The Business Model Book: Design, Build, and Adapt Business Ideas That Thrive
by Adam J. Bock and Gerard George
“A business model is the organizational design used to exploit an opportunity and create value.”
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Assemblage: The Art and Science of Brand Transformation
by Emmanuel Probst
“Assemblage is a French word that refers to the art and science of blending different eaux-de-vies (brandies) before bottling cognac. It is the craft of the maître de chai (also known as the master blender or cellar master) to select brandies from dozens of samples and craft a unique cognac… Assemblage is also a metaphor for building successful brands.”
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Broken Windows, Broken Business: How the Smallest Remedies Reap the Biggest Rewards
by Michael Levine
Broken windows theory came up in a recent conversation. The person I was speaking with said he read the book, but it quickly became apparent that we were talking about two different books. I was talking about Fixing Broken Windows, a book about crime control which I have previously reviewed. He was talking about Broken Windows, Broken Business, which takes the premise of the crime theory and applies it to business.
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Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works
by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin
Former P&G chairman A.G. Lafley and former dean of University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management Roger Martin explain, “in our terms, a strategy is a coordinated and integrated set of five choices: a winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, core capabilities, and management systems.”
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Brand Naming: The Complete Guide to Creating a Name for Your Company, Product, or Service
by Rob Meyerson
Which sounds more appetizing: Antarctic toothfish or Chilean seabass? Although they are the same thing, the latter sells much better. Likewise, a brand name can make a positive first impression or set the wrong tone. “‘Tronc to change name back to Tribune Publishing after years of ridicule,’ read one headline in June 2018… A mere 15 months after its announcement, Consignia was returned to sender, replaced by Royal Mail Group.”
Brand naming expert Rob Meyerson shares a process that balances creativity with discipline to avoid such disasters and arrive at “just one deliverable: a strategically optimal, legally available, linguistically viable, client-approved brand name.”
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Asking For Trouble: Understanding What People Think When You Can’t Trust What They Say
by Jon Cohen
In order to gain useful insights in market research, one must overcome “the illusion of interest.”
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Go Luck Yourself: 40 Ways to Stack the Odds in Your Brand’s Favour
by Andy Nairn
“After almost 30 years in advertising, I’ve often been struck by the pivotal role that chance plays… Luck remains a dirty secret because it’s seen to undermine the virtues of hard work, talent, and intelligence that are at the heart of any successful business culture… I believe that luck exists—and also that you can improve it.”
Andy Nairn is co-founder of Lucky Generals, a creative agency in the UK whose clients include Yorkshire Tea and the Co-op. His book consists of 40 bite-sized chapters divided into to four sections:
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Media Planning from Recency to Engagement
by Erwin Ephron (1934-2013)
Erwin Ephron was a media executive at several ad agencies. He was a proponent of the recency model of media planning, which aims to be present when people are most receptive to the advertising. Recency attempts “to intercept the next purchase with a brand message.”
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Hillstrom’s Pricing: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Optimizing Customer Behavior via Prices
by Kevin Hillstrom
This fascinating booklet is about how the mix of price levels a retailer offers in its selection of merchandise affects customer behavior. In his 30-year career in retail, Kevin Hillstrom worked for Nordstrom, Eddie Bauer, and Land’s End as well as 225 clients in his consulting practice.
The author examines sales data by price range, merchandise category, channel, and customer life cycle (new customers vs. repeat customers) over a span of five years. Most pages include a spreadsheet or graph showing data from a hypothetical company with declining sales, along with commentary on how the author analyzes the numbers to figure out what’s going on. The target audience for the booklet appears to be catalog and ecommerce retailers.
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2021 Castlin Manifesto: Strategy in Polemy
by JP Castlin
JP Castlin is a strategic thinker and consultant based in Sweden. Major themes in his Manifesto are complexity and emergent strategy. In the chapter on marketing, he is not shy about challenging prominent figures. The paper is 71 pages including an impressive 9-page bibliography with academic papers, articles, and books cited throughout the text.
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The Key Point 