“Advertising can only maintain brands that have been created by publicity.”

This can be the summarized sentence of the well-known book “The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR” by Al Ries and his daughter Laura Ries. Even though I do not agree with many points they present, especially the notion that creativity cannot bring sales, I still find the idea of the function of advertising and PR useful. The book is over-extreme at the idea of the falling role of advertising, but it is right about how brands should communicate itself to the public: not anymore the one-way advertising, but a shift towards building “conversational ability” of the brand.

Keeping the PR-ability in mind, I find myself filled with ideas when reading online newspapers. Not a rocket discovery to many people, but the publishing media is the number one inspiration source for a potentially viral creative idea. To plan a successful WOM campaign, imagine what Headline it would appear on the press, whether you as viewers would be clicking on the headlines.

This post acts as a storage for future use only, saving links to articles that opens up the inspiration for a PR stunt.

Căn phòng kì dị của các Otaku Nhật Bản

Video hé lộ “bạo hành” tại trại cung cấp gà cho McDonald’s

Nga: kim cương quý bốc hơi bí ẩn

Video clip Bolt bị cameraman đụng ngã

Muzzle For Walking Your Dog In The Woods

100 Cameras Were Given To Homeless In London And The Result Left Everyone Speechless

1000s Of Handmade Paper Flowers Cover The Streets Of Alentejo, Portugal

12-Year-Boy Trips And Punches Hole In $1.5 Million Painting From 17th Century

Japanese-Inspired Shoes That Wrap Around Your Feet

Gà “Lamborgini” giá 50 triệu/con độc nhất Việt Nam

There is a mistake when it comes to marketing low-price brands. Low-price brands should not be called “cheap”. There is a difference between affordable and cheap. People buy affordable brands, not cheap brands. This is a brand image problem that every low-price brands should be aware of.

Linking to local Vietnamese brands, why our local products are much cheaper than the imported, but still lost the competition despite having the same quality?  One of the reasons is because local brands look at themselves as “cheap” brands, not “affordable” ones. When they look at themselves as “cheap”, they accidentally lower the brand image (low-price brands do not necessarily own low brand image) and become less customer-oriented. Looking at the world trend, one thing that makes any global corporates successful, whether it is Amazon or Starbucks, is the customer-oriented approach. Even Wal-Mart, the every low-priced supermarket chain has always upgraded its customer service, besides trying to maintain a competitive price (Read here). In the cost-conscious culture, “affordable” is one strong positioning, but remember “affordable” does not only mean low-price, but also an expected quality linked to that low price. How much quality do customers expect about your products’ price range? Answer that.

Advertising agency is the expert in branding and communication. This is true; however, as agency, we should not overestimate our expertise and oversimplify the branding process. Often, we forget that brand is not only expressed via communication process, but is deeply rooted and built from the inside out. A brand comes from the inner vision, mission of the brand leader and each of the company employees. Another way to say is advertising agency has very little power to guide its client’s core brand strategy. If the agency thinks they have a better “brand positioning” than its client, think again before proposing one completely new direction.

To the best of my experience, even when the client requires agency to “re-position” its brand via a re-positioning campaign, our client won’t expect a completely new strategy. The mistake of agency is to look only at the “criticism” angle, analyzing and finding rationale for why the client’s current strategy doesn’t work. We forget that to achieve such position as today, numerous time and money have been spent. Therefore, via the “re-positioning” campaign, what the client really wants is to “leverage” and “renovate” its current brand strategy, not finding a new direction.

To propose a new strategy, numerous risks should be taken into account. If we really believe a new strategy is required, there are several questions we must answer to both ourselves and client: What if the current strategy still works? So we start building our brand from scratch if we follow the new strategy? How can we be so sure that the new strategy will work?