(click to buy at amazon)
Author: Al Ries, Laura Ries
Title: The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR
Read: Spring 2007
Format: Text
Reviewer: bek
Al Ries has a long history with marketing. Along with his daughter, Laura, they opened a PR firm and have written several books. This book is a quick read and the basic assertions are handled with 1-5 pages of text. Many of the assertions are anecdotes and often overlap. They fall into five parts.
- The Fall of Advertising
- The Rise of PR
- A New Role for Advertising
- The Differences Between Advertising and PR
- Postscripts
Essentially, this book is arguing
- Advertising lacks credibility and cannot be used to build a brand
- Because someone else is telling your story, PR should be more credible and can be used to build the brand
- Advertising favors a big-bang approach when launching a brand
- PR favors a slow build up
- Advertising should be used to maintain a brand after it is established
Some sections of the book are more memorable than others.
- Language is the operating system of the mind. No word is ever accepted on its own merit. Every sound carries its own baggage.
- Building a worldwide brand requires two things: patience and fortitude.
- Line extensions are bad. They cannot generate PR because they have nothing new to say. They only reflect mimicry.
- You can't force your way into your prospect's mind. Advertising is perceived as an imposition.
Missing from this book is an analysis of the explosion in experts. The Internet doesn't quite level the playing field, but it has given us many voices and many experts. Generally this is through blogs, but that word does not appear in this book about PR. Maybe the book would be more effective if the Ries weren't telling their own story and instead had use the credible voice of a third party. (This would be the equivalent of eating your own dogfood in software.) There is another credibility gap where the largest PR firm, Edelman, is having a terrible time moving the dial for their customers - like Wal*Mart. Edelman is having a difficult time with the world of blogs too (see Nublog, Edelman, Apple .)
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