How To Get Better At Brand Strategy

Here's what I asked recently on LinkedIn:

Brand strategists: what do you read; who do you follow; what resources do you use to continue to develop your brand strategy skills?

I was blown away by the responses.??(I hope I’ve tagged you all in the comments – thank you!).

I promised to collate it all, adding to the recommendations I shared, then pop it back on LinkedIn; so here it is.??It covers books, podcasts, newsletters, subscriptions and people. If you want this as an easier-to-read pdf - just click here.

Enjoy - and don’t get overwhelmed.??There isn’t a brand strategist out there who reads and follows all of this.??(Although I’m about to start trying…)

BOOKS TO HELP YOU GET BETTER AT BRAND STRATEGY

Books are the most radically condensed form of knowledge on the planet. Steven Kotler

In ‘The Art of Impossible’, Steven Kotler makes the case for reading books over any other form of content.??

He highlights the time taken to research and write one vs. the time it takes you to read it.??

Blogs – 3 minutes of reading gets you 3 days of someone’s time and effort.?

Articles – 20 minutes gets you four months.?

Books – five hours gets you fifteen years.?

So I had to start here!

Here's what the brand strategist community recommend you read in order to get better at brand strategy.

READ BOOKS AROUND THE EDGES.?

Not basic ones on what brands are, what brand strategy is. You know all this by now. Ones that help you go deeper, that cover things like:

1. BRAND STRATEGY CASE STUDIES

Be aware that they are rarely called this! What you're looking for are stories, ideally from the perspective of CEOs, that show how changes in a brand strategy improved a brand and business. Here are four of the best.

• Hit Refresh - Satya Nadella
• Shoe Dog - Phil Knight
• Grow - Jim Stengel
• Let my people go surfing: the education of a reluctant businessman?– Yvon Chouinard

Note that Grow has received criticism for the way the research was conducted - ignore those parts - and what they say the brands stand for. Focus on the case studies - they are illuminating.

Also look at:

Obsessed: Building a Brand People Love From Day One - Emily Heyward

This is strong on Start-Ups - it includes case studies from brands like Casper, Sweetgreen, Allbirds, Warby Parker and Glossier.

And R.E.D Marketing - The Three Ingredients of Leading Brands - Greg Creed & Ken Meunch

This is interesting since it's co-authored by the CEO and CMO of Yum! Brands (owners of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell among others).

“Research how companies succeed or fail and evaluate / deconstruct them. It can be from a book or watching a documentary. For example: what were the missteps taken by WeWork? What were the right steps taken at Nike? (No pun intended).” Richard Brown

Also consider books that help to guide CEO success. You want brand strategy to be a conversation in the boardroom, so learn to talk their language. Try:

• CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish The Best Leaders from The Rest; Dewar, Keller, Malhorta - McKinsey Partners

2. EMBEDDING BRAND STRATEGY INTERNALLY

• Fusion - How Integrating Brand And Culture Powers The World's Greatest Companies - Denise Lee Yohn.

One of the best books I've seen on the practical steps you need to take to ensure that brand and culture are truly embedded within an organisation.

• Reculturing - Design Your Company Culture To Connect With Strategy and Purpose For Lasting Success. Melissa Daimler

Practical; from her experiences at Adobe,Twitter, WeWork, Udemy.

• Win From Within - Build Organisational Change For Competitive Advantage - James Heskett

More academic, but full of data to prove out how culture impacts business success.

3. MEASURING BRAND EQUITY AND SUCCESS

Consider:

• Better Brand Health - Jenni Romaniuk
• Managing Brand Equity - David Aaker.??
• How Brands Grow - Jenni Romaniuk, Byron Sharp

The last one should be on your list if you haven’t read it yet. It's the book you need to read if you want to work more long-term with clients helping them grow brands through marketing. All chapters are data-rich to back up their strong assertions. Part 1 is CPG heavy, Part 2 covers emerging markets, services, durables, new and luxury brands.

4. HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY

“I strongly encourage anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a brand consultant to get serious about human pyschology...aka Behavioural Economics, Design Thinking, Service Design, CX etc. etc. Brands being the thing that connects people and businesses. I have come across brand strategists who look down on the entire discipline of research / insight. Highly myopic IMHO. When reframed as the exploration of motivations, needs, desires, hopes, aspirations, fears and insecurities (as opposed to "testing the ideas to see which one people like best" in a viewing facility near Slough) to inspire brand building, then understanding and engaging with customers becomes an essential skill of any brand strategist." Ned Colville

Recommendations in this area:

• The Art of Thinking Clearly - Rolf Dobelli
• The Science Of Why: Decoding Human Motivation and Transforming Marketing Strategy - David Forbes
• A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness - Roger L Martin.
• Anything by Yuval Noah Harari. (e.g. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century; Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow; Sapiens)?
• Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us, Jon Alexander

5. ANALOGOUS DISCIPLINES: AD PLANNING, DESIGN

If you want to dive into the archives, these 2 classics (1920 and 1974 respectively) are ones to look at.

• The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World - Peter Schwartz
• Stephen King's classic JWT Planning Guide:

Jeremy Bullmore - “adland's greatest philosopher”, and one of my mentors on the WPP Fellowship, sadly passed this year, but his great thinking lives on in his books, like Behind The Scenes In Advertising, and on the free site 'Best of Bullmore.'

Julian Cole ?is putting a lot of great free ad plannning/comms strategy resources out there, and there's also?Alex Morris's Strategy Scrapbook.

"I?like to read the posts of?Dave Trott?and?George Tannenbaum. Yes, their primary focus is advertising, but their years of expertise are a goldmine for all forms of communication and strategy." Paul Lewis

The best book on naming I've found is:

• Brand Naming: The Complete Guide to Creating a Name for Your Company, Product, or Service - Rob Meyerson

For books on design try:

• Design and Strategy - Wanda Grimsgaard
• Designing Brand Identity - Alina Wheeler.

“I also learn from reading books by designers (old and young; graphic, interaction and beyond): they often write in profound ways about their work and I find familiar brands and objects take on new meaning once the ideas and people behind them are revealed. As an example (it sounds a little on the frivolous side), over Christmas I read a book called 'Understanding Comics' by Scott McCloud and it absolutely blew my mind. There's stuff in there about purpose, form, idiom, structure, craft and surface which can be extrapolated to branding. And then there's fiction... Where would we be without that?” Nick Liddell

6. IF YOU FEEL YOU'VE LOST YOUR WAY A BIT....

Classic texts recommended by brand strategists when feeling a bit stuck on include:

• Good Strategy Bad Strategy - Richard Rumelt.

“It helps me remember why it's important to focus on connecting strategy with real-time actions (and why simplicity wins in the long run).”

Marty Neumeier’s work got a couple of mentions - particularly Zag and The 46 Rules of Genius.?

“Whenever I’m stuck I reach for one of those for inspiration.” Paul Lewis

Plus:

• Beloved Brands: The playbook for how to build a brand your consumers will love - Graham Robertson
• The work of Les Binet and Peter Field, 'The Long and the Short of It’, etc.'

Consider investing some time in studying how to do brand strategy work in the most productive way – to avoid, sadly oh-so-common, burnout.

Three books that have helped me in this area are:

• The Art Of Impossible - Steven Kotler
• High Performance Habits - Brendon Burchard
• Deep Work - Cal Newport.

And finally – make sure you find your way, your voice.??Here’s two brand consultants’ take on that.

• Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different, Sunny Bonnell, Ashleigh Hansberger

Ready for something a bit shorter?

PODCASTS TO HELP YOU GET BETTER AT BRAND STRATEGY

1. Siegel + Gale Says: gathers insight from across the global Siegel+Gale network on the issues and trends shaping the branding landscape.
2. Lippincott CMO Heather Stern’s podcast:?Icons in the Making.
3. Jim Stengel:?The CMO Podcast? - great guests on the topic of purpose-driven brands.
4. On Strategy Showcase: more advertising and marketing campaign focused, but cherry pick through the fantastic conversations on here.
5. Dig Insights: Dig In?(I share my thoughts on practical brand strategy in this one). Their focus is insights and research.

NEWSLETTERS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS TO HELP YOU GET BETTER AT BRAND STRATEGY

Off Kilter newsletter by?Paul Worthington?("which is a weekly treat and invariably contains links to other brilliant thinkers and thoughts").?

Jim Carroll's blog.

Alex M H Smith's strategy emails:?https://basicarts.org/newsletter/

Interbrand’s Now and Next newsletter.

StratScraps newsletter from?Alex Morris?https://stratscraps.substack.com

The Brand New site by?UnderConsideration, LLC?(“easily worth the annual subscription”).

“Nick Cave's The Red Hand Files blog is also brilliant. You've got to swim in the deep end.”? Richard Brown

“A subscription to HBR will pay back many times over.”??

McKinsey’s marketing and sales insights.?

The Design Business Association was also mentioned.

I publish Brand Strategy Smarter most weeks – sharing with you my learnings on how to, well, you’ve guessed it...??

WHO TO FOLLOW TO GET BETTER AT BRAND STRATEGY

These are the brand strategy experts that came up that you might want to follow on LinkedIn (ring the bells on their profile pages to get notified when a new post comes out).??In no particular order!?

Paul McGuigan

Wes H.

Matt Davies ??

Sunny Bonnell

Baiba Matisone

Mark Ritson

Byron Sharp

Nick Liddell

Uri Baruchin

Tom Roach

Paul Lewis

Graham Robertson

Orit Wittenberg

Guy Gordon

Rob Meyerson

Rory Sutherland

Nick Hynes

Rachel Murphy ChMC FBCS.

Uri Baruchin kindly gave some context on why follow his recommendations with his list:

"JP Castlin?offers most insight+theory per word count than anyone.

Dr Grace Kite?for quant that still sees the creative

Roger Martin?for the best balance of theory and practitioner insight?

Robert Rowland Smith?for the philosophy of business?

Vikki Ross?is indispensable for copy, brand, the industry, and everything

Casey Newton?for tech.

Natalie Wynn for the intersection of philosophy/ideology/gender/culture (on youtube)

Nicholas Thompson?The Atlantic

Richard Brandon Taylor?for FMCG

Richard Shotton?not only for his insight but also for excellent curation.?

J. Walker Smith?for research but much more

Martin Weigel?for deep advertising insights?

Gil Dibner?for VC stuff

Chris Arning?for semiotics?

Baiba Matisone?for her diligent curation of the discipline of planning and creative strategy.?

Simon Dixon?for design and creative leadership.?

Richard Brown?for beautiful human insights into branding in practice

Bryony Simpson?for the changing agency/client landscape

Cindy Gallop?is awesome; that's old news."

Some last words on this:

"Get out from behind a desk. Walk out of the office. Create a brand and business (and no not a consultancy). Feel the pain. Soak up the learning. I had my largest strat roles, and have done infinitely better work, AFTER I became and chef a restauranteur for 6 years. I realised for me at that point desks and offices weren't for me, but if you want to tell people how to do something, do it. Don't just read it or watch it on YouTube. You will never have the one thing that will make everyone a better consultant, empathy." ? Jason Hartley

“Surrounding yourself with people who already possess the skills and experience you want to develop is a HUGE advantage. Intelligence tends to cluster together, and it's evident on LinkedIn!”? Nick Burton

So please keep adding to this post with your advice, and share it with others who it might help.??Looking forward to hearing more of your recommendations!