👉🏼 If you’ve ever said “We need to do some marketing” when what you really meant was “Why isn’t anyone talking about us?”—this one’s for you.
I see it constantly in festival circles: folks use “PR” and “marketing” like interchangeable parts in a booth design.
⚠️Spoiler alert: they’re not the same, and getting them confused can cost you big.
Let’s break it down, festival-style.
🫱🏻🫲🏼 PR … Public Relations … is all about relationships. 👠 Marketing is how you look from across the room.
Marketing
It can be boiled down to how good your posters look, how clear your font is, and whether your colors are consistent across your branding.
👉🏼 Marketing teams direct photographers to capture imagery that makes their graphic design more eye-catching—or that makes it easier to promote specific acts or artists within your venue. (They might run a photography contest to generate imagery from the eyes of guests).
Marketing might also be related to your social media presentation.
Public Relations
But public relations is about how you interact with people within your social media, regardless of how your post looked or how often you posted it.
👉🏼 This is why the PR team is usually in charge of sponsorship arrangements.
Sponsorships are about getting more people to say good things about your venue. And yes, many sponsorships are directly related to Marketing—because they are in-kind arrangements or you’re trading for a certain number of impressions on that sponsor’s social media, soda displays in grocery stores, magazines, or whatever. But it’s still a relationship with that sponsor—and so it’s part of the PR team’s job.
Understanding the difference is step one.
Next up?
🧠 Let’s talk tactics—because even the best understanding won’t help if you’re not putting it into action.
➡️ In Part 2, I’ll cover the boots-on-the-ground PR strategies that still move the needle in 2025—especially if you’re running a regional or seasonal event.
Think: service clubs, poster crews, tourism boards, and why exit surveys are your new best friend.
