PR: HOW TO MAKE A SPLASH - Getting your ad in the news can be good for the brand. Meg Carter gets PR tips on attracting interest from the public and media.(Editorial)

PR can add real value to an advertising campaign, yet agencies willing to lay the foundations for a clear PR strategy from the outset remain few and far between.

'PR can work really well when an ad campaign is truly interesting, newsworthy and where a PR team has been involved in the campaign development process from the beginning,' Jackie Cooper, the founder of Jackie Cooper PR, says. Her agency's clients include O2 and Wonderbra. In conjunction with Scottish Courage's in-house PR function, Jackie Cooper PR also handled John Smith's campaign which generated approximately pounds 1 million-worth of extra media coverage, according to Fairbrother Media.

Yet Cooper points out: 'When ad agencies have the say over whether something is PR-able or not, PR people's hearts tend to sink. News in the ad business is rarely news outside. An ad must compete not just against other campaigns, but the broader news agenda. A campaign needs to be brave to be truly PR worthy - not necessarily controversial, but certainly something that gets noticed.'

Disinterest and ignorance appear to be the two main reasons why more attention isn't paid by ad agencies to the PR potential of their work.

'I like PR and enjoy doing it on most campaigns. Some people aren't interested or don't bother. It's as simple as that,' Matt Edwards, the new-business director at Lowe, admits.

An example of what can be achieved is Lowe's famous 'blackmail' campaign for Heineken. Four TV spots were created featuring a blackmail theme where viewers were threatened with second-rate celebs singing if they didn't buy the beer.

While the ads aired in just an eight- week burst, they generated hundreds of newspaper articles - including the front page of the Daily Mirror.