Today's brands face an apparent choice between two evils: continue betting on their increasingly ineffective advertising or put blind faith in the supposedly mystical power of social media, where “likes” stand in for transactions and a mass audience is maddeningly elusive. There has to be a better way . . .

As Lennon and McCartney wrote a half century ago, money can't buy you love. But in today's world, where people have become desensitized-even disillusioned-by ad campaigns and marketing slogans, that maxim needs an update: Money can't even buy you like.

That's because we've entered the “Relationship Era,” where the only path for businesses seeking long-term success is to create authentic customer relationships. Not through hip social media promotions, viral videos or blizzards of micro-targeted online ads. Those tactics, which simply disguise old ways of thinking with new technology, just don't work in the long run.

So what does work in this bewildering new era? Honesty. Tra