The primary advantage of a PR campaign and the related media relations is that the message reaches the target market. The media are beneficiaries of the campaign, so will be willing partners. This allows the message to be spread. Public relations is also highly effective in changing perceptions and the nature of the dialogue. If the campaign goes well, companies will see doing a European product launch in Rome as the norm, and Italian companies in particular will see the benefit of launching in Rome. Another advantage of a public relations campaign is that it is a relatively low cost means of disseminating the message. With the media doing the bulk of the work, supported mainly by online marketing and perhaps an advertisement campaign, the message can be spread globally at a relatively low cost compared with paying for either staff members or potential customers to travel to Rome.
One disadvantage is that it can be hard to measure the effectiveness of PR campaign. All three major measurement activities will need to be conducted in concert with one another in order to have a sense of whether or not the campaign has been successful. In addition to the measurement problem, using other actors (such as the media) to disseminate the message increases the risk that the message will reach the intended audience in diluted or altered form. If that occurs, the effectiveness of the message is likely to be reduced, since consistency and simplicity are two of the main hallmarks of an effect campaign.
Conclusions
Rome is pursuing a public relations/media relations campaign to increase the number of major product launches in the city. This strategy takes advantage of Rome's strength as a media center and the city's high level of recognition globally. The local media will benefit from an increase in events as well, so they make natural partners in the public relations campaign. The PR campaign will capitalize on Rome's name, but will reposition the city's brand to one as a good place to conduct product launches. The campaign will be focused on local and international media, in order to spread the message to the target market.
These companies are located all over the world, and in Italy they are concentrated in the north as Rome has little in the way of industrial infrastructure. However, Rome is the country's main media center. The effectiveness of the campaign will be measured using a number of different techniques, in order to gauge both the spread of the message and the message's impact on members of the target audience. Overall, the objective of this strategy is to increase the number of high-profile product launches that take place in Rome. This in turn should improve Rome's reputation and increase tourist traffic, so there are two major positive end-games for the CVB in engaging in a public relations campaign to increase the number of product launches held in the city.
