How investment in PR yields long-term returns

In 2014 Gini Dietrich, founder and CEO of a Chicago-based integrated agency Spin Sucks, made waves in the PR industry by proposing a new PESO (Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned) model or acronym, which became a widely entrenched framework for the PR and marketing industries.

A decade later Dietrich is proposing that the widely adopted PESO model should be updated to a new acronym, OSEP (Owned, Shared, Earned, Paid), or the more puzzling ESOP (Earned, Shared, Owned, Paid), suggesting that using all four channels means the framework has become less focused on traditional PR and more on marketing objectives.

What are the implications of the new OSEP and ESOP models?

Why do these new acronyms end with Paid when it was formerly first in the original acronym, and does it matter? Yes! That’s like building the foundation last.

For the more traditional industry POE, or Paid + Owned = Earned, has found its way into the industry (not endorsed by Gini Dietrich) expressing the sentiment that using paid media to amplify owned content and striving for gaining earned media coverage are the original PR objectives.

Investing in paid media

Afterall, paying for PR coverage is nothing new. The term ‘advertorial’, a blend or portmanteau of advertising and editorial content, is over 80 years old. Designed to look like regular editorial content while being paid for by advertisers, the key distinction between advertorials and traditional advertising lies in transparency; ethical PR practice requires that paid content be clearly labelled as such to maintain trust with the audience. (Source Wikipedia)

Newsrooms – the ultimate paid PR decision

Digital newsrooms offer a perfect example. Once you have paid an annual fee for a newsroom you can move into owned territory with allocated credits which you use for different purposes such as general content, sponsored articles, branding, etc. A PR tool, newsrooms can be used to strategically craft and amplify owned controlled narratives and maintain continuous public engagement.

Newsrooms also offer significant SEO advantages and are seen as more credible by search engines like Google compared to social media. By leveraging paid media PR builds robust owned media support for long-term PR and communication goals.

Owned media also leads to opportunities for earned media. Editorial content obviously plays a critical role in PR by building credibility and attracting media interest. The goal, or "end game", is to achieve earned media, which provides the highest level of credibility and long-term reputation benefits for the brand. This approach distinguishes PR from marketing, emphasising relationship building, trust, and third-party validation over immediate sales outcomes.

Paid PR allows control over brand messaging

Paid media is essential for PR because it amplifies reach, precision, measurability, and control over messaging. It supports the amplification of both earned and owned media, facilitates, and helps build and maintain brand reputation, making it a vital tool and still relevant in the comprehensive PR toolkit.

The PR investment

Like any investment, when it comes to investing in PR, a balanced and widespread approach integrating paid, owned and earned media channels will yield the best results over the medium to long term.