I Can't Sleep

It's 1:30 a.m. and I have to get up for work in five hours. Yet here I am writing this blog post because I can't sleep.

I hurt - I have a sinus headache and "arthr" decided to visit - my right ankle, knee and hip really hurt.

My cat poked my cheek with her paw.

My other cat is attacking the window, presumably because he saw a bug outside, but with him, you never know.

My mind is busy. Before I got up to write this post, I
- came up with a goofy rap song for my godson
- wondered how behavioral targeting really works
- thought of three ideas for blog posts (besides this one)
- remembered a survey that's ready to be analyzed at work
- thought of a survey question that might be useful for work
- wondered when my office's "sharing week" is going to be this fall
- worried about my dad's declining health

Now that I've dumped this randomness on you, swallowed a couple of Advil and slurped a mug of warm milk, I'm headed back to bed - if the cats have left me any room, that is.

Wish me luck, folks. Otherwise you might be soon be seeing one of those other three blog posts I mentioned above;-)

Book Review: The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR

At PlayhouseSquare, my colleagues in the marketing department and I handle both advertising and publicity. I spend more of my time on publicity, so my curiosity piqued when I came across the book The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR, written by Al and Laura Ries and published in 2002.

Unfortunately, this book was a chore to slog through. The tone of the authors is so bitter that I suspect that one of them was humiliated by a termination from an advertising agency, or perhaps suffered a concussion at the hand of a Clio Award-wielding ex-lover.

Some of the references are so dated that I'm only familiar with the topics through anecdotes told by my parents. I can't imagine a recent college grad relating to this book. How many 20-somethings know what a Yugo is?

And then there's the litany of suggestions rejected by their clients with the not-so-subtle assertion that these clients were stupid for not listening to them.

Further, it's hard trust the assertions of authors whose foresight has proven to be less than reliable. For example, they asserted that 3G phones and Amazon would prove to be failures.

This book's coup de grace came when I was adding it to my list on goodreads.com. I mistakenly typed in "the rise of advertising" and to my surprise, up came a listing for a book entitled The Rise of Advertising & the Fall of PR, published in 2009 with a forward by Al Ries.

All this said, I did agree with some of the points made by the authors. I do believe that using PR to build a brand and advertising to maintain a brand can be the right strategy to use in many cases. But with today's fragmented communications channels, I do not believe there is a one-size-fits-all answer.

Nor do I believe that either PR or advertising is falling or rising - both are changing.