مقایسه تبلیغات و سرمقاله ها : یک مطالعه تجربی در تلویزیون و چاپ

Publicity represents one of the most visible elements of public relations and as such draws a lot of attention from both within and outside the profession. Public relations practitioners seem to rely on the concept that news in the media has a superior value to advertising, if both messages are similar in content. This study aimed to establish the relationship between advertising and news editorials in terms of communication effects. Since public relations specialists claim that editorials are more credible and have greater impact than advertising it is clear how the results of this study could have potentially important implications for both advertising and public relations professionals.

Publicity and media relations are so important for public relations that even many educated observers equate them (e.g. van Riel, 1992). US textbooks (e.g. Cutlip, Center, & Broom, 2004; Grunig & Hunt, 1984) describe the public relations profession as having evolved out of publicity work at the beginning of the previous century, and a recent bestselling book declared that public relations rose to prominence at the expense of advertising (Ries & Ries, 2004) thus putting the two on equal conceptual footing. Comparisons of publicity (often simply referred to as ‘public relations’) to advertising as a substitute public communication technique (Weiner, 2006) are rooted in marketing, where both advertising and public relations are seen as components of ‘promotion’ in the marketing mix (Belch & Belch, 2004). Public relations practitioners seem to rely on the concept that news in the media has a superior value to advertising, if both messages are similar in content (Michaelson & Stacks, 2007; Hallahan, 1999). These claims however do not have sufficient empirical support. Hunt and Grunig (in Hallahan, 1999: 332) state that: ‘We know of little research evidence that people actually believe journalists have endorsed a product when they run a news story or that editorial copy has greater credibility than advertising copy’. An examination of the relevant literature points towards certain methodological, experimental and theoretical issues (Michaelson & Stacks, 2007: 1–3), which include the fact that this kind of research was mostly conducted on college students, using a quasi-experimental design and without a firm theoretical rationale supporting the research. This study aimed to establish the relationship between advertising and news editorials in terms of communication effects, while trying to avoid some of the most common mistakes mentioned above. Since some public relations specialists claim that editorials are more credible and have greater impact than advertising (Jo, 2004: 504) it is clear how the results of this study could have potentially important implications for both advertising and public relations professionals.

This study was oriented towards further exploring and analyzing the implications of the theory that editorial content offers greater credibility than advertising content and thus offers various advantages in communicating different messages. Even though many of the studies presented in the literature reviewed did not strongly support these claims, this study tried to research the problem from a slightly different perspective. The content used in the message was not (as in most previous studies) concerned with brand or product information, but instead focused on the societal issue of former drug addicts and the difficulty of their reintegration into society. The study also included two types of media (print and television) in order to explore the potential effect that media might have on the perception of advertising and editorial content. Finally, the study included a pre-test/post-test design with three types of dependent variables in order to explore not only the question of credibility, but also how it affects attitudes and behavioral intent. The results of the study once again imply that content type (advertising content vs. editorial content) does not impact subjects’ attitudes and is in line with previous research (Hallahan, 1999 and Jo, 2004). All six hypotheses were rejected since no effect of the content class was proven in any of the tested variables. The results disprove the prevalent view of the professional communication community regarding the greater effectiveness of editorial vs. advertising material. This is not a completely unexpected result, as several studies observed in the literature review section came to the same conclusion. What is more interesting is the significantly greater effectiveness of TV vs. print media in the realm of credibility and the lack of significant differences in other variables, except in the analysis of the sixth hypothesis where print advertisement proved to be more convincing than the print editorial—which may be a result of factual differences in the quality of both materials.