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AGREEING
with Mcluhan, marketing strategists Al and Laura Ries
arrived at a conclusion that’s less than comforting to
advertising people: if advertising is an art, it belongs
in a museum, not in the marketing department (The Fall
of Advertising and the Rise of PR, Harper-Collins).
How can
this be, ask the Rieses, when there is more advertising
today than there ever was both in total volume and in per
capita volume? How can a communications technique be at
the height of its popularity and still be on its way out?
“History
offers an explanation. When a communication technique
loses its functional purpose, it turns into an art form.”
Like all art forms, advertising becomes more expensive
through time as it exists for itself, but loses its
function of selling a product.
The Rieses
have visited many advertising agencies in the words and
seen wall after wall of advertisements set in impressive
mattes and expensively framed. Of course, agencies were
merely exhibiting samples of their work, but they pointed
out that lawyers don’t frame copies of their finest
briefs, nor do doctors exhibit pictures of their brilliant
surgeries. If the aim was to impress clients with their
record, the advertising agencies should have framed sales
charts for their clients.
One
explanation is that creative has become the mantra of
advertising. But here’s David Ogilvy, one of the wonder
boys of advertising, saying, “When I write an ad, I don’t
want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want
you to find it so persuasive that you buy the product—or
buy it more often.”
That’s the
big picture: the loss of function. But the Rieses cites 14
reasons for “the fall of advertising and the rise of PR.”
1.
Advertising is the Wind, PR is the Sun.
2.
Advertising is Spatial, PR is Linear.
3.
Advertising uses the Big Bang, PR uses the Slow Buildup.
4.
Advertising is Visual, PR is Verbal.
5.
Advertising reaches Everybody, PR reaches Somebody.
6.
Advertising is Self-Directed, PR is Other-Directed.
7.
Advertising Dies, PR Lives.
8.
Advertising is Expensive, PR is Inexpensive.
9.
Advertising favors Line Extensions, PR favors New Brands.
10.
Advertising likes Old Names, PR favors New Names.
11.
Advertising is Funny, PR is Serious.
12.
Advertising is Uncreative, PR is Creative,
13.
Advertising is Incredible, PR is Credible.
14.
Advertising is Brand Maintenance, PR is Brand Building.
The point
of it all is that PR, not advertising, is the creative
element in launching a new product and building brands.
Many examples of PR successes and advertising failures are
cited in the book. It’s not the judgment of the Rieses,
however, but of a chairman of the American Association of
Advertising Agencies: “More and more clients are losing
faith in the most fundamental principle of our business:
run good advertising, sell more stuff, build better
brands, make more profits.” Then he added, “Advertising is
not being seen for what I think it is—the single most
powerful tool to produce profitable sales growth and to
increase brand value, which in turn should further
dramatically client profitability.”
But that’s
exactly what critics of advertising are saying: it’s more
focused on awards and “creativity” rather than on
convincing people to buy products. As the Rieses dryly
observed, advertising people are speaking from both sides
of the mouth when they admit advertising is in trouble,
and yet they must reassure their customers that
advertising is still the most powerful brand-building
tool.
The power
of a third party
The rise
of PR as a marketing tool is credited by the Rieses to the
“power of a third party.” Their simple thesis is worth
quoting in full:
“All I
know,” said Will Rogers, “is just what I read in the
papers.” It’s true. Most people only “know” what they
read, see or hear in the media or what they learn from
people they trust.
“Life is
complicated. Who has the time to independently check the
quality or features of the wide variety of products and
services that one might want to purchase? We let ourselves
be led around by the media.
“Who makes
the ‘best’ automobiles? Ask the average person this
question and you’ll often get the answer Mercedes-Benz.
Then ask, Do you own one? No. Have you ever driven one?
No. Do you know anyone who owns one? No.
“Then how
do you know who makes the best automobiles? You have to be
a humorist like Will Rogers or Jerry Seinfeld to admit the
obvious. ‘All I know is what I read in the papers.’
“Most
people determine what is best by finding out what other
people think is best. And the two major sources for making
that determination are the media and word of mouth.
“You can’t
live in a modern world observing reality with just your
eyes and ears. You have to depend on the eyes and ears of
third-party sources that stand between you and reality.
Media outlets are the vital links that add meaning for
most lives.
“Without
the information supplied by media, you couldn’t
participate in the political and economic life of a
capitalist society. You may not believe everything you
read in the papers, but you are enormously influenced by
media.
“Compared
with the power of the press, advertising has almost zero
credibility. Suppose you were offered a choice. You can
run an advertisement in our newspaper or magazine or we’ll
run your story as an article. How many companies would
prefer an ad to an article? (Media run articles now
accompanied by advertisements.)
“No one.
Advertising has no credibility.
“Some
companies have taken to running advertisements that look
like editorial content. But this subversive tactic is
quickly blocked by publishers, who label the page with the
dreaded word: advertisement. This single word greatly
undercuts both the readership of the message and its
credibility.
“Be
honest. How do you read a newspaper or a magazine or watch
a television show? Don’t you differentiate between the
editorial and the advertising? Don’t you only look at the
ads that you find exceptionally interesting or amusing?
And even then, don’t you view the advertisement message
with a great deal of skepticism?
“A typical
newspaper is 30-percent editorial and 70-percent
advertising. What do you spend most of your time reading?
To the average person the editorial stories are islands of
objectivity in a sea of prejudice.”
The final
blow was delivered by Regis McKenna, the well-known
marketing consultant, in the Harvard Review 16 years ago:
“We are witnessing the obsolescence of advertising….
First, advertising overkill has started to ricochet back
on advertising itself…. The second development in
advertising’s decline is an outgrowth of the first; as
advertising has proliferated and become more obviously
insistent, consumers have gotten fed up. The more
advertising seeks to intrude, the more people try to shut
it out…. The underlying reason behind both these factors
is advertising’s dirty little secret: it serves no useful
purpose.”
As
American as apple pie
If PR is
replacing advertising as the primary brand-telling tool,
the Rieses asked, why has so little been written about it?
They gave six reasons.
The first
and most important is the strength and reputation of the
advertising establishment. Advertising accounts for 2.5
percent of America’s gross domestic product. “Furthermore,
advertising has its tentacles into newspapers, magazines,
radio, television, the Internet, outdoor and direct mail.
Advertising is as American as baseball, hot dogs, apple
pie and Chevrolet.”
Second,
people tend to judge the value of a discipline by its
members, proof of which is the fact that the American
Advertising Federation has 210 clubs and 50,000 members,
and the American Association of Advertising Agencies has
494 agencies with 1,279 offices, representing the
country’s most successful agencies (2002).
Third,
advertising benefits from extensive editorial coverage.
None of the big national newspapers has a regular PR
column.
Fourth,
advertising and advertising people dominate the US
national scene, When Bush’s first Secretary of State Colin
Powell needed to take charge of the “public-relations war”
in the Middle East, he selected an advertising person,
Charlotte Beers. The Rieses pointed out that PR is a
secondary function. (From my Philprom days in the early
’50s, I was a one-man PR department under the supervision
of an account executive, the late R.R.de la Cruz, though
with some changes now.)
Fifth,
advertising dominates the educational scene. Surveys
showed more than half of MBA programs offered coursework
in advertising, but only 12 offered coursework in PR.
Sixth,
what really undermines the stature of PR is that most of
the larger PR firms are owned by advertising
conglomerates.
Thomas
Jefferson once said advertising was the most honest part
of a newspaper; he had his own brief against journalists
although he preferred, given a choice, newspapers without
government rather than a government without newspapers.
The view
from the Majority World
The New
Internationalist, “the action in the fight for global
justice,” paints a darker picture of advertising and PR,
especially in the Majority, or Third, World. The ultimate
target is the corporate use of advertising and PR to
“engineer consent.” As Jeane Kilbourne observed, “To be
not influenced by advertising would be to live outside of
culture. No human being lives outside of culture.”
She
complained advertising encourages people not only to
objectify each other but to feel passion for products
rather than our own partners. PR is all spin, working on
our sense of reality.
“In the
world of advertising, lovers grow cold, spouses grow old,
children grow up and away—but possessions stay with us and
never change.”
Much of
advertising’s power come from the belief that it does not
affect us, “Because we think advertising is trivial, we
are less on guard, less critical, than what we might
otherwise be. While we are laughing, sometimes sneering,
the commercial does its work.”
Perhaps,
the most pernicious aim of advertising is that it’s also
aimed at the young, the younger the better, for they also
put pressure on their parents.
Allen
Kanner, a US clinical child psychologist, related that in
his practice he noted how kids were becoming incredibly
consumerist.
“When I
asked them what they want to do when they grow up, they
all say they want to make money, When they talk about
their friends, they talk about the clothes they wear, the
designer labels, not the person’s human qualities.
“I see
parents in this context, too. They come to me and say
their kids are depressed and ask for video games or the
food they see on TV. Parents say they feel in conflict.
They want to say no, but they don’t want their child upset
with them.”
Transfer
the scene to a family in the Majority World, and you will
find consumerism, the passion of the middle class, a
reason for lopsided economic development.
Advertising and religion share a belief in transformation,
but most religions believe this requires sacrifice.
“Advertising creates a world view that is based upon
cynicism, dissatisfaction and craving. Advertisers aren’t
evil. They are just doing their job, which is to sell a
product; but the consequences, usually unintended, are
often destructive. In the history of the world there has
never been a propaganda effort to match that of
advertising in the past 50 years. More thought, more
effort, more money goes into advertising than has gone
into any other campaign to change social consciousness.
The story that advertising tells is that the way to be
happy, to find satisfaction—and the path to political
freedom, as well—is through the consumption of material
objects. And the major motivating force for social change
throughout the world today is this belief that happiness
comes from the market.”
As a
former editor in chief of Advertising Age once claimed,
“Only 8 percent of an ad’s message is received by the
conscious mind. The rest is worked out and reworked
within, in the recesses of the brain.”
That said,
advertising is here to stay. Where would media be in the
first place? Advertising can only be directed toward
beneficial humane ends. The question is, how? |
