Advertising and Publicity in PR Campaigns Introduction In today's competitive marketplace, organizations rely on their public relations departments to manage their overall public image and create buzz. The overall public image of any organization can have a major impact on whether or not people will purchase their product, invest in their stock, or want to be associated with the company itself as an employee or supplier. The main purpose of a public relations campaign is to promote the organization to its key audiences and thereby develop and manage a positive image between the organization and its key audiences. In most cases, organizations will use a public relations campaign to generate publicity for the organization. In some cases, they will use advertising in the campaign to also generate publicity for a product launch. The purpose of this article is to discuss how LML Technologies used both advertising and publicity to promote the organization's name change and product branding. I will also discuss the value of unpaid advertising and the relationship between advertising and publicity in public relations campaigns. LML Technologies uses advertising and publicity to drive new changes Before January 2002, LML Technologies, the company I work for, was called Lease Marketing LTD. The company developed and marketed a leasing software application called Lease Link and was known in the industry as “Lease Link.” During 2001, Lease Link acquired two different software companies. One developed a business development application and the other developed a custom financial application. The reason for the acquisitions was to acquire additional software applications that complemented each other so that the company could bundle them into a suite environment to sell more systems. After the products were integrated into one suite, senior management determined that the company could no longer be called Lease Marketing LTD or Lease Link because the applications were now more than just leasing software and customers would be confused. Although the name Lease Marketing LTD and the Lease Link application are well known in the industry, we needed to rename the company and design a new “brand” name for the newly integrated suite of applications. This was necessary to re-establish the company in the industry as more than just a “leasing software” provider. To do this, senior management hired an advertising and public relations firm to design not only a public relations campaign, but also an advertising campaign..