39 brilliant resources for marketing strategists looking to up-skill this April...

A note before I start:

It feels a bit strange writing about stupid marketing stuff when there are much more important things happening. 

There's been a lot of tone deafness from our industry already. Marketing is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

However, our industry will survive and life does go on in the background. So hopefully these resources might inspire or at least pass some time!

----------

I'm conflicted about predictions on the lasting impact of coronavirus on behaviour. Mass forecasting is often akin to throwing darts at a dartboard. We're in the eye of the storm and while we can make educated guesses (that's what we're paid to do), we've no real clue what macro trends are going to emerge and what behaviours will fall away.

As marketers and marketing strategists, instead of spending all our time ingesting or pontificating about the latest predictions, if you have the headspace now might be a good time to prepare for the calm after the storm.

Marketing is going to change. When the dust settles we're going to witness huge structural upheaval.

But two things will be guaranteed in this 'new world'.

1) The founding principles of marketing will continue to apply, so you better know them inside and out.

2) Investing time and money in up-skilling and practising lifelong learning will create a positive compounding effect on your career. 

So here's an incomplete list of brilliant (mainly free) resources for marketers looking to invest in themselves this month. Many of these I can vouch for as I've used them myself.

I've grouped the resources into four categories for simplicity. Feel free to add anything I've missed in the comments section below.

--------------

- Listen to deep conversations with the best in business

If feels like the world and its mother has a podcast now. Finding quality stuff can be hard, particularly in an industry that's so full of bullshit.

Here are some of my favourites.

Sweathead is an incredible resource. Mark Pollard just keeps churning out brilliant, candid interviews with some of adland's giants. The Facebook group is great too.

Scott Galloway is one of my favourite 'big thinkers' when it comes to business. His Pivot podcast in tandem with Kara Swisher is basically a weekly espresso shot lesson in finance, tech and strategy.

For some reason Real Famous isn't well known. But it gets some brilliant guests from across the industry to speak openly, just like Adam Pierno's 'The Strategy Inside Everything'.

Other podcasts I find insightful include Rachel Mercer and Shann Biglione's Overthinkers, EY's 'Lets' Talk Marketing' and the new 'On Strategy', which gets real strategists to break down the real story behind some of the world's best work.

- Invest in an online course

There are plenty of robust, comprehensive online courses with varying prices.

If you can afford it Mark Ritson's Marketing Week Mini MBA is starting very soon and is an incredible investment. The courses are versions of what Ritson has taught MBA students for years, delivered with his usual gusto and no bullshit attitude!

If you're looking to better understand the financial or commercial side of our business, I can highly recommend Harvard Business School's online courses. I've recently competed 'Leading With Finance' and it has completely changed my understanding of how client and agency businesses operate.

I can also highly recommend the IPA's courses, including the Advanced Certificate and Foundation course.

At a much lower price level 42 Courses have worked with WARC and Cannes Lions on a new 'Marketing Strategy' course that looks very solid.

- Fall down a Youtube hole

Paying for an accredited online course looks good on the CV and guarantees a certain structure and level of quality. But in reality lots of the same content is available for free on YouTube if you know where to look.

Here are some of my favourite channels that touch on business, marketing and strategy.

I find ID Comms' YouTube series #MediaSnack incredibly useful for giving a modern perspective on how marketers should think about media. David and Tom give away a huge amount of insight and don't pull punches. The back catalogue is well worth a trawl through if you're looking to understand media better.

Marketing Week's YouTube channel has some incredible resources, including a multi part series on the secrets to marketing effectiveness and Mark Ritson's excellent Effie series.

This hour long documentary speaks to some of the industry's most interesting talking heads and goes deep into what skills a modern marketer should have.

APG's YouTube channel is absolutely full to the brim of short, insightful advice from some of the best strategists in the game.

There's also plenty of good stuff on the IPA channel, including this brave 17 minute presentation from Adidas media head Simon Peel explaining how the brand got their media mix and measurement approach wrong and what they're doing to fix it. It's an excellent case study in modern media planning dos and dont's.

And finally for something completely different. To be a great strategist you need to intuitively understand what drives your client's business. This is a complete MBA level Corporate Finance taught by renowned NYU professor Aswath Damodaran available FOR FREE. It's crazy what you can find on YouTube.

- Read and remind yourself of the classics

For less than €100 you can quickly build a library that includes the foundation texts of marketing. Even a quick skim of some of these books will make you better at your job.

The text that most marketers talk about (but relatively little have actually studied) is 'How Brands Grow' by Byron Sharp. Truthfully it's a stodgy read but it's hugely important to understand the key points in there.

I would also highly recommend Binet & Carter's 'How Not To Plan' and 'Eat Your Greens' as two excellent books that will quickly teach you a lot of the important stuff in our industry.

Paul Feldwick's 'Anatomy Of Humbug' is another book that really changed how I think about what we do

Rory Sutherland's brilliant 'Alchemy' and Phil Barden's 'Decoded' will teach you about how the mind really works and why we buy in the patterns we do.

I'd also cheekily throw in ShoeDog if you're going on an Amazon spree, simply because it's by far the best business book I've ever read.

But reading the classics doesn't have to cost you.

One of the most important seminal texts of marketing was written in 1974 and is still as fresh, vibrant and applicable today as it was back then. It's JWT's 'Planning Guide'. Find it here and devour it.

For more than a decade Binet & Field's reports have shook marketing with their clearheaded analysis of the IPA database. You'll find these scattered across the web if you look hard enough. Here's 'The Long & The Short Of It', their recent B2B report and here's a list of their most important charts if you want the cliff notes.

Ebiquity's 'Re-evaluating Media' is probably one of the most important effectiveness reports of the past decade and is available for free on their site. It will change how you think about managing and planning media.

| Absorb some of the amazing stuff other strategists share online

There's a whole host of smart marketers and strategists sharing stuff online.

Check out the archives of Helen Edward's excellent Marketing Week column or Martin Weigel's incredible blog.

Jerry Daykin's 'Digital Sense' series has been running for years and for me represents some of the clearest and most concise thinking on effective digital marketing.

Julian Cole is one of the most generous strategists around and his Planning Dirty archive is full of absolute gems. It has helped me hundreds of times. In particular 'Strategy Mate' is great for young planners.

Here's an online strategy scrapbook that's a great collection of models, quotes and other stuff.

The Open Strategy Google doc is a treasure chest of ideas, tools and resources.

BBH Labs' blog is an excellent resource. Here's a particularly good post about some marketing effectiveness foundations. Here's an incredible post on 100 things every planner should know.

And finally if you're a strategist looking to expand your career, here's the David J. Carr's Strategy Skills Matrix, a framework to think about training and development.

----------

Hopefully you find this useful. If you do please share with a young marketer or strategist who might find it valuable. It's a non exhaustive list, please add anything I've missed below. It's particularly male oriented too, so point me in the direction of any great resources from female contributors.

Two notes to finish:

1 - Clearly there are also lots of ways to improve yourself as a marketer that don't involve marketing at all. So if none of the above interests you, watch a documentary on a brilliant creative, read some fiction to inspire you, or listen to some brilliant music instead. Different strokes for different folks.

2 - Don't feel pressure to consume all of the above. There's too much going on in the world to feel pressured into being productive. If something intrigues you, follow it. If not and you just feel like eating two Easter eggs, drinking a bottle of red wine and watching Ozark Series 3 on Netflix all weekend, do that. It's precisely what I will be doing. Be kind to yourself. The resources above will still be waiting when this blows over.

----------

Shane O'Leary

@shaneoleary1

Join 2000+ other marketers by subscribing to my email list...