1. Why Johnny Can’t Brand – Rediscovering the lost art of the big idea. Bill Schley & Carl Nichols Jr. This is one of the most exceptional books I have ever read. I have been working in brands for 20+ years and it made me think about things totally differently.
2. The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design : a Whiteboard Overview by Marty Neumeier. An exceptional and simple book. Again, its one of those ones that once you’ve read it will make you look at all brands and branding projects differently.
2a. Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-performance Brands by Marty Neumeier. Another great book from a very concise thinker and extending some of the thinking in the Brand Gap above. recommended by Chris Fitton. Thanks Chris.
2b. The Designful Company: What I love about this book is the simplicity of the thinking but the fact that it is matched to a great strategy. For me, no brand works without both. If you can’t get a concise message across to a customer as to why they should love your brand, how will they ever have time to hang around to find out. A great read.
3. Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands by Kevin Roberts. Another exceptional one – He was the man that identified the power behind emotive brands and emotion within branding. Anyway, one you have to read to understand what makes Apple/Sony/Nike etc great.
4. A Book About Innocent: Our Story and Some Things We’ve Learned by Innocent – A new entry at number four and a brilliant book. Read my full review here and a part review that I had to write (because I was enjoying it so much) here.
5. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. This was one of my fave books ever until I went to see MG speak in London and then bought Outliers which became my new fave. It sall about creating and understanding what makes a business suddenly explode in success.
6. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell – He is a great writer and an even better thinker. I just love this book. See a brief book review here.
7. The Momentum Effect: How to Ignite Exceptional Growth (Financial Times Series) by Jean Claude Larreche. A bit tough, but produces the thought that advertising is the tax you have to pay for being mediocre. If you create a better product, you will need to advertise less. With a bad product you have to work harder to even stand still.
8. Buyology: How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy is Wrong by Martin Lindstrom. Research is dead, long live really powerful brain scanning consumer insight.
I’ve written a brief book review here, but it’s well worth a read.
I’ve written a brief book review here, but it’s well worth a read.
9. The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle. A brilliant example of single minded determination to create a product that is better than anything else in the world. So many exceptional business lessons in this, it’s well worth the pain of the dull bits.
10. Brand Warriors: Corporate Leaders Share Their Winning Strategies by Fiona Gilmore. All sorts of little lessons and insights that really prove there’s nothing new in branding or advertising, just new ways of describing things. Make great product that is designed around your customers needs.
11. Wally Olins: The Brand Handbook by Wally Olins. This was the best book to understand branding, but i’m not sure it hasn’t been a bit left behind. For someone entering corporate life, it shows you how to not cock stuff up, but I don’t believe there are as many insights into how to create a great brand as there should be. You can read a review of this here.
12. E-myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber. Why entrepreneurs never make money. They create jobs and not businesses. If you are thinking about going out and starting your own business, you’d be a bit of an eejit not to read this first.
13. The Richer Way by Julian Richer – Now in its fifth edition! Brlliantly relevant. The first version of this, was one of the first books I read that seemed to show incredible customer insight. Richer Sounds, were in the Guinness World records for years with the highest sales per SqFt and this book shows some of their secrets. I met him at a conference once and he was Hugely impressive!
14. The Art of War for Executives by Donald G. Krause. It may be all a bit MBA for most thinkers, but it does give a simple lesson (similar to ‘Who Moved my cheese’) about a business needing to adapt to change in order to survive and thrive. It talks a lot about business (and therefore brands) becoming amorphous and being able to flow around problems.
15. Principles of Marketing by Philip Kotler, Gary Armstrong, Veronica Wong, and John Saunders. Yawn. I remember this all too well from College and still have a current copy now as it is the book that you use as a reference point. The hole of marketing can be explained with four box charts, Kotler and his mates show you how.
16. Azazel by Isaac Asimov. Nothing to do with branding, but lovely little parables about how your best intentions can be misinterpreted and my fave one about the author who thinks the world should move faster around him, but soon works out that you need time to think!
17. Other Guy Blinked: How Pepsi Won the Cola Wars by Roger Enrico. Always a good reference point. An insight into a back to back war in the 80′s where Pepsi pushed Coke so hard they forced them into launching new Coke – an abject failure – and Pepsi claimed this meant they had won the cola wars. hmmm.
18. Iacocca: An Autobiography by Lee Iacocca. Again, more of a general business book, but when he saved Chrysler, he did it all the time with 80% of the information and had a dread of MBA’s and their paralysis by analysis. Just a brilliant summary of an exceptional business brain and awesome strategic thinking.
19. Thinking in 3d by Andy Hanselman. Our good friend and death defying superhero. For a business to succeed, it needs to be clear and demonstrably different. Some fantastic examples (including my previous company Purple Circle on Page 54!!!) all through this book.
20. Boo Hoo: A Dot Com Story by Ernst Malmsten, Erik Portanger, and Charles Drazin. A very sad story of technology too advanced for the market and a company that got so consumed by its own PR that it forgot it needed to make itself easy to buy from and have a platform that actually worked!
21.Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson. Mice, cheese and little people with some simple parables to explain how to deliver change to your business. You can read a review of this great little book with a max 30 minute read time here.
22. Purple Cow: Transform your business by being remarkable by Seth Godin. As with all of Seth’s work this is a clear and concise summary of differentiation. Why, with any brand, product or service, to get noticed and succeed, you not only need to be good, but you need to stand out.
23. Rework: Change the way you work forever by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. This is the story of 37 Signals and how making things simpler, made them better. It’s the story of less is more and doing fewer things better. A simple and brilliant lesson for any brand or business and Basecamp, their project management software (that I use) is brilliant too.
24. The Advertising Concept Book: This is a book recommended by Al Davies (Find him on Twitter at @UnionGasworx) and what looks great about it is the fact that it focusses on the concept itself. You can put all the gloss and spin you want on an idea but a bad idea is still a bad idea, so this looks like it could be a great read. Thanks Al.
There are also lots of Websites that I love
These are the sites that I work with and use a lot.
Andy Hanselman Andy is a business advisor that we have worked with on many successful projects. He is my superhero as he is one of the few people I have found to give honest and brilliant advice every single time we have asked him
BeWILDerwood The Children’s adventure park and magical world in Norfolk and my favourite project I have ever worked on.
A Different View Brilliant advisors to the visitor attraction, arts, museums and leisure sectors.
Feefo Exceptional un-edited feedback that will help you improve your business.
Some exceptional blogs that cover branding
As above, these are the blogs that seem to really matter. They are the brand gurus and leaders that i really look up to for inspiration and ideas.
1. Freakonomics - Brilliant book and fabulous differentiated thinking.
2. Seth Godin - Always worth a read.
3. Guy Kawasaki - He’s pretty visible on Twitter too.
4. Mashable - One that came out of the blue but has immense power.
5. Malcolm Gladwell - One of the greatest thinkers of our time.
6. Martin Lindstrom and his many branding brilliance related projects
8. Ted
This is a site that has brought togther some amazing speakers from around the globe and delivers some of their talks, lectures, thoughts in a simple clear video format. Watch one of these a day and you will become very clever indeed.
This is a site that has brought togther some amazing speakers from around the globe and delivers some of their talks, lectures, thoughts in a simple clear video format. Watch one of these a day and you will become very clever indeed.
If you just watch one lecture, watch Sir Ken Robinson talk about Why schools kill creativity and it will change the way you look at education.
9. The Do Lectures - Talks that Inspire Action
10. Bitterwallet - Just a brilliant fun way of presenting consumer issues
Source: http://johnnylyle.co.uk/best-branding-books/
Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People
A great book that shows marketers of any product or service how to engage today's increasingly cynical consumers on deeper emotional levels. The case histories presented by the author's clients analyze demographic and behavioral shifts in populations and retail distribution channels, then show how all five senses can be used as powerful marketing tools to respond to those trends.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is the definitive text on branding. It provides you with pairing anecdotes about some of the best brands in the world, like Rolex, Volvo, Starbucks and Heineken. This book tackles one of the most challenging marketing problems today which is branding on the Web. By reading this book you will learn not only how to build a brand, but how to keep it alive.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is the definitive text on branding. It provides you with pairing anecdotes about some of the best brands in the world, like Rolex, Volvo, Starbucks and Heineken. This book tackles one of the most challenging marketing problems today which is branding on the Web. By reading this book you will learn not only how to build a brand, but how to keep it alive.
Unleashing the IdeaVirus
Unleashing the Idea Virus recognizes the importance of new ideas, change, and innovation within product or services. It also acknowledges the efficiency of creating a word-of-mouth atmosphere, as opposed to the more direct approach of marketing at people through excessive and expensive advertising. This book presents great case studies that will get your branding blood flowing.
Unleashing the Idea Virus recognizes the importance of new ideas, change, and innovation within product or services. It also acknowledges the efficiency of creating a word-of-mouth atmosphere, as opposed to the more direct approach of marketing at people through excessive and expensive advertising. This book presents great case studies that will get your branding blood flowing.
Experiential Marketing
This book is about moving beyond traditional "features-and-benefits" marketing. Inside you will find a revolutionary approach to marketing for the branding and formation age. It’s about showing how managers can create holistic experiences for their customers through brands that provide sensory, affective, and creative associations as well as lifestyle marketing and social identity campaigns.
This book is about moving beyond traditional "features-and-benefits" marketing. Inside you will find a revolutionary approach to marketing for the branding and formation age. It’s about showing how managers can create holistic experiences for their customers through brands that provide sensory, affective, and creative associations as well as lifestyle marketing and social identity campaigns.
Building Strong Brands
Building Strong Brands will show you how to deal with the fragmentation of markets by building brand identity, creating brand personality, and managing a brand system. It will show you how to break out of the box by considering emotional and self-expressive benefits and by introducing the brand-as-person, brand-as-organization, and brand-as-symbol perspectives.
Building Strong Brands will show you how to deal with the fragmentation of markets by building brand identity, creating brand personality, and managing a brand system. It will show you how to break out of the box by considering emotional and self-expressive benefits and by introducing the brand-as-person, brand-as-organization, and brand-as-symbol perspectives.
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