It’s that time of the year where anybody and everybody ranks the best of this and the best of that. Last year while serving as co-guest host for the Fast Company blog, I compiled my list of Best Marketing Books for 2003. So I reckon this is now my Second Annual Marketing Books of the Year Awards blog posting.
Best Book Title
Rules of the Red Rubber Ball (Carroll)
I’m a sucker for great analogies and linking the carefree creative and playful spirit of childhood to a red rubber ball is bloody brilliant. (And the book is also bloody brilliant.)
2003 Recipient:
Your Marketing Sucks (Stevens)
Golden Raspberry Award for Insignificance in Business Book Publishing
Bang! Getting Your Message Heard in a Noisy World (Thaler and Koval)
Hated it. Ego-driven drivel from two ad execs on how to trick, deceive, and manipulate clients. For more on why I so hated this book, click here and scroll.
Clued In (Carbone)
A totally worthless read. Besides being god-awful boring, it does nothing to advance the notion that delivering great customer experiences is important. Nothing.
2003 Recipients:
Beans (Yakes and Decker)
Making Dough: 12 Ingredients of Krispy Kreme’s Sweet Success (Kazanjian & Joyner)
Best Marketing Advice Book
Renovate Before You Innovate (Zyman)
Why are so many companies transfixed on transformational marketing ideas when incremental ideas have more cumulative impact? With real-world examples galore, Sergio Zyman eloquently and effectively makes the case for marketing incrementalism.
2003 Recipient:
Lessons from a Chief Marketing Officer (Kirk)
Best Marketing Book to Generate Tactical Ideas
Ideas Are Free (Robinson & Schroeder)
Okay, Ideas are Free is not really a marketing book. But the tactical ideas the authors share on how to generate ideas from within inside a company make this book a must read for marketers.
2003 Recipients:
Meaningful Marketing (Hall)
How to Become a Marketing Superstar (Fox)
Surprise Book of the Year
Art of the Start (Kawasaki)
This is the best book I have read on how to turn a business concept into action. Besides giving sensible advice on everything from positioning to pitching to bootstrapping to writing business plans to recruiting to branding, Art of the Start will motivate you to make your new business happen.
Unstuck (Yamashita & Spataro)
Every team leader and every team member should have this book. Hmm … that means EVERYONE should have this book. Why? Because UNSTUCK is not really a book. It is a tool to get each of us thinking differently in order to get out of our personal and professional ruts.
2003 Recipients:
The Brand Gap (Neumeier)
Creating Customer Evangelists (McConnell & Huba)
The Philip Kotler Vanguard Lifetime Achievement Award
Sergio Zyman
The End of Advertising as We Know It, The End of Marketing as We Know It, and Renovate Before You Innovate are all enduring and endearing marketing book classics. (Disregard Brandwidth. We all make mistakes as Sergio did with Brandwidth and New Coke.)
2003 Recipient:
Al Ries and Jack Trout
Best Business Strategy Book
We the Media (Gillmor)
The Revolution Will Not Be Television (Trippi)
The Wisdom of Crowds (Surowiecki)
No matter if you call it bottom-up marketing or open-source marketing or participatory marketing … businesses that learn to relinquish top-down control over customers and instead choose to empower customers to co-collaborate with them will be rewarded with customer loyalty beyond reason.
We the Media explores the impact, the motivation, and the potential for citizen journalism. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised illustrates how the Howard Dean presidential campaign empowered ordinary citizens to assume the marketing leadership within a political campaign. The Wisdom of Crowds shows how the power of collective wisdom is more right than wrong.
All three books serve as the foundation for a monumental marketing movement that will shake the tectonic plates of corporate marketing forever.
2003 Recipient:
Double-Digit Growth (Treacey)
Best Marketing Book of the Year
FREE PRIZE INSIDE (Seth Godin)
Yes, I am a Seth Godin groupie. I have all his albums, including bootlegs only released in the Netherlands. If you need to be convinced to buy FREE PRIZE INSIDE, click here to read Brand Autopsy postings on the book.
2003 Recipient:
Purple Cow (Godin)
I agree.
Posted by: Brand Examiner Paul | December 14, 2004 at 12:04 PM
''rewarded with customer loyalty beyond reason''
great balls of fire!! this looks like the first public lovemarking to have crossed the screen/brain barrier!
The companies who use their customers to drive innovation will win. Those who do not will be featured on eBay and overstock.com
Posted by: the head lemur | December 15, 2004 at 01:41 PM
Very keen observation!
As I wrote in my CEO READ book review of Lovemarks, I didn't like the book. But I did like the killer branding concept Roberts articulates underneath all that ad agency drivel. That concept being: Brands that connect emotionally with customers and forge loyalty beyond reason transcend from being just a brand.
Posted by: johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) | December 15, 2004 at 05:17 PM
I had found this page when looking for "best marketing books". For other searchers I have found another pages with "best marketing books":
Three (Plus One) of the Best Marketing Books of 2005: Start Reading Here
http://www.marketingprofs.com/5/covert2.asp
Berry-AMA Book Prize For Best Book in Marketing Winners
http://www.marketingpower.com/content-foundation.php?Item_ID=15482
Top 10 Marketing Books You Should Be Reading
http://www.thechannelinsider.com/article2/0,1895,1472241,00.asp
I could recommend these authors: Kotler, Ogylvy, Zyman, Schmetterer, Ries, Trout, Wunderman.
Posted by: Robert Němec | October 02, 2005 at 10:08 AM