index index index index The Fall of Advertising and The Rise of PR is a well-argued case on the role of PR versus the role of advertising in brand marketing. The thesis is that PR is needed to launch a brand and establish its identity; advertising is for maintaining an existing brand's position. The reason is that advertising has no credibility, so it can only remind people of what they already believe.

Huge sums of money are spent on advertising campaigns with a poor track record of return on investment. The authors cite multiple examples in which award-winning advertising campaigns led to declining sales and market share. And therein lies their point. Advertising agencies are more focused on winning awards for their creativity, rather than helping their clients sell product. The ads lose function and become art.

Another theme repeated in this book is the authors' disdain for brand extension. This rings familiar from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, a book Al Ries coauthored with Jack Trout. Line extension dilutes the meaning of the original brand. A new brand is a PR opportunity.

I don't agree with everything in the book. I think Pets.com failed because it was a dumb business model, not simply because the brand was launched with advertising rather than PR. Also, the authors claim that IBM was unsuccessful in the PC business because they didn't create a new brand name for it. I think there were many other factors. Nevertheless, I found the book engaging and insightful.
In the surmountable aspect of Public Relation, no other device is poorly used, yet has the potential for greatness than Advertising. Advertising is, in all points of fairness, an extenstion of Public Relation... a broad yet clear message of what the company is, what the company sells, and what the company can offer you.

For these schmucks to ever think that advertising is not an extension of PR, or to think that it is not useful and "dead", shows how much they actually know about the business of Marketing. Advertising is a model vehicle for brand recognition, brand strength, and brand longetivity.

Any "advice" in this book is ultimately a reflection of their own personal greed... of course they want you to think advertising is dead and that PR is king.. because they are in the PR business.

Do not buy this book... it will be a waste of your valuable time, and it will ultimately doom you to failure.Al and Laura Ries, iconoclasts of the advertising industry, really have only one point here -- advertising is inherently not credible because it emanates from the source of the product or service, while "PR," their term for placements in the media, is inherently credible because it comes from a disinterested third party. As a public relations practitioner, I think their point is a generally valid one, and I find it truly astonishing that businesses spent 58 times as much on advertising than on PR in a recent year. It's also interesting to note that many successful brands (Starbucks is the best example) were built by editorial buzz, not by advertising.

This book is, however, incredibly repetitious and about a third of it could have been axed without leaving out any important points. Also, the authors show little economic sophistication. As other reviewers have pointed out, it's very unlikely that the dot-com collapse a few years ago can be traced to the fact that the dot-com companies used advertising rather than PR. A company without a viable product or service and without a valid business plan would not have made it regardless of the marketing strategy.

The authors say that as time goes by, prices for products and services "usually decline" -- and give computers, telephone service, digital cameras, and other electronics as their examples. These declines occurred for specific reasons (tremendous technological advances, the injection of new competition), and hardly prove any such rule of long-term price declines. What about college education, health care, coffee at Starbucks? These may also be special cases, but there's no general rule of increase or decline. The authors also say that "prices (adjusted for inflation) tend to fall." Since inflation is, precisely, the change in the prevailing level of prices, this statement is meaningless.

Still, the authors' overarching insight into the value of the media is worth a great deal. I have been able to apply it directly to my work, and that's more than I can say for some business books.The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR sets out to prove that advertising doesn't make a brand, publicity does. Though I enjoyed reading the stories (at least 200 brands and companies are mentioned) and found some of the ideas insightful, the lack of concrete ideas for using PR effectively and the absence of cited sources left me wanting more. I also felt that some of the generalizations about advertising were misleading, and the arguments sometimes lacked consistency and depth.

For example, on page 39 the Energizer bunny campaign is cited as an advertising failure because it didn't pass the "sales test" and currently has 29% of the US market behind Duracell's 39% market share. So is Duracell's 39% market share a result of good publicity? How did Duracell's "Copper Top" advertising campaign impact their sales? You won't find the answers here.

Additionally, if the "sales test" and large market share are indicators of successful brand building, I'm not sure how they can claim on page 99 that the Linux OS is "one of the best examples of how publicity can build a brand." Sure, Linux has good exposure in the media, but how big is the market share?

If you are interested in learning how to use PR as part of a brand-building strategy, I suggest looking elsewhere. If you enjoy books by Al Reis and you want to read about some interesting stories about brands, you won't be disappointed!The Ries's really knock ad agencies and advertising in general to make their point... one also gets a sense that they aren't happy that some clients did not listen to them.

Definitely a worthwhile read for any one interested in marketing!

Bestselling authors and world-renowned marketing strategists Al and Laura Ries usher in the new era of public relations.

Today's major brands are born with publicity, not advertising. A closer look at the history of the most successful modern brands shows this to be true. In fact, an astonishing number of brands, including Palm, Starbucks, the Body Shop, Wal-Mart, Red Bull and Zara have been built with virtually no advertising.

Using in-depth case histories of successful PR campaigns coupled with those of unsuccessful advertising campaigns, The Fall of Advertising provides valuable ideas for marketers -- all the while demonstrating why

Bold and accessible, The Fall of Advertising is bound to turn the world of marketing upside down.

In The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, longtime marketing strategist Al Ries and his daughter/business partner Laura Ries offer solid arguments championing the latter over the former for modern-day brand building. Such a stance is hardly new for these two, who have jointly, individually, and with others written eight previous books on related topics since Al penned The Positioning Era Cometh for Advertising Age some three decades ago. What's fresh this time is the dissection of contemporary corporate hits--like Starbucks, Botox, eBay, and even Harry Potter--that have eschewed traditional advertising and nevertheless soared to the top through the savvy use of public relations. The authors spend the first part of the book discussing how advertising lost credibility among consumers as it became more of a creative art than a sales tool, and the second part showing how PR subsequently supplanted it in effectiveness. Using the above examples and others, they explain how such practices can work in various situations (building a new brand, rebuilding an old one, dealing with line extensions, etc.), as well as ways advertising can still be usefully employed (primarily to maintain a brand and "keep it on course"). The result is both provocative and practical. --Howard Rothman suria review reviews analysis analyze