IABC|Utah

“To be successful, you have to own a word in the mind”
- Laura Ries

Laura Ries, the keynote speaker for this year’s event, is the President of Ries & Ries, a marketing strategy firm based in Atlanta. Laura discussed the myth of advertising—that it builds brands. She says it does not build brands and that the main strategy for most companies is to launch their new product with an ad campaign. They throw a bunch of money at the campaign and hope sales will take off. It rarely does.

A lot of what Laura discussed may be found in her book, The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. It has the silly sock puppet from the Pets.com ads on the cover.

Brands start of slow and “reach everybody” advertising campaigns don’t work. Laura discussed how various companies launched typical advertising campaigns only to fall short of expected sales.

She continued with how PR gets brands recognized because brands are recognized by people and “people are sheep”. If a friend tells you to use a product, you are more likely to go out and buy it. Word-of-mouth is the most powerful medium. Laura said that the role of PR is to get the first mouth talking. She discussed how Red Bull, Starbucks, The Body Shop, and Google are all PR successes.

These companies are successful because PR established their credibility. Advertising re-enforces the brand and accelerates it. She said that the Cheesecake Factory never advertises and is known by word-of-mouth. Compared to advertising, PR is not saying you’re great, it’s someone else saying you’re great.

Additionally, Laura believes that if you want your company to be famous, you have to make your CEO famous too. Ralph Lauren, Andy Grove of Intel, and Michael Dell of Dell Computers were some of the examples she used.

A brand should strive to own words in the mind of the consumer. Laura explained that successful brands are attached to certain words. When you think of a word, a certain brand or company comes to mind:

Organic Groceries = Whole Foods
The Real Thing = Coca Cola
Internet Searches = Google
Internet Auctions = eBay
Always Low Prices = WalMart
Safety = Volvo

This even plays out in the political arena and entertainment industry. Laura discussed how Hillary Clinton tried to attach her campaign with the word “experience”. Burack Obama owns “change”.

Laura said the way to get famous is to own a word. Some successful celebrities are described as:

Wise Guy = Bruce Willis
Bad Boy = Jack Nicholson
The Boss = Bruce Springsteen
Pretty Woman = Julia Roberts

Laura’s presentation really hit home the importance of pubic relations in building the brand.