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Al and Laura Ries
have written a eulogy for advertising, or, at least, recorded its decline to
second-class status.
The Fall of
Advertising and the Rise of PR (HarperCollins, 320 pages, $37.95) argues
advertising can’t build brands anymore. It can only maintain and reinforce
what consumers already know. And they don’t get that information from
advertising. Public relations, they say, builds brands.
“Botox did
US$300-million in sales last year with no advertising,” Mr. Ries offers as
an example. “This year they launched a US$50-million advertising campaign. I
think that’s perfect. The brand got built by PR, and now’s the time to
switch to advertising. Same thing happened with Viagra, Sony Playstation;
The Body Shop has never advertised.”
Neither has
doughnut chain Krispy Kreme, which relies solely on public relations,
eschewing traditional advertising almost entirely.
The Fall of
Advertising details other examples to back up Mr. Ries’s thesis, which has
been advanced before — notably in his book The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
(1998).
Al Ries has made an
impression on the advertising business before, too, initially with 1980’s
Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.
“It’s not a new
idea, but it’s a newly appreciated idea,” says Nancy Evans, vice-president
at Environics Communications.
“PR has been
undervalued. We have a very cluttered marketplace. The average consumer has
built up a pretty good filtering system. It’s harder to get the message
across through straight advertising. But public relations had been a stealth
technique. I don’t think people have appreciated how well it can work for
branding.”
Ms. Evans says
advertising and PR have traditionally been separate disciplines running
along similar, parallel tracks.
Mr. Ries’s ideas
offer an opportunity to integrate them and make both more effective.
Mr. Ries maintains
increasing ad clutter has inured consumers to advertising messages and
sapped their effectiveness. But the proliferation of media outlets and
content has had the opposite result; the messages consumers get from
newspapers, Web sites and television are more memorable and stronger, maybe
because the PR work behind them ensures the same message gets repeated in
contexts consumers trust more than advertising.
“Even if you accept
our premise, it’s the maintenance with advertising that’s likely to be our
biggest long-term point of contention,” he says.
“The advertising
establishment is hung up on creativity — the new and different — whereas
maintenance reaffirms what’s already in the mind. People who want to be
creative should get into public relations.”
Of course, you’d
expect PR people to agree with a book that says they’re undervalued. And
dissent comes from exactly where you’d expect it as well — the business Mr.
Ries declares is fading.
“He’s wrong,” says
Tony Alitilia, president and chief operating officer of Palmer Jarvis DDB.
“Ries is one of the pre-eminent authorities on brand positioning, so it sort
of surprises me that he writes this, because I do think it’s a lot of bunk.
To claim that advertising is dying in the creation of brands is almost
ludicrous. It may have a less-dominant role in the creation of brands, but
look at Nike. I was the head of the Reebok account in the United States for
three years, and competed against them. And if it wasn’t for [Nike’s
advertising agency Wieden and Kennedy of Portland, Oregon], that brand would
not be as big as it is. It’s bunk.”
Mr. Altilia cites
Marlboro, Budweiser and other brands that owe their status to advertising.
But he also
concedes that advertising takes a smaller chunk of marketing budgets than it
used to, and that public relations is an increasingly important component of
most marketing plans.
There’s another,
wider view of this debate.
“Advertising and PR
are both tools, and there are many different tools that you use to build a
brand,” says Shannon Potts, director, communications at global brand
consultancy Watt.
“Part of the brand
strategy process is establishing what messages you need to communicate
before you launch a brand. Advertising comes in much later in the process.
All the values and key messages should be established before an advertising
or a PR company is engaged.”
She says she agrees
with Mr. Ries, basically, and that as marketing bosses examine squeezed
budgets looking for greater effectiveness at lower cost, PR probably looks
like a better bet than traditional advertising.
“People are trying
to figure out how to get the most bang for their buck. Advertising is a very
expensive endeavor; PR is more economical.”
She also points out
that often the brand itself will determine how it’s introduced to consumers.
Some rely solely on advertising, others use PR almost exclusively.
Al Ries says his
book’s launching will prove its thesis.
“We’ve always left
it up to the publisher to promote the book. This time, we took our own
advice and did it differently. We started in January with a mention in a
newsletter. Then narrow magazines, then wider magazines.
“The PR business
is the opposite from the advertising business. Advertising works with a big
launch, then trickles down. With PR, you start small and build credibility,
then proceed with a slow, slow rollout.” |
