Put Advertising In Its Place
In The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, Al and Laura Ries, (as you may guess from the title) explain that it is not the place of advertising to build a brand, that is PR’s job.
Advertising then, becomes an investment into the health of your brand, amplifying and maintaining it.
Advertising and PR campaigns often become this investment to maintain the brand. Studies have found the cutting advertising budgets can cause a drop in sales that can take 3 years to recover from a 50% cut and 5 years to recover from a full cut of budget. (Creating Powerful Brands, 2010). This can also be viewed in terms of missed opportunity for those unwilling to allocate investment into their brand and generating future revenues.
I could probably stop here and have said enough, but you may be wanting more from this article. (I’m flattered.) Still, I’d highly recommend you go and read the book. Yes, it is 15 years old, but it is brilliant and prophetic, and has tons of case studies on brands and their successes and blunders.
Cue cliché of “learn from other’s mistakes so that…” blah blah, you get it.
Go read it. I’ll wait.
So then, where does advertising fit in to your marketing plan? First, let us set some things straight. Marketing is not necessarily advertising, but advertising certainly is a part of marketing. Advertising is paying to attract or retain customers. Marketing is anything done to attract or retain customers. See the subtle difference?
Therefore, PR can be advertising, but advertising it not necessarily PR. And they have distinctly different purposes if you’re doing them right.
*deep breath* We’ll get there.
In a world of paid Forbes articles and “as seen on…” grey-scaled logos on every start-up’s home page, PR is something you often pay for these days, at least initially, to grab more eyes. And that’s ok. Like all marketing you should expect a return from that, and see it as an investment into the health of your brand.
You’ll figure out the right mix, but it isn’t uncommon for a company to invest 10% of its revenue as a marketing expense. (Just be sure to factor it into your…
