Today's public relations (PR) campaigns courses give students the opportunity to research, analyze, plan, and, in many cases, execute a campaign for a real client. Even so, today's campaigns courses may leave students with a weak understanding of how PR can best partner with other tools in the communication mix, namely advertising. Educators may support integrating the two disciplines within an integrated marketing communication fashion (IMC), but they are still guarded as to how far they are willing to go. Advertising and PR each attempt to create awareness, change attitudes, and influence behavior. Accordingly, consumers obtain product information from a variety of sources suggesting that individuals are in fact more likely to purchase a product when advertising and PR are linked. PR's greatest strengths are its ability to manage communications and create relationships, to inform and influence attitude and behavior, and to build greater understanding and trust--all through effective communication. Through the use of PR tools--article placements, websites, and collateral materials like brochures, newsletters, and press conferences--audiences can gain a greater understanding of a product, service, or cause. As such, the tools of PR, and the communication channels they utilize, allow for the delivery of messages of greater depth and across more of the marketing media. Advertising can employ message creativity to attract attention and may actually be received by consumers as more interesting, more informative, and thus more persuasive than PR. Unlike PR, advertising can control key messages and circumnavigate media "gatekeepers" primarily because it is paid. This article describes an exercise that can help students learn when to use PR and advertising together, and when to use them separately. A list of references and suggested readings is included.