New Rules of Marketing and PR | Public Relations | Marketing | Books | Artificial Intelligence
It’s the new, new! The 9th edition of my international bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR is available today in print and ebook editions the USA and Canada and will soon be available in other countries! First published in 2007, in the same month as the iPhone 1 was released, New Rules has been completely updated with new stories and strategies to reach buyers directly.
We have certainly come a long way in 17 years. When I was writing the first edition, MySpace was the most popular social network, Twitter and Instagram didn’t exist, and Facebook was only available to students. Now, very few people even remember MySpace, Twitter has become X, and Facebook counts nearly half the world’s population as monthly active users.
With more than 500,000 copies sold in English and available in 29 languages from Albanian to Vietnamese, New Rules is now a modern business classic. It’s used as a marketing and PR guide in thousands of companies and required reading in hundreds in marketing, journalism, and business courses at universities around the world.
If you’ve read previous editions, thank you! I especially want to thank all of you who have shared the ideas in the New Rules with your colleagues, followers, and students over the years. I’m honored.
What’s new in the 9th edition
By far the biggest change since the previous edition was published has been the explosion of Artificial Intelligence onto the marketing and public relations scene. Earlier editions did include an AI chapter where I shared how AI has become an important way to automate routine tasks to save time and money, as well as to increase the success of marketing and PR initiatives.
However, with generative AI services like ChatGPT, DALL-E, and soon Sora from Open AI, as well as similar services from Google and other companies, the world of AI has broken wide open—for everyone. In fact, the rapid growth of AI is the most significant development for marketing and PR since the first edition of this book back in 2007.
In addition to making repetitive tasks easier, AI has transformed the analysis of enormous datasets that was previously impossible for humans to parse (like analyzing how many thousands or even millions of users interact with your website, predicting what they will want next, and serving it to them when they need it).
The new chapter explores ways that AI can help marketers, such as analyzing which blog or email newsletter topics have the greatest chance of getting seen and shared, the best ways to write headlines for maximum exposure, the best time and day to post, which channels are the best to share on, and what hashtags are appropriate to use. As you consider AI in your organization, think about the routine tasks that drive business value that might be possible to automate. Even if you're not using AI yet, you need to know what's possible in this, the fastest-changing aspect of marketing.
What’s stayed the same
While there are always new tools and techniques, since 2007 I have taught marketing as a simple strategy. Rather than spend tons of money on paid advertising, traditional media outreach, and direct selling, focus instead on understanding the needs of buyers and creating the compelling content that will educate and inform them and that will build fans. This is a strategy used by tens of thousands of people who have read the various editions of my book and has led to many billions of dollars in profitable business growth.
It's super exciting to me that you can oversee your own success, and that hasn’t changed in 17 years.
Oh, and the ideas in New Rules make marketing and PR fun. It’s way more creative to create a video or write an interesting blog post or share an image to generate attention than to simply outspend the other guys on ads.
Educate and inform instead of interrupt and sell.
Here’s to your continued success!
