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Why advertise an unknown
commodity? Why spend so much on advertising when most
people don't believe the message? What good is a catchy
and memorable advertisement if sales decline?
These are just a few of the
thoughts raised by The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of
PR (Harper Business, August 2002). Co-authored by Al
Ries (along with daughter Laura), chairman of the Ries &
Ries marketing strategy firm in Atlanta, Ga., The Fall
of Advertising & The Rise of PR points out the key
reasons why companies should look to establish products
with PR rather than advertising, as well as evidence to
support this theory.
The Scoop recently
sat down with Ries, who worked in the advertising
industry for three decades, to get some thoughts on
theories found in his book, the current status of the PR
and advertising industries, and ways companies can
better utilize the two disciplines.
Q: What inspired you to
write this book?
A: This is something we had
been thinking about for a long time. I just talked to
Forbes magazine about an advertising campaign that GM is
launching telling people the quality has improved. The
research showed GM has low quality cars so they're
running a campaign saying, "Hey that's not true, our
quality's improved." But you can't change minds with
advertising and that's our point. Advertising is
self-serving, so what you say about yourself lacks
credibility - so advertising can't work on negative
problems at all.
Q: In the book, you say
advertising has become an art form. What does that mean?
A: We've had this problem
time and time again over the years where a client says,
"I have a problem" and we say, "You have a problem, but
we can't do anything about it with advertising." The
only thing you can do with advertising is try to find
something positive in the mind and then focus the
advertising on the positive side.
When the Beetle came out,
(Volkswagen) didn't hire a photographer to take photos
of the car. They said, "No, it's ugly, but it lasts a
long time," and people believed it. People believed it
was reliable, so they could say it was reliable. Again,
here's where PR comes in. If we have a problem, we have
to solve the problem. How do you solve the problem? You
solve the problem with a medium that has credibility and
that is PR.
Q: Going along with the idea
of credibility, can you discuss your theory that PR is
where a company should start instead of with an
advertising campaign?
A: Advertising cannot solve
the problems that most companies want solved. But what
can is PR. Why? Because PR has credibility and
advertising does not. That's the basis of the book. When
you launch a new brand, you have no credibility, so why
would you even read an ad about something you've never
heard of? Most people take the position of, "Well if I
haven't heard of it, then it can't be any good."
Q: In the book, you discuss
the Budweiser "Whassup?" campaign and point out that
despite its national popularity the ads did not help
boost Budweiser's sales. Then, on the opposite end, you
note that books that appear on Oprah Winfrey's book club
see a surge in sales. What does this say about the
difference between the power of advertising and PR?
A: (In the Oprah Winfrey
case), we're just demonstrating the power of publicity
and on the other hand, just because an advertisement
gets famous, it doesn't necessarily make the product
famous. The people that are involved in advertising,
like the agencies, don't get credit for sales. If sales
go up, the sales manager takes credit for that.
Advertising agencies don't benefit from increased sales,
but what they do benefit from is the publicity generated
from a famous advertising campaign. The people that did
the "Whassup?" campaign benefited tremendously from the
awards they won and the publicity they got. They're
rewarded by how famous the ads get so there tends to be
a divorce between advertising and sales.
Q: Does it surprise you that
more companies haven't embraced your theory of using PR
first?
A: We have actually been
pleased with the number of companies that have expressed
interest in our ideas. We have given presentations to
General Mills, Microsoft, and a number of other
companies. So we've been pleased with the number of
large companies that expressed an interest. They haven't
changed how they launch a product or how they allocate
advertising and PR dollars, but that's going to take a
long time. When you're talking about advertising,
something that's been around for a long time, and
there's an established way of doing things, that's not
going to change very rapidly.
Q: What's a happy medium
between the use of PR and advertising?
A: I'm in favor of the
cheerleading type of advertising where you're talking
about ideas that most people already accept. In other
words, most people believe Volvo cars are safer cars. So
Volvo advertising should talk about the safety of the
car because they don't have to convince people about the
safety of the cars.
Q: What advice do you have
for PR professionals reading this interview?
A: From the PR point of
view, their biggest complaint is the budget idea. In
company after company, advertising is given more money
to work with, so PR has to sell that concept of being
responsible for launching the brand. You can't launch a
brand with PR using the kind of budgets most companies
allocate for PR. It's just not enough money because PR
has the reputation as being something that costs
nothing.
The Fall of Advertising &
The Rise of PR
Al Ries and Laura Ries
Harper Business
ISBN# 0-06-008198-8
Copyright: August 2002
Al Ries can be contacted through his Web site,
www.ries.com
(Article reprinted from
The Scoop, with permission from LexisNexis, original
title "Interview
with Al Ries, co-author of The Fall of Advertising & The
Rise of PR ", by Joseph M. Walsh, media analyst,
jbw237@aol.com.) |
