After a thorough research on Amazon’s best reviewed books, LinkedIn and Quora recommendations, I compiled a brief list of brand management books which I intend to read in 2012. I promise to keep the list updated and comment on them as I go through. Without further ado, here are my picks:
- (2011) Strategic Brand Management by Shahid Khan, Dr. Simon John and Marketing Club / link
- (2011) Brand Against the Machine by John Morgan / link
- (2011) Managing Product Management by Steven Haines / link
- (2011) Marketing Management 14th Edition by Philip Kotler and Kevin Keller / link
- (2011) Advanced Brand Management – Managing brands in a changing world by Paul Temporal / link
- (2010) B2B Brand Management – The success dimensions of business brands by Philip Kotler and Waldemar Pfoertsch / link
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A beautifully written piece by Milton Glaser on life, wisdom, creativity. It’s a powerful and challenging collection of ideas to which I often return in search of inspiration. You can find the 2-pages PDF here, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
I added below 2 of my favourite paragraphs from his speech:
“I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client (…) I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle” (lesson You can only work for people you like)
“(…) What is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.” (lesson Professionalism is not enough)
“The mark of an innovative company is not only that it comes up with new ideas first, but also that it knows how to leapfrog when it finds itself behind”
Walter Isaacson – Steve Jobs
Remember the old Robin Williams joke about his son’s future: “Hello Mr. President” or “Do you want fries with that?” Career planning at this point probably requires a combination of serendipitous opportunity plus being curious. This in turn requires an educated mind that allows for serendipity to play a large role in discovering opportunities and staying just outside of your comfort zone.
Live in the coolest place, I tell Cole and his brothers. Have the coolest friends. Do the coolest things. Learn from everything you do. Be open to new opportunities. And do something your father hasn’t yet figured how to do, which is every few years take off 138 days and just walk the Earth.
A thought-provoking article on life, creating learning opportunities and what kind of advice would a father give to his 7-years old son. (full article)
The SIGG bottle is one of the products I have come across not once and it’s a fantastic example on how to mix just the right dozes of design, creativity and marketing. Created and produced in Switzerland since 1908, the 100% recyclable aluminium bottle quickly became famous, making its way to the permanent exhibition within the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Once a niche product for climbers and hikers, it soon got adopted into mainstream as a fashionable daily accessory – it was versatile, had a funky design and was tapping into the trend towards sustainability and environmental awareness.
It’s really extraordinary the way they shifted the product in terms of marketing communication with the eco friendliness statement at its core.
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4 marketing lessons to learn from physics, a really awesome thing to observe while doing a parallel between these two. Of course, you still need plenty of imagination and creativity mixed in the pot, to actually spot the common grounds. This fascinating creative exercise is performed by Dan Cobley in his 7-minute speech at TED. Playing with these two, he soon unveils 4 rules that physics and marketing share in common:
#1 Newton’s Law – Force=Mass x Acceleration
The bigger the mass of a certain object, the more force is needed in order to change its course.
The same can be applied to brands: the more massive/complex a brand is, the more baggage it carries, the more effort is needed to influence its course in the market (think of positioning, advertising etc.)
#2 Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle
It’s impossible to measure precisely the state (position, momentum) of a particle, because the act of measuring it, by definition, changes it. The act of observation changes it.
It’s the same with marketing: the act of observing consumers changes their behavior, they get biased from the research. So, it’s safer to measure what consumers actually do instead what they say they do or intend to do.
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