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!

Al and Laura Ries discuss why PR is more believable and so more effective to build a brand. The role of advertising is to manage the brand once it has been built up by supporting the PR message. Current focus on creativity in advertising is misplaced. This is because although creativity may lead to advertising awards, it rarely leads to increased sales. Instead PR is where creativity needs to be applied for appropriately positioning the product in the customers' mind. PR is more believable by the customer because it reflects opinions and views of third parties. This believability more than outweighs the loss of control in having third parties provide public opinions on your product and results in higher sales.

The book gets three stars because the supporting arguments are simplistic, and the authors belabor the above points for ~300 pages. Also, there is no discussion on the evolving blogs and how they can be used to execute PR effectively.