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 of someone's expertise.

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 (if you're really starting from scratch, scroll down for the best ones on the fundamentals).

The are ones that follow help you go deeper, and 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.

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

When you really understand brand strategy, you understand that it's not just about guiding marketing and branding. it's just as much about engaging the whole organisation to deliver experiences that build the associations you want to stand for in people's minds (that's all a brand is after all, associations and assets! (More on that here)).

Read these three books to understand this better.

• 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

This one is really 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) 

5. ANALOGOUS DISCIPLINES: AD PLANNING, , NAMING, DESIGN

Orlando Wood is a great person to follow and read - his book Look Out is super on the importance of emotion in building brands in particular.

 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 brand strategy into design my favourites are:

• Branding in 5 and a half steps - Michael Johnson 
• Designing Brand Identity - Rob Meyerson and 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. BEST BRAND STRATEGY STARTER BOOKS (IF YOU FEEL YOU'VE LOST YOUR WAY A BIT...)

The top 3 in my mind are:

Nick Liddell's You are a Fish.

Don't be put off by the title - it's the best brand strategy book out there in my mind. And it's free here online.

Read also The Brand Book by Daryl Fielding. Super on the fundamentals and includes helpful tools.

And RED Marketing, The Three Ingredients of Leading Brands, Greg Creed and Ken Muench Great case studies, process and tools - particularly for consumer brands (it's written by the former CEO and CMO of Yum Brands who own KFC and Taco Bell, among others).

Marty Neumeier’s work - particularly Zag and The Brand Gap are also often recommended. 

And Dan White writes and illustrates a set of really short and accessible, insight-packed guides, like ‘The Smart Branding Book.’

 7. BUSINESS STRATEGY BOOKS

It helps to understand the difference and cross-overs from business to brand strategy.

Try these for starters!

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. Uncensored CMO.
2. Just Branding (I share my brand strategy framework in this linked episode, and in more detail in this free mini course here).
3. Unicorny. (Here's my two episodes on this one).
4. The Marketing Meet Up.
5. Marketing Week Podcasts
6. Kantar: Futureproof.
7. Siegel + Gale Says: gathers insight from across the global Siegel+Gale network on the issues and trends shaping the branding landscape.
8. Lippincott CMO Heather Stern’s podcast: Icons in the Making.
9. Jim Stengel: The CMO Podcast  -  on the topic of purpose-driven brands.
10. On Strategy Showcase: more advertising and marketing campaign focused, but cherry pick through the fantastic conversations on here.
11. 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

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