14 Essential Books about Branding and Advertising
Recommended by Bob Steele,
Advertising Copywriter and Branding Advisor
Today, there are thousands of books out there about branding, advertising, marketing, and writing. Which are the most rewarding? Here are the books I suggest you spend some time with. They're shown in alphabetical order by title.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand
By Al Ries and Laura Ries (Collins Business, 2002)
Al Ries is well known for a series of books written with Jack Trout, including Positioning: the Battle for your Mind. I understand The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding was written largely by Laura Ries, Al’s daughter, but it reads very much like Al’s other writings.
Which is to say, you’ll find all kinds of insights about branding stated with a very strong point of view. We are, after all, talking about immutable laws here. I question a number of statements, and many branding examples are outdated. But taken as a whole, this is a provocative, entertaining, and informative book well worth the couple of hours it takes to read.
Quotes:
“Successful branding programs are based on the concept of singularity. The objective is to create in the mind of the prospect that there is no other product on the market quite like your product.”
“What’s a brand? A singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.”
“If you want to build a brand, you must focus your branding efforts on owning a word in the prospect’s mind. A word that nobody else owns…Once a brand owns a word, it’s almost impossible for a competitor to take that word away from the brand.”
“The most frequently violated law is the law of consistency. A brand cannot get into the mind unless it stands for something. But once a brand occupies a position in the mind, the manufacturer often thinks of reasons to change…Markets may change, but brands shouldn’t. Ever.”
Aaker On Branding
20 Principles That Drive Success
By David Aaker (Morgan James Publishing, 2014)
David Aaker, Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, has been called the father of modern branding. And for good reason. He’s written six highly respected books on branding strategy. This book offers a concise 200-page discussion of Aaker’s core principles about brand leadership and the creation of strong brands. For me, a key takeaway is that great brands convey a compelling vision and personality that goes well beyond functional benefits.
Quotes:
“What is a brand? Far more than a name and logo, it is an organization’s promise to a customer to deliver what the brand stands for not only in terms of functional benefits but also emotional, self-expressive, and social benefits.”
“When the brand vision clicks—is spot on—it will reflect and support the business strategy, differentiate from competitors, resonate with customers, energize and inspire the employees and partners, and precipitate a gush of ideas for marketing programs, When absent or superficial, the brand will drift aimlessly and marketing programs are likely to be inconsistent and ineffective.”
“Brand personality can be defined as the set of human characteristics associated with the brand…Personality is an important dimension of brand equity because, like human personality, it is both differentiating and enduring.”
The Brand Gap
How to Bridge the Distance between Business Strategy and Design
By Marty Neumeier (New Riders/AIGA, 2003)
Mr. Neumeier calls this a whiteboard overview of branding. It’s short—you can easily read it on a two-hour flight. But every word counts. The main idea is that a company needs to bridge the gap between its business strategy and its customers’ brand experience. The book describes five disciplines for brand building: differentiation, collaboration, innovation, validation, and cultivation. A useful 220-word brand glossary is also included.
Quotes:
“A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company. It’s a gut feeling because we’re all emotional, intuitive beings, despite our best efforts to be rational."
“When enough individuals arrive at the same gut feeling, a company can be said to have a brand. In other words, a brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.”
"Focus. Focus. Focus. These are the three most important words in branding. The danger is rarely too much focus, but too little. An unfocused brand is one that's so broad that it doesn't stand for anything. A focused brand, by contrast, knows exactly what it is, why it's different, and why people want it."
Q: How do you know when an idea is innovative? A: When it scares the hell out of everybody.
Brand Simple
How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed
By Allen P. Adamson (Palgrave Macmillen, 2006)
How can you make a brand stand out in the world’s increasingly crowded marketplace? Even more important, how can you make it succeed? Mr. Adamson answers those questions in a way that anybody can understand. His basic premise is that the best brands stand for something different and highly relevant to the lives of its customers. And what is different and relevant is made consistently simple to understand.
Quotes:
“The most powerful brands in the world, whether they’re big brands of small, are based on clear, gut-simple ideas.”
“If you want to win, you must know what you’re selling, find a way to prove that what you’re selling is different, and distill this difference into a focused and compelling idea that can drive and unite everything associated with your brand.”
“Capture the essence of your brand idea in a brand driver—a simple statement of what your brand stands for. Make sure it’s as succinct, as focused, and as compelling as possible. It has to be able to drive your branding signals, brand actions, and brand behavior—intuitively. It’s your brand recipe and it has to be simple to follow and remember by heart.”
Designing Brand Identity
An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team
By Alina Wheeler (Wiley, 2012, Fourth Edition)
Many consider this the branding Bible. It looks at virtually all parts of the brand identity process. The book is divided into three nearly equal parts: The first section covers the basics; the second, takes us through the branding process; and the third looks at best practices, including dozens of case studies. If nothing else, this is a great reference guide for brand champions.
Quotes:
“Who are you? Who needs to know? How will they find out? Why should they care?”
“Branding is about seizing every opportunity to express why people should choose one brand over another.”
"The best brands stand for something—a big idea, a strategic position, a defined set of values, a voice that stands apart."
"Authenticity is not possible without an organization having clarity about its market, positioning, value proposition, and competitive difference."
Hey, Whipple, Squeeze this!
The Classic Guide to Creating Great Ads
By Luke Sullivan with Edward Boches (Wiley, 2016)
I don’t know a single copywriter or art director who hasn’t read and admired this book. It offers both timeless information about traditional adverting and contemporary information about digital and social media. For someone new to advertising, it provides solid, relevant, hands-on advice about making ads. For established professionals, it reminds us of many, many things we already know but should always keep in mind. Hey, Whipple was originally published in 1998; a fifth edition has recently come out.
Quotes:
"A brand isn't just the name on the box. It isn't the thing in the box, either. A brand is the sum total of all the emotions, thoughts, images, history, possibilities, and gossip that exist in the marketplace about a certain company."
"Find the central truth about your whole product category. The central human truth. Cameras aren't about pictures. They're about stopping time and holding life as the sands run out."
[With an ad, you're looking for] "an idea that dramatizes the benefit of your client's product or service. Dramatizes is the key word. You must dramatize it in a unique, provocative, compelling and memorable way."
Kellogg on Branding
Edited by Alice M. Tybout and Tim Calkins (Wiley, 2005)
This book is a series of valuable branding articles written by the well-regarded marketing faculty of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. While not light reading, it’s like receiving the collected knowledge of 20+ people who have spent years researching and teaching branding at a very high level.
As Philip Kotler says in his Forward, “We offer this book as a treasure trove of ideas for bringing new life to your brand.”
Quotes:
“Branding is much more than attaching a name to an offering. Branding is about making a certain promise to customers about delivering a fulfilling experience and a level of performance. Therefore, branding requires that everyone in the supply chain—from product development to manufacturing to marketing to sales to distribution—works to carry out that promise. This is what is meant by ‘living the brand.’ The brand becomes the whole platform for planning, designing, and delivering superior value to the company’s target customers."
[With services brands] “The frontline employee is the brand for the customer…While all employees contribute to the success of a company, the individuals who interact with customers are key to establishing and maintaining customers’ perception of the brand. Consider the implications of that simple finding: that in many service settings, a million-dollar advertising campaign can be completely undermined by the inability or indifferent attitude of a minimum-wage frontline service helper.”
“When challenging larger, well-established, and well-funded competitors, start with a tangible point of difference that resonates with consumers…Second, create the impression that you are bigger than you are…Finally, be nimble in responding to changes in the marketplace, but be true to your basis of differentiation as you extend the brand.”
A New Brand World
8 Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century
By Scott Bedbury with Stephen Fenichell (Viking, 2002)
This is one of my favorite books about brands and branding. Scott Bedbury played management roles during pivotal branding periods for two of the world’s great brands: Nike and Starbucks. In this book, he tells us about those periods and countless other things he’s learned about branding over the years.
The book’s key idea is that for a brand to be successful in the 21st century, it’s critically important to form deep, enduring relationships with the brand’s customers. One chapter alone—Cracking Your Brand’s Genetic Code—is worth the price of admission.
Quotes:
“Every brand has at its core a substance that gives it strength. You have to understand it before you can grow it.”
“Cracking your brand’s genetic code is not strictly about product, about the past, or even about things—it is about tapping in to an essence and an ethos that defines who you are to the folks who matter: your core customers, your potential customers, and your employees.”
Ogilvy on Advertising
By David Ogilvy (Crown Publishers, 1983)
David Ogilvy opened his ad agency in 1949, and he soon became one of the giants of Madison Avenue. Today, his name is still on the doors at Ogilvy & Mather, one of the largest ad agencies in the world. Mr. Ogilvy believed that “advertising is salesmanship,” and he was famous for strongly worded guidelines, often based on research. While Ogilvy on Advertising is a bit dated now, it’s still considered one of the classic books on advertising, and much of the advice still stands.
Quotes:
“Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the brand image.”
“Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities…”
“If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.”
“…There are no dull products, only dull writers.”
“On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 per cent of your money.”
On Writing Well
The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
By William Zinsser (HarperCollins, 30th Anniversary Edition, 2006)
On Writing Well first came out in 1976, and it’s been in print ever since. This is a highly regarded classic on how to write nonfiction such as articles, columns, reviews, memoirs, and various forms of business correspondence. But if you genuinely try to use the principles Mr. Zinsser covers, you can improve any of your writing, including copywriting. The book is all about creating clear, direct, warm and personal sentences. And that’s the way it’s written. For my money, it’s one of the best books available on how to write.
Quotes:
“Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling with unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.”
“…The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.”
“Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds—the writer is always slightly behind.”
“Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around using a passive verb. The difference between an active-verb style and a passive-verb style—in clarity and vigor—is the difference between life and death for a writer.”
The One Show, Volumes 1-40
The One Club (One Club Publishing)
The One Show annual is consistently the best and most wide-ranging collection of the world’s advertising and design work. Every year, the newest annual showcases hundreds of print ads, TV commercials, radio spots, collateral pieces, and integrated marketing approaches.
In recent volumes, each piece shown is a finalist or award-winner that’s been selected from more than 18,000 entries representing nearly 60 countries. Pick up any volume you can get your hands on. If you’re an advertising person, you can’t page through these books without being inspired.
You might also want to look through issues of Communication Arts Magazine (CA), along with The Art Directors annuals and the British Design and Art Directions annuals.
Positioning
The Battle for Your Mind
By Al Ries and Jack Trout (McGraw-Hill, 2001)
This is one of the books that genuinely influenced how marketing is done. It started out as a series of Ad Age articles written in 1972 entitled “The Positioning Era.” Since then, as a book, it’s sold more than half a million copies. Today, the examples of successful positioning seem a little dated, but the ideas will always be relevant because they're based on how consumers think.
Quotes:
“In communication, as in architecture, less is more. You have to sharpen your message to cut into the mind. You have to jettison the ambiguities, simplify the message, then simplify it some more if you want to make a long-lasting impression.”
“The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already up there in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist.”
“Changing minds in our overcommunicated society is an extremely difficult task. It’s much easier to work with what’s already there.”
Selling The Invisible
A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
By Harry Beckwith (Warner Books, 1997)
This is one of several good marketing books written by Mr. Beckworth. It specifically looks at branding and selling what you can’t see: services. Written in brief sections—most are less than a page long—this book can be easily read in two or three hours. Time well spent if you provide a service.
Quotes:
“America is a service economy with a product marketing model. But services are not products, and service marketing is not product marketing. A product is tangible. You can see and touch it. A service, by contrast, is intangible. In fact, a service does not even exist when you buy one.”
“Create the possible service: don’t just create what the market needs or wants. Create what it would love.”
“Ignore your industry’s benchmarks, and copy Disney’s.”
“Marketing is not a department. It is your business.”
“If you’re selling a service, you’re selling a relationship.”
“Stand for one distinctive thing that will give you a competitive advantage.”
Zag
The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands
By Marty Neumeier (AIGA/New Riders, 2007)
In Mr. Neumeier’s first book about branding, The Brand Gap, he talked about five disciplines necessary to building a powerful brand. In Zag, he zeroes in on the first of the disciplines: Differentiation. In a nutshell, when others zig, you should zag. That is, when other companies are all going the same direction with their brands, you should take your brand in an entirely different direction.
Quotes:
“BE DIFFERENT. NO, REALLY DIFFERENT.”
“Differentiation, the art of standing out from the competition, is not front-page news. What is front page news, in a world of extreme clutter, is that you need more than differentiation. You need RADICAL differentiation.”
“Complete this sentence: Our brand is the only_____________ that ___________. In the first blank, put the name of your category (frozen pizza, furniture dealership, computer repair service). In the second blank, describe your zag (that tastes like Naples; that sells sustainably manufactured furniture; that makes house calls). If you can’t keep it brief and use the word only, then you don’t have a zag…”
“Onliness” is the true test of a zag. If you can’t say you’re the 'only,' go back and start over.”