We have seen the future and its name is Botox, a brand built entirely by public relations. No advertising at all. Sales in the year 2001 were over $300 million.

Then last year, after eight years of PR, Allergan, the makers of the product, launched a $50 million Botox advertising campaign. That’s exactly the way to build a brand. PR first to establish the credibility of the brand and advertising second to maintain the brand.

Before Botox, there was Viagra. Same strategy. Massive PR followed by massive advertising, a powerful combination. All the recent brand successes have been PR successes first and advertising successes second. Red Bull, Starbucks, Harry Potter, Palm, JetBlue, Linux, and many others.

Starbucks, for example, spent less than $10 million on advertising in its first 10 years. That’s less than one million a year, very little for a national brand.

The fastest-growing retail chain in the world is Zara, headquartered in Spain and now operating in 27 different countries. Zara does no advertising except for two sale ads a year.

PlayStation and PlayStation 2 were introduced with a fanfare of publicity and went on to become the leading videogame brand. Microsoft Xbox followed the same pattern. As a matter of fact, awareness of the brand reached an astonishing 75% before the first advertising ran.

What dot-coms became successful? Amazon, Ebay, Google, Yahoo, and a few others that relied primarily on PR to build their brands. Those that tried to do it with advertising alone were notable failures.

Fact of life No. 1: Advertising often gets the credit for PR’s successes. Advertising Age ran a special issue on the best advertising campaigns of the 20th century. The number one advertising campaign, as you might have guessed, was Volkswagen. The first ad, “Think Small,” was run by Doyle Dane Bernbach in 1960. Almost everyone credits this campaign for building the Volkswagen brand.

But in the year before the campaign started, Volkswagen was the largest-selling imported car in the country, with 19% of the imported car market. Volkswagen was already successful due primarily to favorable publicity. What the DDB campaign did was accelerate the brand’s success, which is exactly what the best advertising should do.

Fact of life No. 2: Advertising often gets the credit for campaigns that don’t deserve it. Take the Energizer Bunny, one of the most admired advertising campaigns of all time. Is Energizer the leading appliance battery brand? Of course not. The leading appliance battery brand is Duracell, by a big margin. Recently, MasterCard’s “Priceless” campaign has gotten a lot of publicity. Terrific, but Visa leads MasterCard by two to one.

Fact of life No. 3: Advertising dollars cannot compensate for the lack of favorable PR. The largest advertised brand in America spent $780 million on advertising last year. Do you know the name of the largest advertised brand? It’s not McDonald’s, Budweiser, or Coca-Cola.

The largest advertised brand in American last year was Chevrolet. Now let us ask you a question, what’s a Chevrolet? If someone told you they would meet you in their Chevrolet, would you be able to recognize the car?

What’s a Chevrolet? A large, small, cheap, expensive car…or truck. But you already knew that. Seven hundred and eighty million dollars, and there probably isn’t one thing stuck in your mind connected with Chevrolet. What a waste.

What’s a Volvo? Most people connect Volvo with “safety.” It was PR that built the safety po- sition for Volvo. And advertising reinforced it.

It’s what we call PR-oriented advertising. PR first to establish the credibility of the brand. Advertising second to reaffirm and reinforce the brand’s credibility.

Fact of life No. 4: Advertising agencies believe in PR, not advertising. It’s a paradox. The only industry that doesn’t believe in advertising is the ad industry itself because they do almost none. What the advertising industry believes in is public relations.

Advertising Age and Adweek are the bibles of the agency business. If an advertising agency is not mentioned favorably and frequently in these publications, that ad agency is not going to make it in the advertising business.

For their clients, however, agencies believe in advertising-oriented PR. Advertising first to establish the creativity of the brand. PR second to take credit for the creativity of the advertising. Why the emphasis on creativity? Because agencies want the PR that comes with winning advertising awards.

Nobody has won more advertising awards than Budweiser. Their latest award winner was the Whassup? campaign, voted the best advertising in the world two years at the Cannes International Advertising Festival. What’s up is Budweiser advertising.

What’s down is Budweiser sales. Budweiser has lost market share every year for 13 years in a row. And this is the best advertising in the world? We wonder what the average ad would do for a client.

Fact of life No. 5: Advertising can be extremely effective if the message is right. What’s the right message for Budweiser? The right message for Budweiser or any well known brand is any advertising that touches an idea or concept that is already embedded in the prospect’s mind. Especially if that idea or concept contains a motivating reason to buy the brand.

What’s in the mind of the beer drinker? Budweiser is widely perceived as the “King of Beers.” Why would you want to drink the Queen when you can drink the King? The natural visual for Budweiser is the Clydesdales and the old-fashioned beer wagon, both of which reinforce the authenticity of the brand.

What’s the right message for Coca-Cola? What’s in the mind? Coca-Cola is widely perceived as “the real thing.” Everything else is an imitation. Whenever the media has the opportunity to squeeze in “the real thing” in a Coca-Cola story, they do so. It’s only Coca-Cola’s advertising that ignores this powerful message.

Fact of life No. 6: It’s PR that needs to be creative, not advertising. It’s a reversal of roles. Advertising should follow PR in both timing and theme. Advertising is a continuation of public relations by other means and should only be started after a PR program has run its course.

Advertising can be clever, compelling, interesting, involving, dramatic, dynamic, majestic, amusing and skillfully produced, among other things. It just shouldn’t be “creative.” That is, new and different.

It’s PR that needs to be new and different. That’s what the media want to cover, what’s new. Starbucks was the first European-style coffee house. Red Bull was the first energy drink. Palm was the first handheld computer.

Our message is simple. PR builds brands. Advertising maintains brands once they have been built by PR.

Al Ries and Laura Ries are the authors of The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, (HarperCollins, 2002). Their marketing strategy firm, Ries & Ries, is located in Atlanta, Georgia (www.ries.com).