Here is a post by marketing guru  Seth Godin, best-selling author of “The Purple Cow”. He  provides a very interesting recap of his promotional strategy in launching his first self-published book. He mentions that the big break came when an excerpt from his book appeared in the magazine Fast Company. This illustrates the power of media in building sustainable brand awareness. The perception of a third-party media (Fast Company) endorsing his book by virtue of featuring it in their magazine, created a buzz amongst its readers. The clever promotional campaign around it made it just that much more stronger. The same principle applies to all of us. Word-of-media and word-of-mouth are the most effective in building brand beliefs in the marketplace, while advertising and promotion are most effective in helping to remind the market what those beliefs are. When you know what your business stands for – and it’s compelling – use PR to  help generate stories and angles that reinforce it, and that the media would be interested in covering. An excellent book that illustrates this concept is “The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR”.