies that put that into practice in a real way come out ahead, and one way in which to do that is to ensure that your advertising is not thwarting your public relations efforts.

Let's take last week as an example. It is the day on which all of America is holding its breath, waiting for Congress to pass legislation that will bail out the failing mortgage and investment banking industries to the tune of $700 billion. Oh, and by the way, what is being blamed for this national crisis? Corporate greed, especially lenders going after people who couldn't really afford the home loans they were applying for. The "get 'em in cheap and they can worry about the eventual rate hike later" mentality.

You cannot imagine my shock, upon opening my computer browser window, at what ad appeared across from the economic crisis news story on Yahoo!

My first thought was, "Does the greed ever stop??" This ad may have been an effective way to drive applications for home loans, but the effect from a PR perspective was dismal. It had a completely negative effect on my opinion of this firm, as it seemed to illustrate exactly what had gone wrong with our economy.

In contrast, I opened the Houston Chronicle the next morning to see an ad by First Community Credit Union that was positive from both an advertising and PR perspective. It spoke directly to the now fearful public "YES, your funds are insured!" and it also asked for business "YES, we are lending!" The body copy went a step further to communicate key messages such as the credit union's core values and the fact it has been in business for over 50 years. It also addressed the audience's specific needs by mentioning it had hurricane relief loans available.

Kudos to First Community. Their ad shows they care about their company but they also care about their customers. Good advertising. Good PR. No wonder they've been around for so long.