Advertising is dead. At least, it is when it comes to brand building. Once upon a time, advertising was the preferred and best strategy to build a brand. Coca-Cola, Tide, Crest, Maytag and dozens of others rose to brand stardom during a time in which our society naively absorbed and trusted advertising. But times have changed.

Today, Uncle Miltie and the men that wore the Texaco star are gone, and more people mistrust advertising than ever before. Plus, there’s too much heated competition, too much advertising and too much clutter for potential customers to sift out all the advertising messages. Every day, consumers are bombarded with more than 5,000 advertising messages, and it has become increasingly difficult for an advertisement to pierce the clutter and make the consumer sit up and take notice.

So with all of these obstacles, how can anyone expect to build a new brand through advertising. When you think about it, there is absolutely no reason for a prospective customer to pay attention to a message they’ve never heard before, about a product they don’t know, from a brand they’ve never heard of. Of course, you’ll never hear this from an ad agency, but the truth is that it is simply getting harder and harder to get your message heard. (This column will not win me any friends in the American Advertising Federation.)

"You can’t launch a new brand with advertising because advertising has no credibility. It’s the self-serving voice of a company anxious to make a sale." 
— Al Ries

Don’t misunderstand. Advertising is an excellent strategy for maintaining a brand because consumers need constant reminders. The Real Thing. Don’t squeeze the Charmin. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz. As author and marketing strategist Al Ries once wisely stated, “Advertising cannot start a fire. It can only fan a fire after it has been started.” Thus, advertising should be the follow-up strategy after public relations has established the brand.

Recent marketing successes such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Red Bull, Intel, Google, PlayStation, Dell and Botox all owe their success to public relations. In fact, upon closer inspection, many other major brands have risen to the top with almost no advertising at all. At $200 billion in sales, Wal-Mart became the world’s largest retailer with very little advertising. Beanie Babies and Pokémon took over entire toy stores with almost no advertising. All of these success stories have one factor in common — they earned a place in the prospect’s mind and became big brands through publicity.

While it is true that a business owner has less control over public relations and press coverage, it is also true that public relations has significantly more impact on shaping public opinion around a brand. Public relations has credibility. Newspapers, magazines, tv networks, radio stations and other media outlets are critically important links for most of us. The power of the press has an enormous impact, and I don’t think there’s a CEO out there that when given a choice between a free full-page ad or a feature article in Fortune Magazine would not choose the article.

Why? The press has credibility. Advertising does not. So, don’t be too quick to launch those expensive ad campaigns when launching a new brand. Use public relations first and advertising second. For brand-building, this is your one-two punch.

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