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Cassie Grimm
The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR: A Review
The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR looks at the effects of advertising and public
relations campaigns on various companies over the last century. The major themes that authors
Al and Laura Ries discuss in this book are the lack of credibility of advertising, the need for PR
when launching a brand, and the use of advertising to maintain a brand. This book provides a lot
of detailed information, but its credibility is hurt by its outdated nature and some false
predictions.
One of the biggest concepts discussed in this book is the lack of credibility that
advertising has. According to the Riess, advertising has as much credibility as a message inside
a fortune cookie, (Ries and Ries 137). Because advertising is a paid, one-sided message, it is not
effective at persuading the masses. Also, the sheer volume of advertising hurts its credibility as
well. As advertising volume has increased, advertising messages become wallpaper, (Ries and
Ries 10).
As this metaphor shows, no one ad can be exceedingly attention-grabbing or significant,
because the average person is bombarded with advertisements every moment of every day.
Instead, people tend to tune all advertising messages out. As the Riess state, If you have
wallpaper in your home, when was the last time a stranger walked in and said, Wow! Thats
very interesting wallpaper, (Ries and Ries 10).
Due to advertisements overwhelming nature and lack of credibility, advertising has lost
its communication function and has instead become an art form. Advertising agencies have
become more concerned with the creative approach in order to make shocking, funny, and
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award-winning advertisements. Instead of focusing on the creative approach, the book states that
ad agencies should focus on the product, and reinforcing the message the product sends to the
public (Ries and Ries 23-25).
In his article Advertising in the 21
st
century, longtime advertising agent Marshall
McLuhan states that, advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century, (McLuhan,
8). Many examples in the book reinforce this idea. Famous examples of artistic and creative
advertising campaigns sited in the book include the Budweiser Whassup? campaign, the Coca-
Cola polar bear campaign, and the Got Milk? milk-mustache campaign. While all of these
campaigns were creative and went on to win coveted advertising awards such as the Oscar of
advertising, the Gold Lion at Cannes, these ads did not have a significant impact on sales (Ries
and Ries 36).
For example, while the Whassup? Budweiser campaign was called fresh and
amusing, and everyone fell in love with it, by advertising award judges, it did not boost the
sales of Budweiser at all. Instead, U.S. sales of Budweiser beer have fallen every year in the last
decade. This example backs up the authors points that, Advertising is art. It has no connection
to sales, (Ries and Ries 37). Instead, the real function of advertising is to create talk value and
to reinforce the buzz already created by a solid public relations campaign (Ries and Ries 38).
While advertising has no credibility, PR does. Therefore, when launching a brand,
companies need to stop focusing so much on advertising, and focus on public relations. PR is the
only way to launch a successful brand with very few exceptions. The fundamental principle
according to the authors is PR first, advertising second, (Ries and Ries 67).
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A major example of the success of a company due to good PR is the Microsoft Company.
Launched in 1975, the Microsoft Companys rise to dominance took very little time. The reason
is good publicity. When Microsoft launched Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, and XP, countless news
outlets picked up the story about these revolutionary products. When customers read something
in the news they are going to believe it, unlike when they hear information on a TV commercial.
Microsoft succeeded because its brand was original and newsworthy. That is how Microsoft
became one of the worlds most valuable companies in only 27 years with very little advertising.
As Ries and Ries state, If you want to launch a brand today, you need a message that gets media
attention, (Ries and Ries 66).
An example in the book of a company that failed by trying to launch its brand with
advertising instead of PR is Pets.com. Pets.com was a website that sold supplies to dog and cat
owners which tried to launch its brand with a major Proctor & Gamble advertising campaign.
Proctor & Gamble created the Sock Puppet dog to be the face of Pets.com, which was called the
first bona fide advertising celebrity to be created in dotcom land by Advertising Age (Ries and
Ries 61).
The Sock Puppet campaign itself was a major success. The ads won many award, the
puppet appeared on CNN, E!, and even the Macys Thanksgiving Day parade. However, these
advertisements did nothing for Pets.com sales. In just six months, Pets.com spent three times as
much on marketing than it brought in ($22 million in revenues) (Ries and Ries 62). In less than a
year, Pets.com went bankrupt. Even though the brand became well known, advertising did not
help Pets.com become successful. Public relations are the building blocks for any new brand. It
is key to a companys success to first use PR to build a companys credentials, and then launch
advertisements to reinforce these credentials (Ries and Ries 63).
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Advertisings key role is to maintain a brand. The Riess use the metaphor of a company
going up and down the mountain to explain this process. On the way up, the goal is to roll out
the brand with publicity and good PR. Once a product reaches the top, the new strategy
becomes protecting the through advertising to reinforce PR ideas and concepts (Ries and Ries
137).
Many companies make the mistake of using advertising to broaden their brand instead of
reinforcing previous ideas. These companies go on fishing expeditions where they explore new
markets, demographics, and/or benefits of the brand. However, advertising cannot change the
perception of a brand, so instead of trying to broaden a brand, advertising should be used to
deepen a brand (Ries and Ries 198-199).
The key to deepening a brand is acceptance. Accept what a brand is and move on from
there. According to the Riess, Reminding, educating, deepening, and protecting are four good
reasons for running an advertising program that reinforces an existing perception in the mind,
(Ries and Ries 201). For example, Coca-Colas slogan of the real thing emphasized its
leadership position and its attribute of being the original and classic soda of choice. This
campaign was much more effective than Cokes New Coke campaign, which tried to broaden
Cokes market. While this New Coke campaign received much media attention, it did not change
Cokes perception and ended up hurting the brand (Ries and Ries 203).
This book seems to be credible and efficient in teaching readers about the effective use of
PR techniques over advertising techniques. The two authors, Al Ries and his daughter Laura
Ries, are both renowned marketing professionals and authors. Together the two have written five
books on public relations and marketing, and were selected by PR week magazine as some of
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the most influential people in the world of PR in the 20
th
century in 1999. (King 1). The authors
back up every detail in their book with countless examples which enhance their credibility.
However, while the authors are credible and the book is successful in getting across its
message, the book is outdated and full of laughable examples. The book was published in 2002,
and so much has changed in the world of technology. Today PR and advertising messages are
consumed in so many different mediums than they were a decade ago. For example, at the
beginning of the book, Ries and Ries talk about outdated methods of consuming information.
Your toilet is overflowing and you look for a plumber in the yellow pages. Youre moving to
the suburbs and you look for a new house in the classifieds. Youre going on a date and you
check the movie times in the weekend section, (Ries and Ries 11).
Many young people these days do not even know what the yellow pages are. In all of
these situations, modern Americans would use the internet to find information in these cases.
One of the most noticeable examples of the out-of-date nature of this book occurs on
page 110 when the Riess talk about the idea of 3G phones.
The telecom industry, especially in Europe, has fallen for a similar generational
approach to mobile phones. 1G was analog, 2G is digital, and 3G is going to be
Internet-access phones. We dont think that 3G phones are going to become a big
business. Those 3G phones are a convergence product, which is why we dont
believe they will ever achieve much success (Ries and Ries 110).
Of course anyone in modern America knows that this prediction is so far off it is
humorous. Today, nearly half of all adult Americans (46%) own those 3G phones (Smith 1).
Smart phones have become a huge market all over the world.
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Lastly, while talking about the importance of finding a good name for a brand, Ries
discredits one of the largest and most popular beer brands in the United States. Any beer called
Gablinger is not going to taste good. Nor is a beer called Yuengling going to taste good. Was
there ever a beer called Yuengling? Sure, (Ries and Ries 184). While Yuengling was not
popular when this book was published, Yuengling has become the largest American-owned
brewery. Yuengling has also gained much publicity in the last decade; President Obama even
stated that Yuengling is his favorite beer (Charlier 1).
All of these examples hurt this books credibility by making the book seem very old and
out-of touch.
The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR does a good job at getting across its central
themes: advertising lacks credibility, PR is necessary to launch a brand, and advertising must be
used to maintain a brand. The book is well organized, and each section of the book is backed-up
with countless details and examples. While the book has become outdated since its publication in
2002, the credibility and experience of the authors along with the use of extensive details, makes
the source useful.






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Works Cited
Charlier, Marj. "Yuengling's Success Defies Convention." Yuengling News Page. The Wallstreet
Journal, 9 Apr. 2012. Web. 02 Apr. 2013.
King, Aaron. "Al Ries and Laura Ries ::." Al Ries and Laura Ries ::. OWL Education, May
2011. Web. 02 Apr. 2013.
McLuhan, Marshall. "Advertising in the 21st Century." PRWeek (2001): 1-19. Print.
Ries, Al, and Laura Ries. The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. 1st ed. New York:
HarperBusiness, 2002. Print.
Smith, Aaron. "Nearly Half of American Adults Are Smartphone Owners." 46% of American
Adults Now Own a Smartphone. Pew Research, 1 Mar. 2012. Web. 02 Apr. 2013.