Seth Godin, author and entrepreneur, crowned “king of marketing” by Forbes magazine chooses the best books on marketing.  Asked to summarise what constitutes good marketing, he says “the act of changing things for the better by telling true stories to the right people.”  He talks about how marketing has been revolutionised in the digital age and how it has remained the same.  To illustrate the former he chooses New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World by Kevin Kelly and to illustrate the latter, The Republic of Tea by Bill Rosenzweig, Mel and Patricia Ziegler.

Robert Jones, strategist at Wolff Olins, one of the world’s leading branding consultancies, chooses his best books on branding.  He defines a brand as “what you stand for. It’s the bigger idea that a product or a service or a company stands for in the minds of its customers, but also its employees, the media and investors.”  He chooses books specifically on branding, such as Brand Society: How Brands Transform Management and Lifestyle by Martin Kornberger, but also on the history of art (Ways of Seeing by John Berger) and history (Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari).

Steve Lance, author of The Little Blue Book on Advertising talks about the future of advertising and marketing. He chooses Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and What Sticks by Rex Briggs and Gregg Stuart and Up the Organisation: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits by Robert Townsend.