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Publicity

In marketing, publicity is the public visibility or awareness for any product, service, person or organization. It may also refer to the movement of information from its source to the general public, often (but not always) via the media. The subjects of publicity include people of public recognition, goods and services, organizations, and works of art or entertainment.

A publicist is someone that carries out publicity, while public relations (PR) is the strategic management function that helps an organization establish and maintain communication with the public. This can be done internally, without the use of popular media. From a marketing perspective, publicity is one component of promotion and marketing. The other elements of the promotional mix are advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing and personal selling.

Organizations will sometimes organize events designed to attract media coverage, and subsequently, provide positive publicity; these events are known as publicity stunts.

Publicity originates from the French word publicité 'advertisement'. Publicity as a practice originates in the core of Paris, where shopping, tourism and the entertainment industry met commercialised print media and a burgeoning publishing industry. Among the urban society, scenes of consumption and new consumer identities were circulated through advertisement. La Maison Aubert shaped the emerging discipline of publicity. In early 19th century Paris, the advertisements and publicity campaigns for consumer items, such as cashmere shawls, and retailers such as perfumeries soon attracted regulation on flyposting.

19th century US companies included not only pro-sales messages in their publicity, but also explanations, demonstrations and exaggerations. Patent medicine and cosmetics manufacturers in the US frequently described or even showed consumers before and after the usage of the product. The Blair Manufacturing Company was among the US companies that advertised its products by comparing old-fashioned consumers who did not use the advertised product with the progressive customers who did. Before-after-changes became common in advertisement from 1910 onwards. In the early 20th century, American Albert Lasker, developed the used of advertising for appealing to consumers' psychology.

The contemporary economist Thorstein Veblen criticised the relative benefit of publicity. He argued that vendibility is not utility, and that publicity had "no traceable relation to any benefit which the community may derive." Veblen estimated how much the publicity campaigns of companies added to the price consumers were paying. He argued that the publicity overhead for over-the-counter pharmaceuticals and cosmetics was more than half the retail price.

Publicity is often referred to as the result of public relations, in terms of providing favourable information to media and any third party outlets; these may including bloggers, mainstream media, as well as new media forms such as podcasts. This is done to provide a message to consumers without having to pay for direct time or space. This in return creates awareness and achieves greater credibility. After the message has been distributed, the publicist in charge of the information will lose control of how the message is used and interpreted, in contrast to the way it works in advertising. According to Grunig, public relations is often reduced to publicity. He also states how publicity is a form of activity in which should be associated with the sales promotion effort of a company, in order to help aid advertising and personal salesmanship as well. Kent also stated that the doing of publicity can help attract attention whilst also supplying information regarding a specific organization or individual client and any event, activity or attribute associated with them.

The use of publicity is also known to be an important strategic element and promotional tool due to its effect of intentional exposure on a consumer. This helps publicity gain an advantage over other forms of marketing, such as advertising, often in order to boost credibility. Favourable publicity is also created through reputation management, in which organizations try strive to control via the web. Furthermore, despite the fact that publicity, both good or bad, can be beneficial for an organization, company or individual, much of it is paid for despite claims that publicity is often free.

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