PR and Promotion is STILL dwarfed, big time, by Advertising

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Little tidbit from a report:

According to Veronis Suhler Stevenson’s 2006 Communications Industry Report, consumer promotion spending in the U.S. rose only 4.0% to $44.47 billion last year. While that is a sizeable chunk of marketing budgets, it nonetheless is dwarfed in comparison to a much bigger and faster growing consumer advertising business. According to VSS, advertising grew 6.4% last year to $210.29 billion.

What does that tell us? It tells us that while we’re growing as an industry, we’re not growing fast enough. Advertising has always been the big fish in our pond, and it still is. It’s also growing faster than we are, which continues to make it bigger.

Now this isn’t a truly accurate comparison, as we all know that it doesn’t cost $2,000,000 to place a story, but it does to take out a Super Bowl ad. But still – we should make sure we continue to drill our clients as to why PR and Event based promotion is a viable tool, and one that can’t just be lumped in with “the extra dollars left over after the ad buy.”

Thus endeth my rant for the day. Go in peace.

Join the discussion 38 Comments

  • afinepress says:

    Incredible.

  • I had a similar incident… I wrote about it …. Well… because that is what we do, I actually took it one step further
    http://www.smiffbib.com/2012/03/27/im-not-a-number/

  • I’ll follow you 20,000 times for half of what he’s asking – especially if you’re going into some good restaurants.

  • afinepress says:

    Incredible.

  • I had a similar incident… I wrote about it …. Well… because that is what we do, I actually took it one step further
    http://www.smiffbib.com/2012/03/27/im-not-a-number/

  • I’ll follow you 20,000 times for half of what he’s asking – especially if you’re going into some good restaurants.

  • Angela Moore says:

    Pimpin’ ain’t easy dude. Thanks for the Thursday GTs.

  • Angela Moore says:

    Pimpin’ ain’t easy dude. Thanks for the Thursday GTs.

  • Walt Ribeiro says:

    What’s worse is that some of these “social media strategist” are making bank going from company to company with this gold rush “strategy”. I’ll bet it’s the same 20,000 made-up Twitter accounts of theirs that they follow from new client to new client.

    If followers if what you want, then I suppose this is a solution. But it won’t create interaction or a community. The real formula for a community is simple: make stuff people want.

  • Walt Ribeiro says:

    What’s worse is that some of these “social media strategist” are making bank going from company to company with this gold rush “strategy”. I’ll bet it’s the same 20,000 made-up Twitter accounts of theirs that they follow from new client to new client.

    If followers if what you want, then I suppose this is a solution. But it won’t create interaction or a community. The real formula for a community is simple: make stuff people want.

  • Carissa says:

    I have clients consistently ask how many followers they can have within a year, with 50k being the low number. Where is that bar getting set?

  • Carissa says:

    I have clients consistently ask how many followers they can have within a year, with 50k being the low number. Where is that bar getting set?

  • Steve Woodruff says:

    Well – I can get you 30,000 followers AND a fortune hidden in a bank account ($3.3M!) from Mugabe Zazende in Nairobi…..hey, wonder if these guys are related??

  • Steve Woodruff says:

    Well – I can get you 30,000 followers AND a fortune hidden in a bank account ($3.3M!) from Mugabe Zazende in Nairobi…..hey, wonder if these guys are related??

  • brooklyndan says:

    This is true in search, too. Companies — sometimes big ones — buy “organic” backlinks. It ends badly, and these days it ends worse than ever. One seller of organic links actually vanished from Google for a couple of months until it promised to mend its ways. It’s like Billie Holiday wrote: “then it’s gone and the money ends, they don’t come round no more.”

  • brooklyndan says:

    This is true in search, too. Companies — sometimes big ones — buy “organic” backlinks. It ends badly, and these days it ends worse than ever. One seller of organic links actually vanished from Google for a couple of months until it promised to mend its ways. It’s like Billie Holiday wrote: “then it’s gone and the money ends, they don’t come round no more.”

  • Caroline says:

    I can get you 50,000 followers… also, I have this bridge I’d like to sell you…you’ll love it. It’s quintessential New York. IT’S YOU! Really…

  • Caroline says:

    I can get you 50,000 followers… also, I have this bridge I’d like to sell you…you’ll love it. It’s quintessential New York. IT’S YOU! Really…

  • daveevans says:

    This has been going on for *years* now. The majority of Twitter is this kind of crap and you are just now hearing about this and incensed? People buy tens of millions of Likes and followers on Twitter and Facebook every day. Its a huge sub-culture and lots of companies take advantage of it. I’ve learned recently that when my site was hacked by bad guys that my ad rates actually went up! FYI I trace this sort of thing back to MySpace Friend Trains. Might be earlier example but that was the first one that went big-time.

  • daveevans says:

    This has been going on for *years* now. The majority of Twitter is this kind of crap and you are just now hearing about this and incensed? People buy tens of millions of Likes and followers on Twitter and Facebook every day. Its a huge sub-culture and lots of companies take advantage of it. I’ve learned recently that when my site was hacked by bad guys that my ad rates actually went up! FYI I trace this sort of thing back to MySpace Friend Trains. Might be earlier example but that was the first one that went big-time.

  • donnapapacosta says:

    In my experience, when I look at the Twitter accounts owned by people who sell followers, they usually have pretty lame numbers. (Love your headline here, by the way, Peter!)

  • donnapapacosta says:

    In my experience, when I look at the Twitter accounts owned by people who sell followers, they usually have pretty lame numbers. (Love your headline here, by the way, Peter!)

  • Eric Burgess says:

    Social media marketers like these are the new Kevin Trudeau’s of the world. Watch out!

  • Eric Burgess says:

    Social media marketers like these are the new Kevin Trudeau’s of the world. Watch out!

  • John Baronian says:

    While I’m still laughing that the “About” page is in Flash I have to catch myself as I think of so many that I encounter who value the number over the relationship. It is exactly this 36-26-36 to 21,200 relationship that so many CEOs, Presidents, VPs — what I call the Socially Unaware– think they value. Numbers are easy, building relationships is hard, and ask our friends at Klout how hard it is to build numbers that reflect relationships is. Bravo Peter… this is a great teachable moment. Thank you Sensei —

  • John Baronian says:

    While I’m still laughing that the “About” page is in Flash I have to catch myself as I think of so many that I encounter who value the number over the relationship. It is exactly this 36-26-36 to 21,200 relationship that so many CEOs, Presidents, VPs — what I call the Socially Unaware– think they value. Numbers are easy, building relationships is hard, and ask our friends at Klout how hard it is to build numbers that reflect relationships is. Bravo Peter… this is a great teachable moment. Thank you Sensei —

  • I was recently also propositioned. In my case in was twitter automation gone wrong: http://www.georgiasapounas.com/2012/07/please-dont-use-an-automated-twitter-system/ Although twitter automation is arguably just about always wrong if not always.

  • I was recently also propositioned. In my case in was twitter automation gone wrong: http://www.georgiasapounas.com/2012/07/please-dont-use-an-automated-twitter-system/ Although twitter automation is arguably just about always wrong if not always.

  • pjperez says:

    I’m really surprised your lawyer asked you to remove the name of the company. I don’t see how outing them is any different than warning people away from any other bad service. Besides, they sent YOU the unsolicited email.

    Also, I am getting more and more of these all the time. I thought by now, with the LEGIT “bulk-adding” methods proven to be useless, that approach wouldn’t be a prime market for spam. Guess I was wrong …

  • pjperez says:

    I’m really surprised your lawyer asked you to remove the name of the company. I don’t see how outing them is any different than warning people away from any other bad service. Besides, they sent YOU the unsolicited email.

    Also, I am getting more and more of these all the time. I thought by now, with the LEGIT “bulk-adding” methods proven to be useless, that approach wouldn’t be a prime market for spam. Guess I was wrong …

  • I was in a meeting the other day and one of my colleagues half- seriously recommended buying followers for a client — in front of my bosses — as if this was legit — and I was like REALLY?!

  • I was in a meeting the other day and one of my colleagues half- seriously recommended buying followers for a client — in front of my bosses — as if this was legit — and I was like REALLY?!

  • There are no shortcuts. End of story.

  • There are no shortcuts. End of story.

  • Jo says:

    It doesn’t surprise me in the least, but it does crack me up that they clearly don’t know what you do or have ever glanced at your blog.

  • Jo says:

    It doesn’t surprise me in the least, but it does crack me up that they clearly don’t know what you do or have ever glanced at your blog.

  • Oana says:

    Funny in the sad way… I wonder if some really fall for this.

  • Oana says:

    Funny in the sad way… I wonder if some really fall for this.

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