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The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR | 
 enlarge | Authors: Al Ries, Laura Ries
Publisher: Collins Business
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $4.10
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Rating:  69 reviews
Sales Rank: 101965
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0060081996
Dewey Decimal Number: 659
EAN: 9780060081997
ASIN: 0060081996
Publication Date: May 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New & Unread Book with Remainder Marked- May Have Slight Handling Wear From Bookstore Shelf- Instock For Immediate Shipping
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Amazon.com Review
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
Product Description
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 - advertising lacks credibility, the crucial ingredient in brand building, and how only PR can supply that credibility;
- the big bang approach advocated by advertising people should be abandoned in favor of a slow build-up by PR;
- advertising should only be used to maintain brands once they have been established through publicity.
Bold and accessible, The Fall of Advertising is bound to turn the world of marketing upside down.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 64 more reviews...
Don't know what everyone's problem is October 31, 2008
JD (Oceanside, CA)
Most of these reviews are acting like this book killed their dog. Settle down people.
It's not about how to do PR. You should be able to tell that from the title. It's about how advertising fails, mainly on the basis of establishing a brand. With so much skepticism in the market today, you can't just throw a bunch of advertising out there. People don't trust it anymore. The best way, but not the easiest, it to get them to talk about it themselves. Then you support those talks with advertising to remind people of what they have already heard (he says that in the book, so quit acting like he thinks PR is the end-all, be-all). Your product needs to support those themes too. None of this flys without a product that stands up to the hype.
If nothing else, this book should just be read as a cautionary tale.
 Excellent review of PR vs. Advertising October 31, 2008
Lara Johnson
I am currently writing my thesis on the role of PR in the communication of luxury brands, and have a whole chapter on how PR has taken over the market that was previously held by advertising and marketing. I have found this book to be extremely helpful, full of real life examples and it is extremely easy to read. It was so good I couldn't put it down, and finished it overnight. For anyone who is not familiar with the area or for experts who have worked in the area for years, this book is an excellent read, very thorough and enlightening.
 The role of PR vs advertising June 2, 2008
Andrew Everett (Santa Monica, CA USA)
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.
 The ultimate resposibility of advertising IS PR January 4, 2007
Daniel Ferguson
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
Makes one point over and over, but it's a good point October 17, 2006
Jonathan Groner (Silver Spring, MD)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
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