Marketing Masters

Summer will not be here for several weeks. But having spent the Memorial Day weekend in hot and humid weather, I have mentally moved into summer thinking. Along with that comes summer reading.

Sunny days spent reading on the beach, or while lying on a hammock in the shade, are great ways to acquire information and knowledge. Although my bookcase is overflowing with volumes about sales, marketing, advertising and creativity, there are some books that are timeless masterpieces — packed with gems of wisdom that are only available through real experiences shared by the authors.

If you find yourself with time for rest and reading this summer, here are my recommendations for the ten best books that are entertaining and enlightening about the process of business and marketing. Don’t let the copyright dates on some of these fool you into thinking they are too out-of-date to be relevant. If anything, more people today should be learning from the masters of yesterday.

What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School by Mark H. McCormack. McCormack founded the company IMG (International Management Group) in 1960 and signed on golfer Arnold Palmer as his first client for representation. He went on to build the business into a mega company for celebrity representation (was first to get Tiger Woods) and earned himself a place on the list of Forbes 400 Richest Americans. McCormack’s book, published in 1984, should be required reading for anyone in business. It covers all aspects including risk-taking, sales, economic challenges and fluctuations, systems, processes, and people.

Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. Every time I watched the A&E show, Mad Men, I would think of this book. Written in 1963, about the same period as the setting for the show Mad Men, it chronicles the experiences of David Ogilvy as he took a start up business and turned it into the third largest agency in the U.S. The book is organized in a series of How To chapters, including How To Be a Great Client and How To Choose an Advertising Agency. Even if you do your advertising in-house, those chapters clearly indicate the way relationships must work if great advertising is to be the result.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout. The authors have taken marketing and broken it down into simple laws, easy to read, with case studies and examples provided to support each law. Although there is room for dispute with some of the laws, there is no dispute that complex ideas are easy to understand in their short and simple style of writing. It would be great to have the book re-released with updated examples (the book was written in 1993) to see how the laws apply with Web marketing and digital age communication changing the relationship between the marketer and consumer.

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. Hopkins was one of the first to combine science and art in selling products to consumers. He pioneered the use of psychology and the understanding of human wants and needs in crafting copy that differentiated products and motivated consumers to buy them. Scientific Advertising was written in 1923, before TV, before computers and even before radio was used as an advertising medium. So you might think this book would be totally irrelevant 85 years later. It isn’t. What motivated people then motivates them now. You just have to adapt Hopkins’ sage advice to today’s marketplace. (The book is now offered as a combined read with Hopkins’ biography, My Life in Advertising.)

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s easy to see why this book stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for so long. Published in 2000, the book applies the theory of epidemics, for which the phrase “tipping point” was coined, to define when momentum becomes unstoppable in all kinds of situations. Among them are examples from the world of advertising where Gladwell introduces the “stickiness factor.” This is one of those books that can change the way you think. (Gladwell continues to write breakthrough non-fiction with his book, Blink, and his most current release, Outliers.)

Being Direct, Making Advertising Pay by Lester Wunderman. It is not surprising that in The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell uses a marketing campaign created by Lester Wunderman to demonstrate his “stickiness factor.” Wunderman coined the phrase “direct marketing” back in 1961. He wrote this book in 1996, just as computers were becoming mainstays in American homes as well as businesses. The beauty of this book is that all of Wunderman’s examples and experiences in direct marketing can be easily adapted to e-mail marketing and Web marketing. Wunderman has been described as the most original thinker and practitioner in direct marketing.

Reality in Advertising by Rosser Reeves. Some call this the greatest book ever written about advertising. Unlike the others on my list, this is not an easy read. Reeves writes in an academic style, referencing real examples but never sharing the company names so you have to read between the lines to know who he is talking about. Reeves was the originator of the concept of the unique selling proposition as a way to differentiate a product to establish it’s brand. Reeves created advertising from the perspective that “If the product does not meet some existing desire or need of the consumer, the advertising will ultimately fail.” The book was written in 1959 and has been re-printed sixteen times.

Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith. As we become a society more focused on selling services than manufacturing products, the invisible is increasingly what drives our markets. Beckwith has one of the most direct and easy writing styles. His book is packed with examples of what to do and what not to do when providing service, advertising services, and marketing a service organization. And he links the invisible to companies that sell tangible goods, but use the invisible element to gain competitive advantage. Published in 1997, it is one in a series of books by Beckwith.

Why We Buy, The Science of Shopping by Paco Underhill. Having grown up in retail, I remember frequently switching out displays of merchandise to keep shoppers interested and to move products that weren’t selling as fast as my dad wanted. Little did I know as a kid working in my dad’s store that there was a sophisticated science about how people browse, shop, touch, try, handle and buy merchandise. Underhill captures the in-store experience but also has studied the factors that persuade us to buy when walking through a mall, in a downtown, or a major city.

The Fred Factor by Mark Sanborn. Attitude, passion, and caring are some of the ingredients that go into creating success as demonstrated in a warm and engaging way through the story-telling of Sanborn. Anyone in a capacity to deliver service should read this book. It is short, often humorous, and always right on target about how success can be the result of doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

The scope of these books will give you a broad basis of improved understanding about all aspects of business, with an emphasis on marketing. Unlike in school, however, this is just a recommended list. Reading them isn’t mandatory. But if you were looking for 10 titles to add to your library, these would be valuable purchases.

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