Currently Bought (and will be reading...)

Editorial Reviews from: http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Advertising-Rise-PR/dp/0060081988

Amazon.com
In The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, longtime marketing strategist Al Ries and his daughter/business partner Laura Ries offer solid arguments championing the latter over the former for modern-day brand building. Such a stance is hardly new for these two, who have jointly, individually, and with others written eight previous books on related topics since Al penned The Positioning Era Cometh for Advertising Age some three decades ago. What's fresh this time is the dissection of contemporary corporate hits--like Starbucks, Botox, eBay, and even Harry Potter--that have eschewed traditional advertising and nevertheless soared to the top through the savvy use of public relations. The authors spend the first part of the book discussing how advertising lost credibility among consumers as it became more of a creative art than a sales tool, and the second part showing how PR subsequently supplanted it in effectiveness. Using the above examples and others, they explain how such practices can work in various situations (building a new brand, rebuilding an old one, dealing with line extensions, etc.), as well as ways advertising can still be usefully employed (primarily to maintain a brand and "keep it on course"). The result is both provocative and practical. --Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly
Marketing strategists Ries and Ries spend all 320 pages of their latest book arguing one point: skillful public relations is what sells, not advertising. Case in point: the failure of Pets.com's sock puppet ads. However, in a chapter devoted to dot-com advertising excesses, the authors never mention that many dot-coms had miserable business plans and neophyte management. (The Rieses may be counting on the sock puppet to sell another commodity, as a deflated sock puppet dominates the book's jacket.) Today, most small companies aren't bloated with venture capital to buy TV ads, yet the book has little practical advice on how these companies' executives should use public relations, particularly PR's most important role: crisis control. Some readers might resent paying $24.95 for what amounts to an advertisement for pricey PR consulting firms like Ries & Ries. The authors frequently poke fun at the most outrageous TV ads of recent years, paralleling Sergio Zyman's The End of Advertising As We Know It (reviewed above), a more thoughtful critique of current advertising trends. The inherent flaw in the Rieses' logic: time and again they cite ad campaigns for new products that are "off message" and then say how much sales declined; this supports the notion that products and services are sold by good advertising. Although their book is occasionally entertaining, the argument is simplistic and self-serving. Illus.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Editorial Reviews from: http://www.amazon.com/Youre-Hired-Succeed-Business-Apprentice/dp/0060765410

From Publishers Weekly

The author won on the reality TV show The Apprentice, in which Donald Trump (who provides a foreword) slowly eliminates potential personal assistants until one is left standing. Rancic puts down, in tumbling first-person prose, the strategy he used to win, as well as how, back in 1995, he co-founded and ran a small mail-order company, Cigars Around the World. Rancic never went to business school, and his book might be boiled down to "rely on your observations and common sense, and on your close relationships." Nearly every chapter is loaded with advice gleaned from family members or friends with whom he has collaborated, salted with a smattering of approaches Rancic picked up from his own reading of how-tos and from his work life. The result sets the book apart: Rancic takes work seriously, and everything in the book is something he personally has tried out; his successes and travails (including a fire at his company) come through clearly and conversationally, as from a big brother. The last two of seven chapters cover his time on the show with "Mr. Trump" and offer candid takes on the other contestants and the show's productions. For a loquacious "how-I-did-it," Rancic's book debut is surprisingly satisfying. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Who would have thought that a real-life TV series on business and its struggles would command such a large viewership? This autobiography of The Apprentice's first winner gives a few clues about the show's popularity--other than host Donald Trump and the competition to win a 12-month $250,000 salary. First, contestants were carefully screened and more than well prepared to test their individual and collective mettles on a broadcast medium. Second, Rancic himself can already claim success as an entrepreneur, as his stories about the start-ups of Elite Boat Wash and Wax and Cigars Around the World reveal. Along with growing-up anecdotes interspersed with The Apprentice tales, he synopsizes at the end of each chapter lessons he learned in work and in life. Bet the long shot. Go above and beyond. Listen. Count on family. Give something back. Surprising words from a wise, young soul. Barbara JacobsCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved