Marketing Books
These books debunked a lot of what I was taught in my degree! I’ve included my favourite quotes.
Whether you work in marketing or not, everyone should read the first two books which have achieved cult status.
If key decision makers outside of marketing (CEOs, CFOs etc) can appreciate the need to invest in long-term brand building they will likely oversee significant growth and make the Marketer’s job easier too!
"Loyalty is largely underpinned by mental and physical availability not love/hate."
"People watch movies, listen to music and read books largely for an emotional ride. They enjoy gaining the same from advertising and when they get it they pay more attention."
"Marketing is particularly successful when it reaches light and non-buyers of a brand."
"Marketing best practice is to spend around 60% on brand building (the Long) and 40% on short-term sales activations (the Short)."
"It’s tempting to throw it all on short. Quick spend, quick returns, easily measurable. But once you switch this off, your sales collapse and you will find yourself in the dark. There is only so much low-hanging fruit on the tree..."
"It is perfectly possible to build a brand online, it just turns out to be much more difficult than anyone imagined. "
"We also seem infatuated with metrics and tactics that have little relation to our actual buying behaviour. Things like tweets, buyer personas, NPS (‘Net Promoter Scores’) and engagement rates."
"Your customers are mostly other brands’ customers who occasionally buy you."
"I have regularly seen it proven that social media advertising can influence the opinions and actions of hundreds of millions of people. The vast majority of those people, however, will never like, comment, share or actively engage with the brand in question at all."
"As David Ogilvy said, “Consumers don’t think how they feel, say what they think or do what they say."
"Trust grows at the speed of a coconut tree and falls at the speed of a coconut."
"The iPhone, perhaps the most successful product since the Ford Model T, was developed not in response to consumer demand or after iterative consultation with focus groups; it was the monomaniacal conception of one slightly deranged man."
"The Earl of Sandwich was an obsessive gambler, and demanded food in a form that would not require him to leave the card table while he ate. Weird consumers drive more innovation than normal ones."
