The Power of PR

I just finished reading ‘The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR’. The title actually is a misnomer. The authors, Al Ries and Laura Ries, are not proposing that advertising is dead and buried. Instead they claim advertising isn’t as powerful as it used to be and should be used more as a support to a well-orchestrated PR plan.

Their theory is simple: Build brands with PR and once it is established maintain it with advertising. They give enough and more case studies of brands that have taken this route: Microsoft, Starbucks, Body Shop, Linux, PlayStation, Viagra etc.,

I would strongly recommend this book to you irrespective of where you are - advertising, marketing or PR. Nicely written, neatly presented with powerful examples…the book could be described with the clichéd word ‘unputdownable’!

And as irony would have it, the next book I just picked up to read (which is still work under progress) is an old classic (all classics are old, right!) - All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. A book that became popular not by advertising but by brilliant PR and word of mouth. The story of its popularity is presented in the front flap cover of the book itself. I quote it verbatim:

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten began as Robert Fulghum’s attempt to write a simple credo. In his capacity as a Unitarian minister, he shared his statement of belief with his congregation and then read it at a primary school celebration. As fate would have it, Washington’s Senator Dan Evans was in the audience. Impressed and touched by what he had heard, he requested a copy of Robert Fulghum’s speech and took it back with him to Washington, D.C., where it was eventually read into the Congressional Record.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten made its way from Washington to the Kansas City Times, which ran Robert Fulghum’s observations in its Sunday edition. The response was overwhelming.

The snowball of enthusiasm keeps building. Portions of the piece were printed in ‘Dear Abby’ and Reader’s Digest. Paul Harvey and Larry King read it to millions on their radio shows and Southwestern Bell sold hundreds of thousands of copies as a poster to its customers. Robert Fulghum’s simple credo was photocopied, sent to loved ones and posted on bulletin boards at schools throughout the country.

The book went on to sell more than millions around the world. All this and more accomplished without a single shred of advertising!