Advertising Age:
Tom Martin over at Advertising Age shares some of his biz book favorites for summer reading.
Enjoy the summer and the books. If you don’t see your favorite here, add it to the comments.
How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market by Gerald Zaltman.
I read this book a few years ago and it totally changed how I think about marketing to consumers. Zaltman has developed a technique he calls “metaphor elicitation,” which is patented, to mine the unconscious. Truly one of the most interesting and impactful books I’ve ever read.Margaret Mark’s The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes, which draws on Jung’s concept of archetypes. In the book, you are introduced to such archetypes as the hero, outlaw, lover, sage, magician, creator and innocent, and told that these archetypes cross lifestyle and cultural boundaries. I once used this book to help sell a truly great ad campaign by helping the client see how the work we created really spoke to a deeper need in his customers’ lives. So if you want get your inner account-planner geek on, read this one. You can thank me later.
Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business by Jon Steel.
As someone who has been in charge of biz dev at more than one agency and had my own gig for a while, I can tell you that Jon’s book taught me more than a few lessons on how to create and then sell ideas.Photo by Auroqueiro.