I had picked up this book with a lot of anticipation. And while it makes some strong provocative points, it overall fails to convince on the uber message - that PR builds brands, while advertising simply maintains them (and nothing more). Why so -

- The book is from early 2000s and hence misses the entire revolution brought about by performance marketing and what that has done for internet companies. Also, it does not speak to the media situation of today, and the choices before PR to drive impact
- The examples are mostly from the West, but personally I am aware of many success stories on the other side in India
- The book’s messaging is super repetitive - just because the same thing is called out 10 times does not mean it is more believable (much like the claim that over advertising does not make something credible; it in fact does the opposite)
- All the extra real estate spent on repeating the same messages could have been used to articulate what organisations need to do to extract the maximum juice from PR
- The authors would have done well to go deeper into a few examples, than spread themselves thin with so many cursorily explained examples

Having said the above, I still take away the point that PR has its role to play in brand building and driving awareness in the early stages of a brand’s journey.

Some notes from the book:

- PR builds brands; advertising maintains / defends brands
- PR needs to be creative, not advertising
- Line extensions do not work. They blur the singular identity of the brand and they bleed advertising support from the base brand
- Advertising is overpowering; an average person is exposed to 237 tv commercials a day
- Advertising is now an art form - has lost its functionality
- Advertising wins awards. But rarely does it drive business outcomes
- The goal of traditional advertising is not to make the product famous. It is to make the advertising famous
- The CEO’s personal brand is a critical component of PR
- The job of advertising is to remind, educate ( new customers), deepen (including the market), protect

Spectacular. Balances advertising and PR, effectively demonstrating each discipline's effectiveness in different areas using statistics from the most successful companies today. A must-read!

Наверное, если бы я прочла эту книжку на 1 курсе университета, мое понимание происходящего во время обучения было бы лучше. С другой стороны, всему свое время. И читать теорию (тем более западную) гораздо интереснее, когда за плечами уже есть практика. Что-то уже можно сравнить и увидеть так ли на самом деле в жизни.

Khó đọc, không thuyết phục và có phần cực đoan

While there are good points made, it is generally a tired and oversimplified explanation of the PR function

as others al ries books, it's convincing and focus to the book's title.

should read by marketing people to get a new perspective about communication ... it will complementary with buzz marketing book

FUll of Advertising Examples & Studies...Enjoyed it

A must read for marketing people.
Although the book is old or authors tone may be biased. Or few examples are outdated and invalid, the idea behind the book is really valuable.
I strongly recommend you to read this book. However I should pray that my competitors dont find this book.

This book makes a strong point. It’s a bit outdated by the time I read it – almost 14 years after original publication – but the importance of setting up a brand identity long before you try to sell it to a consumer is still something important to remember.
On the other hand, it’s really obvious that the authors’ job is PR. They give tons of examples of the failures of advertising but only skim thru them with numbers and superficial comments without really going into “why” they didn’t work. It would have read as a lot less skewed if the parts that talked about the “fall of advertising” were a few in-depth studies of why it’s failing instead of 20+ name drops that are nothing more than numbers and opinions.
It’s worth reading, if only for the chuckles you’re sure to get when the authors seriously fail to see the importance of certain things. There’s a chapter where they mention how farfetched they consider the idea of phones with internet access being successful.