glossary

At BOTTLE PR, we talk to you in plain English. We find that communication doesn’t work well without it! However, we’ve put together our own PR ’jargon buster’ which will, we hope, help guide you through the jargon jungle should you encounter it.

If there’s anything you need to know about PR, or any more jargon you’d like us to translate, please get in touch and we’d be happy to talk to you…in plain English.

ABC – Audit Bureau of Circulation
The Audit Bureau of Circulations independently checks the circulation of the national newspapers.

ACE – Advertising Cost Equivalent>
A comparison between the cost of an advertising space and an equivalent editorial piece. Puts a value against PR.

ACE PR Value
An industry view that the value of PR is 2.5 times more than that of advertising taking into account the high editorial involvement and the story content.

Advertising
A paid-for space in media that intends to promote a company’s product or service within the area that the media targets.

Advertorial
A paid-for article that has the appearance of an editorial. Readers will be able to identify the piece as ‘promotion’ or as ‘advertorial’.

Agency
A company in the business of creating advertisements, packaging and names for products and services, as well as providing marketing and merchandising advice and general business and promotional counsel to its clients. One type of agency is a PR agency.

BARB – Broadcasters Audience Research Board
A service providing information on the audience levels every minute. This information is available for ITV and BBC.

Blog/blogging
A weblog or web page entry. Like an online diary. Written using a simple text editor and posted online usually with a simple mouse ‘click’. By tagging key words can appear in Google search words. (As at September 2007 it was estimated that there were over 108 million blogs)

Blog post
An entry made by someone on their blog. As at September 2007, it was estimated near 200k posts were made a day. These can be read by the estimated 1.2 billion people connected to the internet.

Byline
The name of the author or journalist written under the headline.

Circulation
The number of copies distributed by a publication. Circulation figures are available for all major publications.

Collateral PR
Materials such as a brochure or printed information about a company. Often supports media or packs and therefore obtaining links with the primary source.

Column Inches
A form of measuring PR success by multiplying the length of a piece of editorial by the number of columns.

Competitor Analysis
A comparison of PR success against competitors. Can be measured in various ways.

Composition
The different types of audiences that make up the target audience.

Conversation market
Style of marketing where a direct ‘do this’ message is negatively perceived. Companies no longer ‘own’ the conversation – but they can participate and so influence it.

Core Message
The angle taken in order to target the correct publications. Press releases contain the core message.

Coverage
The amount of exposure given to a company in the media.

CPT – Cost Per Thousand
The cost-efficiency of publications. Calculated by dividing the rate or specific advertisement cost by the circulation or number of readers.

Crisis Management
A crisis can be described as a period of potential or actual damage to the perception and/or reputation of an organisation, individual or concept caused or started by an unexpected event. Forward planning can prevent a crisis or minimise the impact of one that is already happening.

Demographics
Information about the target audience. Such as age, gender, race etc.

DPS – Double Page Spread
Two pages of the same article covering both pages of an open publication. Becomes more eye-catching to the reader.

Duplication
Where a person consumes more than one media; i.e. they may read ‘The Times’ and ‘The Telegraph’.

Editorial
Section of a publication written by a journalist such as an article or feature.

Executive Summary
Listing of key research findings.

Feature
An article of a detailed nature.

Frequency
Since people are exposed to more than one type of media, frequency is the average number of times that your audience could be exposed to your message.

IPR – Institute of Public Relations
The leading public relations industry professional body for the UK and Europe.

IPRA – International Public Relations Association
An organisation based on membership for professionals in up to 95 countries. Members gain valuable networking and professional advice.

Keywords
Specific words or phrases often within a press release. Many professionals use keywords in order to search for specific publications or features.

Mechanical Data
The layout details of a publication including page size, width of the columns and number of columns.

Media Type
Such as broadcast, national papers, consumer magazines and local or regional newsletters.

NLA – Newspaper Licensing Agency
The NLA issues copyright licences to companies who wish to copy articles. Applies to all the national and some regional and foreign newspapers.

OTS - Opportunity To See (OTH - Opportunity To Hear)
The number of times the target audience is likely to see a marketing message.

Overlap
Houses that are able to obtain more than one ITV station due to living on the boundaries of regions.

PR – Public Relations
According to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), public relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.
Public relations not only tells an organisation's story to its publics, it also helps to shape the organisation and the way it works. Through research, feedback communication and evaluation, the practitioner needs to find out the concerns and expectations of a company's publics and explain them to its management.

Press Release (or ‘media release’ or ‘news release’)
A written announcement issued to the news media and other publications that seeks to draw the public attention of a company’s developments.

Podcast
An audio or video file recorded and used to deliver information to remote audiences via the internet. With an estimated 1.2 billion people connected to the internet that makes it the words largest media platform to get your messages to.

Proactive PR/Reactive PR
Editorials that appear as a direct result of the PR. Re-active PR is where the editorial has been placed as a result of the publication's input.

Publics
'Publics' are audiences that are important to the organisation. They include customers, both current and potential; employees and management; investors; media; government; suppliers; opinion-formers.

RAJAR – Radio Joint Audience Research
An independent research body which monitors the performance of all radio stations in the UK, whether BBC or commercial.

Rate Card
The cost published for advertising in any type of media.

Reach
The reach of a PR campaign is the total number of people within your target audience who may see your message. Often referred to as ‘coverage’.

Readership
A general term that refers to the number of people reading a particular publication. Includes both the individual who purchased the publication and others who have read the publication.

ROI – Return on Investment
A measure of budget spent on a campaign, versus the income generated through the activity.

ROP – Run of Paper
It is an instruction to a publisher indicating that no special position is sought for an advertisement, i.e. it can be placed in any convenient part of the advertising space of the publication and is therefore charged at a lower rate.

SCC RATE – Single Column Centimetre Advertising Rate
How advertising rates are calculated. It is generally the width multiplied by the height of the publication column.

Sector Analysis
The measure of an industry sector's media coverage.

SERIES – Regional Newspapers
A number of publications covering a geographical area represented by the same publisher.

Social media
Software tools that allow groups to generate content and engage in peer-to-peer conversations and exchange of content (examples are YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace etc)

Syndicated Articles
The same article published across a series. The copy and layout can sometimes vary within the series.

Tagging
Selecting key words or phrases in a blog to ensure maximum chance of being picked up by a search engine.

Target Audience
This is the group of people you are trying to reach with your message.

Target Publications
Newspapers and magazines with a readership profile best matching a company's target market.

Tonal Bias
Whether an article takes a positive, neutral or negative angle.

Tone of the Media
An analysis tool that accurately reflects the mood of the press. Takes into account the amount of editorial bias.

TV Regions
The transmission areas of each of the ITV companies cover specific UK.

TVR – Television Rating
Percentage of specific demographic viewing a channel or programme, one TVR represents 1% of target audience.

Universe
The total number of people who read, listen to and watch a type of media.

Web 2.0
A mix of technology and business process that facilitates conversational marketing.

Wisdom of the Crowds
Concept that groups of people will give a better overall rating than a single individual, so that reference sites like TripAdvisor are very popular source of rating used by many before purchasing a product or service.

WOM
Word-of-mouth/word-of-mouse marketing where ‘people networks’ promote the message without outside influence or management.