groundswell. winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff. 2008. ISBN 9781422125007. This is the seminal book on using social networking tools today. Forrester and these two authors have done the rest of us a terrific favour by putting this book (and blog http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/) together. This goes well beyond detailing how the tools are used by major companies, by closing the loop on how best to implement, with lessons learned and some of the red flags illustrated. It is on one book a blueprint of change I loved two comments - Your brand is whatever your customers say it is ( Its not about you) and Caterina Fake’s description of the “culture of generosity” (Ie why people add and edit content for free). I really enjoyed it and could not put the book down!

Accidental Branding. How ordinary people built extraordinary brands. David Vinjamuri. 2008. 9780470165065. This is a clearly written book about “accidental” entrepreneurs, who remained true to their brand promise. Vinjamuri has defined an accidental brand as one where:

1. An individual who is not trained in marketing must create the brand
2. The individual must experience the problem that the brand solves.
3. The individual must control the brand for at least three years.

So you will read about

• Craig Newmark of Craig’s list,
• John Peterman of J.Peterman,
• Gary Erickson of Clif Bar,
• Gert Boyle of Columbia Sportswear,
• two founders of The Art of Shaving,
• Julie Aigner-Clark , Baby Einstein videos and
• Roxanne Quimby of Bert’s Bees.

These are all unique individuals in different industries who remained

• really true to the customers “who bring ya to the dance”,
• they also were fanatical about details and product execution,
• they may have had one really lucky break in their business, and
• they have been able to capitalize on their success to go onto other things.

Well written and clearly in tune with the subject ( I love it when marketing folks write a book). This is a useful book in that it reinforces that for todays market, the customer has to know they receive real value from authentic vendors. (Sounds like the Go-Giver). The depictions are very authentic and real.

Its on Amazon

Customer Satisfaction is Worthless. Customer Loyalty is Priceless. Jeffrey Gitomer. 1998, 2007. ISBN 188516730x. This was the one Gitomer book I had not read. Each of his books is so much fun to read, and they are so right on the money. As a long time sales guy, I always learn something new from Jeffrey, including in his weekly newspaper columns., and sales caffeine newsletter. Priceless words on every page such as;

• Customer satisfaction is at an all-time high . Customer loyalty is at an all-time low.
• Companies only train once in a while instead of every day.
• 80 % of US business is based on Word of Mouth.
• Be a student first, always a student.
• College education prepares you to play “Jeopardy” and “Trivial Pursuit”. The rest of what you need to learn about your success you have to learn on your own.The courses you really need they never gave.
• He quotes Jim Rohn, “Formal education will earn you a living.Self education will earn you a fortune.You determine how much fortune you will earn by how much self-education you decide to get.”

This book overdelivers in true Gitomer style. He believes that serving is the extension of selling. We do too.

Hidden in Plain Sight. How to find and execute your company’s next big growth strategy. Erich Joachimsthaler2007.ISBN 978-1-4221-0165-0. Sometimes an academic book really surprises you. This is one of them. The author starts right at the heart of the matter, you can never know too much about your customer. Using examples from P&G., GE, Unilever, BMW and other very large companies he draws out how the ability to observe customer behavior up close, for a significant amount of time, has allowed these giants to recapture share and reinvigorate their market They can then successfully approach the target from a demand side rather a marketing driven side. The story of Mastercards Priceless campaign is worth the price of the book . As an added bonus you get the whole evolution of the Axe fragrance growth for the target US male demographic, directly applicable to B2C marketing. You could easily mistake this as a book about brand, brand image, brand identity and brand strategy (all very different), it is that and more. It reinforces the research at Rocket Builders on the importance of knowing everything there is about the buyer’s buying process and “holding” back selling until the buyer has been nurtured to be “sales ready”. This is the core of getting the most effective selling time you can. Read this book annually, the more you learn the better it gets.

Company Purpose is a Community Purpose

1. Tie to a movement
2. Use Web 2.0 viral growth models
3. Community policing
4. User content is free

a.

1. Tie to a movement
All people involved in our project (employees, clients, partners) are a community of like minded folks. This drives passion to make a change, to have an effect. Branding is achieved via a halo effect. i.e. if our intentions are good, and we mean to do good, we become good. Affiliation with a large movement drives down air cover marketing. Our costs to drive traffic are driven way down. If the movement is large and in the popular realm, then this just increases site value to advertisers as a means to better reach a targetted demographic. In our case advertisers think people will spend green to be green.

In any case paid ad spending for this segment is increasing. In 2006 True.com paid $90 M for advertising costs, Eharmony over $117M, Chemistry’s “Rejected” Ads were $10M. For paid sites it just gets harder and harder and takes more of their budget to maintain their advertising.

2. Web 2.0 viral growth
The web application cost is in supporting the spectacular member growth with hardware, not ads (since ad costs can be mitigated). All growth is self supporting. Members invite their friends. Web 2.0 site response rates support what members want, instant gratification, sign –up and you are live now! As a result SEO ranking grows and grows (Our Alexa ranking grows 10 000 spots every two weeks – with minimal marketing dollars).

3. Community policing
As your community grows they self police using our tools. They bring to light issues and report any misuse or misrepresenetation very very quickly. This removes a huge amount of administration and vetting costs. It is as much the users’ site as the company’s site which increases their attachment to pages, driving up stickiness. and reducing member churn, a big cost to “paid” sites. Reducing churn and driving down site operating costs drives up the company valuation.

4. User content is free (and it is topical)
User driven content really increases SEO ranking (more content, more links, more spider hits). This reduces our direct creation costs and improves our regionalization efforts. We have found this increases the number of site visits, prolongs attachment, visit times and frequency of visits. Also we notice North America is just beginning to get the degree of attachment to these issues that we already find in Europe.

Next: Valuation depends on what you are buying.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR. How to use news releases, blogs, pod-casting, viral marketing & on-line media to reach buyers directly. David Meerman Scott. 2007. ISBN9780470113455. This book could change your approach to the web. After devouring this book it has a record number of post it notes attached to pages. The “new style ” of writing books first in a blog and then into print is starting to generate more books like this one, chock full of very useful information and methods, vs academic tomes with thoughtful but less tested ideas. So many great ideas in this book, but one that comes up early is that Press Releases are read as much by buyers than any other group out there, due to search engine retrieval long after the release is out there. So you need to write your releases as much for your buyers as to media, and make sure they are always posted on your site media centre. This reinforces the need for all your web content to talk to buyers in their words about their issues, not how great your company or product is. One more reinforcement of the core research findings behind our Precision Sales and Marketing approach. A library keeper, but a working book, not just a reference.

Focus. The Future of Your Company Depends on it. Al Ries. 1996. ISBN 978006799908. Yes , 1996! Found this in a book-bin and realized that although I have read his successive books on marketing I never read the original book where he presented all his and Laura Reis’ research. This is a trip back in time, but his predictions are uncanny! Lesson learned, he suggested IBM should move to “open source” long long ago. I defy you to read this and not have second thoughts about brand, message, and marketing today. Absolutely timeless book, despite the examples being all over 11 yrs old! Great for the bookshelf and a regular reference book. Pretty cheap these days!