Influential Marketing Blog

The Influential Marketing Book List - May 2011

Who has time to read books? We all should, but it's tough to know what is worth reading. As an author in the midst of writing a new book, I have a unique point of view on what I look for in great books. The Influential Marketing Book List will spotlight and review the best new books relevant for marketers, entrepreneurs and those interested in business with ideas worth learning and sharing. 

1. Brand Atlas

Authors: Alina Wheeler & Joel Katz - http://www.brandatlas.info/

THE REVIEW: This book is the branding equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife, you'd never whip out all the tools at once ... but they are damn useful when used individually. The first thing that caught my eye about this book was the structure, created to mirror how an actual geographic atlas might be laid out (hence the title). Carrying through Alina Wheeler's trademark of beautiful layout and design, the book takes you on a journey through just about every important element of branding you could think of, from passion to positioning. Each page uses visuals and curated quotes from thought leaders to get you thinking about how that might apply to your brand. The best way to read this book is to skip back and forth between pages and ideas, with a notebook at your side to jot down notes and ideas that you are sure to get as a result.

THE BOTTOM LINE: A goldmine of ideas and resources to help anyone faced with the real task of figuring out what a brand stands for.

2. The Idea Writers

Author: Teressa Iezzi - http://www.theideawriters.com

THE REVIEW: I admit this book has been on my read list for months, and I only recently had a chance to read it - but it was worth the wait. In our world of instant content creation where anyone can become a "published" author - Idea Writers is a much needed rallying cry and inspiration for the professional writer. The author takes her considerable expertise at writing about brand marketing campaigns as Editor of Advertising Age's Creativity and delivers an inside look at how the role of advertising and the copywriter has evolved over the last 50 years. Deftly moving between the historical and modern perspectives, this book takes a sweeping look at advertising without becoming too academic or encyclopaedic. Many of the book's stories offer overdue credit to unheralded writers like Bob Cianfrone - the copywriter on CP+K's Subservient Chicken campaign for Burger King. For the sadly shrinking group of marketers and content creators who describe themselves first and foremost as writers, the author's takeaway message is clear: "if you're calling yourself a writer, you should be a strong writer first; you should be reading all you can and writing for all you're worth. If doing that doesn't appeal to you, maybe you should pursue some other creative path."

THE BOTTOM LINE: A much needed manifesto for the importance for high quality writing in marketing, advertising and our culture as a whole.

3. BOLD: How To Be Brave In Business And Win

Authors: Shaun Smith & Andy Milligan - http://www.boldthebook.com

If you believe everything you read, you might conclude that the biggest problem facing organizations today is the innovation gap ... most need to find a way to innovate more as an entire organization to drive their products or services. The premise of this book is that often innovation matters less than simple bravery. Through sharing the stories of 15 brands as case studies of companies who are bold and brave, it is only the last chapter of the book that is dedicated to sharing an analysis of what makes a BOLD brand and how you might go about creating one. Those last 15 pages are a guidebook to transforming an organization through 8 principles which are presented simply and clearly - they make this book an essential read.

THE BOTTOM LINE: An entertainingly unique marketing book that uses 14 well presented case studies as stories which lead to 8 core principles for how to create a BOLDER organization.

4. 15 Minutes Including Q&A: A Plan To Save The World From Lousy Presentations

Author: Joey Asher - http://www.speechworks.net/blog/

Most of us (myself included) avoid books that seem published simply to provide another piece of marketing collateral for a professional consultant. If that sounds familiar, you could be tempted to skip this little book by executive speaking coach Joey Asher, but that would be a mistake. In about 100 short pages, Asher shares some of the tips and tricks that have made him a successful consultant on professional speaking and presenting. While some of the tips in his book will seem quite obvious (eg - make sure to have 3 key takeaways from any presentation), the methodology he uses is useful for anyone who needs to present in front of a group. Packed together, this book is a quick read that delivers on its promise to offer ideas for how to make your presentations (and your delivery) stronger - and at just $3 for the Kindle version, it is a bargain.

THE BOTTOM LINE: A quick read of tips from a professional speaking coach on how to make your presentations 1000 times simpler and more compelling.

Review Philosophy (Why These Reviews Matter):

All the books that are reviewed in this series are worth your time. That's why you won't find any negative book reviews on this blog. As a Author myself, I have hundreds of book on my shelf and have researched hundreds more. I dozens of invitations to preview books and search online as well as looking at pitches to choose the 5 best books for marketing and busines readers every month to share here on this blog. Read my other book reviews at http://www.rohitbhargava.com/book-reviews/. 

Disclaimer: I have personally purchased many of the books reviewed in this blog, however many others are provided by publishers or an author for review purposes. In each case, the reviews of every book represent my honest and unbiased opinion about the book and are not paid or compensated for in any way apart from recieving a review copy or advance galley copy of a book at no cost. I have also used affiliate links for Amazon throughout this post.

To recommend a book to be featured in the Influential Marketing Book List, send an email pitch to influentialmarketing@gmail.com.

How Sharing Your Secrets Can Transform Your Business

Colonel Sanders has a trade secret. His special blend of herbs and spices is supposedly the secret formula that makes his chicken taste the way it does. When Pfizer releases a new drug, they spend considerable effort to protect their manufacturing process and are even more secretive about particular formulations that they are testing in their R&D division. Yes, when most of us think of company secrets, we think in terms of these types of proprietary information.

The only problem with this line of thinking is that it may be limiting your small business because in your desire to protect how you company works under the umbrella of trade secrets – you may be missing a golden chance for transparency that can transform your business.

In the social media era, you often hear advice telling you to be more transparent. Real transparency involves taking a bit of a risk and sharing something that you may have previously thought of as your own secrets. On the surface, this likely seems like a naive suggestion – what business owner in their right mind would willingly give up their secrets and competitive advantage?

If your business does involve the secret formula for the world’s best tasting rice cake, I’m not suggesting that you give that up.* Doing this right, however, can put your small business in a position of power and authenticity. Wondering how?  Here are a few tips and examples for how sharing your secrets might be the best thing you could do for your business.

Tip #1 – Share how much are you making.

For many businesses, one of their most closely guarded secrets is how much money they are actually making. Not necessarily in annual revenue, but on particular deals. The hidden margin is rapidly becoming a business process of the past. Media agencies now share more directly with their clients what commission (if any) they are making on media buying. When a developer creates an app and launches it in the iTunes app store, they know exactly how much of the revenue from people purchasing that app will go into their pocket and how much Apple will keep. Thanks to the Internet, many car buyers now go into the dealership armed with specifics about exactly how much a dealer is making on their car purchase. The point is, hiding your margin is becoming harder and harder – so why not come clean and share it directly with your customers? The upside of this is that it will also give you permission to share more directly what your hard costs are – so you can really prove to a customer that is squeezing you on price whether you actually stand to make any money from the deal.

Tip #2 – Share where you don’t make money.

When you walk into a McDonald’s and buy a meal, most of their margin comes from the drink and the fries. At a movie theater, the margin comes from selling the popcorn and snacks. There are good reasons why you wouldn’t want to call your customers attention to the places you aren’t making much money (not the least of which is that you would invite your customers to only interact with you on those low margin purchases). Instead, why not make the facts of your business and where you are NOT making money a strength for your business?  Most coffee shops now advertise that they offer FREE wireless internet access. Are they making money on this offering?  Not directly, but obviously keeping people in their shops to buy more coffee makes sense, and the expense of paying for wireless is justified. If you are footing the bill for something similar for your customers, make sure they know about it.  If you do services based consulting on a fixed fee, tell your customer how much time you ACTUALLY spent so they see the added value you have offered. Telling your customers about all the places where you are subsidizing the costs of doing business with them can help to shine a light on all the little secret things that your business does everyday which your customers aren’t charged for.

Tip #3 – Share the real size and skills of your team.

There is a temptation in most businesses to overestimate what you can reasonably deliver with your current staff. In some cases this may lead to overpromising something to a client, or you may work hard to hide the fact that your business is actually only run primarily by yourself and your spouse – even though your customer assumes you are much larger.  The ideal way to think about this tip is the same as when you go on a first date. You may not volunteer right away that you live at home with your parents, but eventually the truth with come out so you may as well be more upfront about it and deal with it proactively. It doesn’t have to be something to be ashamed of, though (and not that there’s anything wrong with living at home with your parents either!) A customer who knows you are upfront about your capabilities and your intention, perhaps, to grow your business in response to a new relationship will help them to see you as an honest and upfront partner committed to success.

*Sidebar – If you do, in fact, manage to find a way to make something as cardboard-esque as a rice cake taste remotely palatable, you have a trade secret worth patenting.

This post is republished from the original article on the American Express Open Forum website. It is part of "Small Business Friday" on this blog - a featured series on ideas and marketing techniques for small businesses.

To read more articles like this, visit the "Small Business Friday" category on this blog.

How Oprah Became Oprah (And What It Should Teach You About Marketing)

In 1986, there were certain rules of television that pretty much everyone followed. You expected news anchors to be buttoned up and serious when presenting the evening news. Television programs (as they often still do) presented a distorted view of reality that only slightly resembled real life, but still allowed you to escape into other worlds. And whether you looked at television as a source of information or one of entertainment - you certainly didn't expect it to openly and honestly mirror real life.

That same year, Oprah Winfrey's talk show was nationally syndicated and on air she broke the taboos and shared openly her story of having been sexually abused at age 9 by a relative. It was an honesty that no one expected to come on television, and certainly not from a talk show host. It set the pattern for what came to become one of the most honest and open shows on television for the next 25 years as Oprah not only asked celebrity guests to share truths about themselves, but also managed to continually find and openly share her own with a live studio audience.

The atmosphere she created was one of openness because she wasn't afraid to be vulnerable and share the deepest secrets about herself. How many people do you know like that? How many brands? As Oprah airs her final episode today, the lesson any of us in marketing should take from her is the unbelievable power that comes from being open and honest about the toughest things. Brands screw up, make bad decisions or bad products, implement the wrong strategy, or treat customers unfairly.

Those aren't the things that drive brands to lose trust and fail. The failure comes from not admitting those mistakes, letting employees be human, and building a deeper connection with customers. Oprah may have been the most believable personality in the history of television. As she signs off today, consider asking yourself one simple question: how could being more honest make your brand more believable?

How The Inventor of OREO Cookies Changed Marketing

In the book The End Of Overeating, former FDA Commissioner Dr. David A. Kessler delves deep into the food industry and talks extensively about how the industry has developed, marketed and promoted products to the American people. One of the stories he describes is the one of Roger Smith who was at one time the Vice President for Research and Development at Nabisco. His name is probably not recognizable to most of you, but he is the one behind two of the most iconic cookie brands every developed: Oreos and Chips Ahoy!

In the book, Kessler features the story of Robert Smith and describes the key insight that Smith reached while working at Nabisco - that "no single aspect of food - neither one ingredient nor one sensory property - gets us to like something. The key drivers are multisensory." TAs Kessler describes, this insight led to Oreos - a product where "unique bitter taste of the chocolate wafer, combined with the sweetness of the cream filling is what the industry calls "dynamic novelty." 

Dynamic novelty is all about creating a contrast between two opposing forces. The opposition creates harmony and by having both, you can stand out. When you visit in IKEA store, you can leave your kids at a play area to keep them occupied while you shop for furniture. By putting a day care and play room inside of their furniture store, IKEA created a dynamic novelty – inviting parents to bring their kids along for the boring activity of furniture shopping. This is certainly not the only reason why parents shop there, but it helps make the experience much better.

Do you have any dynamic novelties in your small business? If not, where might you create one to help bring more customers in the door to work with you or buy your products? Thinking about this challenge can help you to cater your business to people outside of your target audience who may be influencers that have an impact on whether someone chooses to do business with you or not.

This post is republished from the original article on the American Express Open Forum website. It is part of "Small Business Friday" on this blog - a featured series on ideas and marketing techniques for small businesses.

To read more articles like this, visit the "Small Business Friday" category on this blog.

Interruption Marketing 2.0 - How Engagement Can Be The New Dirty Word Of Marketing

The renaissance of marketing over the last decade has generally left certain things behind. We no longer count on loud billboards or long print ads, for example, to tell our story in a way that people will actually read. TV, while still important, is now a smaller part of the marketing mix. The art of marketing as an interruption has been rejected by brands in all industries, as the new holy grail has become engagement.

Unfortunately, in our world of ever present devices, constant alerts and multiplatform experiences - real time engagement has become a new a form of interruption, keeping us from truly enjoying a moment.

At the Mashable Connect conference last week, a hot topic was the future of social TV. As executives for SyFy, Bravo, and ESPN shared their views on how to make their shows more immersive - Sabrina Calouri from HBO shared the interesting learning from her audience that their programming was a "lean back experience."

Her point was that sometimes to be completely immersed in an experience, we just need to sit back and experience it. Then you can build social engagement tools around the community that wants to relive and discuss that experience afterwards.

The most profound lessons here that far too few marketing teams understand is that sometimes the most engaging social media strategy can be to just shut up and let someone enjoy the show.

Likeonomics: A Book About Believability

This past weekend at the Mashable Connect conference in Orlando, I offered a sneak peek at my next book project which I recently signed a deal to complete with a new publisher (Wiley). The working title for the book is "Likeonomics" - a book on how to be more believable in the affinity economy.

What Is Likeonomics?
Likeonomics is a term that explains the new affinity economy where the most likeable people, ideas and organizations are the ones we believe in, buy from and get inspired by. 

Likeonomics: The Book

Regular readers of this blog will probably recognize the term Likeonomics as one that I first introduced in my 15 Marketing Trends To Watch In 2011 presentation released earlier this year.

5 Communications Insights Leading To Likeonomics

The book will be based on 5 big insights into communications that have fundamentally shifted our understanding of how people choose to believe or reject ideas and messages. Each of these insights is something that has been reported over and over in media, extensively analyzed in best selling business and psychology books, explored through academic research and spotlighted in trend reports. Here are the trends:

1. There is a modern believability crisis.
2. People make decisions emotionally, not logically.
3. Stories are the most compelling form of communication.
4. Simplicity is the foundation of all great communications.
5. In strangers (and “microexpertise”) we trust.

You can read more about the upcoming book at www.likeonomics.com or join the Facebook page at www.facebook.com/likeonomics.  On the book website site, you can also join the official email list to be the first to find out when the book is coming out and receive an invitation later this year to join a reader panel to see an early version of the book.

6 Lessons From Jim Collins On Becoming Great

One of the most dynamic speakers you will ever hear at a live event is legendary business thinker and author Jim Collins. Through is best selling books and many talks at some of the world's largest business events, he often shares wisdom that is driven by his vast experience, but also easily understood and implementable by people in businesses of all sizes. Below are six of his most powerful lessons that stood out for me:

1. Run a pocket of greatness. Too many business owners try to expand and do too many things well. If you know that you are the best at something, then focus on that and make it into what Collins called a "pocket of greatness." When you have this, you have something that you can build from. Without it you can lose focus.
2. Double your questions to statements ratio. This is a slightly mathematical way of making the point that you need to ask more questions about your business and where you want to go instead of creating vast vision statements or bold declarations for your business without the right amount of thinking. When you ask more questions, you force yourself into the mindset of thinking about how you will ACTUALLY do something and what the barriers might be. It's an essential step towards achieving anything.
3. Spend less time trying to be interesting and more trying to be interested. Conventional marketing wisdom and most books focus on trying to help you find more ways to be interesting. I too write about this topic here and on my own marketing blog. The problem with focusing too much on this, however, is that you may be missing out on learning opportunities or leads or even just highly useful conversations if you aren't listening for them. So try to spend more time being interested in the people that you meet and ask them questions instead of focusing on yourself. You may be surprised with what you will find.
4. Turn off your gadgets and create white space. As Collins talked about turning off your gadgets, you could see the people in the audience shifting uncomfortably and the ones who had been checking their Blackberries or iPhones look up. Putting away your gadgets and being disconnected is hard - but if you can do it then you create essential time on your calendar every week just to think about your business and what else you could be doing. This is the time where the great thoughts stuck in your mind can find their way out - and it may become the most important time of your week.
5. Create a STOP doing list. Most of us have a to do list, but how many of us have a list of things that we should STOP doing? This is exactly what Collins suggested - to help you prioritize by clearly thinking about the things that may be wasting your time right now which you will stop doing.
6. Read beyond your field. One of Collins' most surprising habits was that he says he reads 100 books unrelated to business every year. This helps him to expand his vision beyond the world of business and think about other areas. It gives him an essential sense of the world and what is happening, as well as ideas that he can apply to his business and for the organizations with which he works. The same principle can work for you and your business. 

This post is republished from the original article on the American Express Open Forum website. It is part of "Small Business Friday" on this blog - a featured series on ideas and marketing techniques for small businesses.

To read more articles like this, visit the "Small Business Friday" category on this blog.

What I Learned From An Eccentric Norwegian Millionaire

By anyone's measure Christian Ringnes would have to be described as an odd man. He is a millionaire in Norway thanks to his real estate investments and well known thanks to his funding of philanthropic projects such as a $300 million sculpture park in Oslo. His wealth and noteriety has also afforded him the luxury to also create a monument to his surprising lifelong hobby ... collecting miniature liquor bottles.

It is a common collection among those who have travelled often - particularly on KLM where a blue and white set of Dutch house shaped liquor bottles have become so iconic they are actually still given out to passengers even in today's austere era of airline cutbacks. So when Ringnes' wife suggested that he find a better home for these bottles which he had been collecting since childhood, he decided to do it.

That home is the world's only Mini Bottle Museum, which also doubles as an event center hosting parties and private events. After a day of discussions on corporate reputation at an event in Oslo, we ventured into the museum for a tour and private dinner.

A part of the tour was a home-video style introduction to the museum, recorded with Ringnes as the star. Throughout the video, visitors could watch his antics as he paid happy American collectors cash to buy their collections, wheeled 4 huge suitcases with his "bounty" onto airport trolleys, and even took his obsession a big step over the line by jumping into a tub full of (hopefully) empty miniature bottles.

The museum itself features a built in slide, a monthly award for the "tackiest miniature bottle" and even a fake brothel with a collection of 40 custom bottles from the 40 legal brothels in Las Vegas. All of which brings me to that marketing lesson that Ringnes offered through his museum: when you have a passion for something many people consider silly, the best thing you can do is not to take yourself too seriously.

Good advice even if you don't happen to be a quirky Norwegian millionaire.

What Is The ROI Of A Conversation?

Most students of any business course are taught constantly about the importance of having a good Return on Investment. Whether that "investment" is measure in dollars or in time that you or your employees spend trying to do something, we are taught that the benefit must be tangible when it comes back to your business. The problem that many businesses have when it comes to social media is that the ROI is not as simple to measure as putting a discount code into a print ad and then counting the redemptions.

During a presentation at the World Business Forum last year, Charlene Li, bestselling author of “Groundswell” as well as the brilliant new business book “Open Leadership” and a leading mind in how social technologies can be used for business, talked about this in her short presentation to a global audience of business people. At one point she asked all the members of the audience to shake hands with the person next to them. Then she asked them to describe the ROI of that handshake. It was a nice example of where the measurement problem lies - because most of us are not used to quantifying the value of social relationships and conversations

The irony is that most small business people know this inherently - and the process of trying to emulate big businesses is what drives them to forget. You KNOW that if your customer is the President of the local PTA and you do a good job for him or her, that they will help drive word of mouth about your business to other parents. You KNOW that having a positive review or endorsement of your business in the local paper will add to your credibility and increase consideration. In some cases, you may already be tracking the value of these instances in hard terms. But most of these sorts of activities don't fit neatly into a spreadsheet.

In fact, this situation is what creates the most skepticism about the value of social media for small business owners and whether or not to engage in using it. The solution is surprisingly simple. Stop comparing what you might do in social media and how you might measure it to something as tangible as a radio advertisement or sponsoring an event with a booth.

Instead, start thinking about the value of social media how you think about whether or not to attend a networking event. Or in the realm of customer service or loyalty for how you encourage your current customers to talk about you or come back to you over and over again. The ROI of focusing on these activities is huge – but it may not fit neatly into your spreadsheet.

Does that mean you stop attending events? Of course not. The ROI of a conversation may not appear for years, or it may happen tomorrow, or it may never happen. That is the way that relationships go. But the more of them you can create, the more you can increase your chances for positive outcomes.  You KNOW this already – just trust your instinct and start doing more of it.

This post is republished from the original article on the American Express Open Forum website. It is part of "Small Business Friday" on this blog - a featured series on ideas and marketing techniques for small businesses.

To read more articles like this, visit the "Small Business Friday" category on this blog.

The Campaign To Save NBC's Outsourced Ignites Racial Debate

Having moved from a city where political correctness barely exists (Sydney) to one where it was invented (Washington DC) qualifies me as something of an expert. The idea of the importance of being politically correct is good in principle ... because there are many things that people can unintentionally do to marginalize or demonstrate an ignorance for another culture or gender. Yet the downside of a culture where political correctness dominates conversations is that people are forced to demonstrate a fake indignity over certain things simply because they feel they are supposed to.

This week a campaign led by many South Asians and including people from many other cultures
has been leading the charge to save a comedy called Outsourced from being cancelled by NBC. It is about a call center based in India and the culturally shocking adventures of the one American who has been sent to India to manage it. Does the show make fun of India? Yes. Does it make fun of being American in India? Yes. As a result, there are many people who feel that the show is too politically incorrect.

The show is filmed in India and features a cast of nearly 100% actors of Indian origin. There was a time when if you asked anyone to name an Indian character on TV, the only name that would come up was Apu from The Simpsons. Recently there have been an influx of Indian actors in leading roles on Parks & Recreation, The Office, Scrubs, House, Heroes, Lost, ER and many more. A film set in India featuring an Indian story even won the Best Picture Academy Award in 2008.

So a show like Outsourced was perhaps inevitable as the next evolution - using an all Indian cast and putting a contentious social issue like outsourcing and the tension it causes between cultures front and center. The show is a comedy about the real life challenges of communicating across cultures - and that is the subject line for many of the episodes. As our world gets more global, this is a subject that we need to talk about and one that we need to laugh together about.

Outsourced is not politically incorrect toward Indians, it puts a spotlight on how funny and universal the idea of relating to someone from a different culture can be. The show is hilarious and this is a subject worth spotlighting through a primetime comedy.

If you agree, check out some of the links below and support the effort to save Outsourced:

NBC Outsourced Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/NBCOutsourced
Outsourced Twitter Account: http://www.twitter.com/OutsourcedNBC
Direct Email To Write A Letter Of Support: saveoutsourced@gmail.com

And a few video clips from the show:

• Say my name right! Madhuri clip
• Rizwan on Outsourced
• Parvesh Bollywood Clip
• Sasha on famous Dance Clip