The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, 5th Edition

1The Old Rules of Marketing and PR Are Ineffective in an Online World

Several times in the past few years, I have thought about buying a new car. As it is for billions of other global consumers, the web is my primary source of information when I consider a purchase. So I sat down at the computer and began poking around.

Figuring they were the natural place to begin my research, I started with some major automaker sites. That was a big mistake. I was assaulted on the homepages with a barrage of TV-style broadcast advertising. And most of the one-way messages focused on price. For example, at the beginning of 2015 at Ford, ¹ the headline screamed, “Up to $1,000 Switch Cash OR No Payments for 90 Days.” Chevrolet ² announced a similar offer: “COMPETITIVE OWNERS GET $1,000 CONQUEST CASH.”

I'm not planning to buy a car in the next 100 hours, thank you. I may not even buy one within 100 days! I'm just kicking the virtual tires. These sites and most others assume that I'm ready to buy a car right now. But I actually just wanted to learn something. Sure, I got Flash graphics and animation, TV commercials, pretty pictures, and low financing offers on these sites, but little else.

I looked around for some personality on these sites and didn't find much, because the automaker websites portray their organizations as nameless, faceless corporations. In fact, the three sites I looked at are so similar that they're effectively interchangeable. At each site, I felt as if I was being marketed ...