Here are 73 books that ZAG fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve been in the DEI trenches for over 20 years, and let me tell you, it's been one hell of a ride. As a Black woman navigating this shit show, I've seen it all—from clueless executives to well-meaning “allies” who can't get out of their own way. My passion? Calling out the bullshit and actually making DEI work. I've gone toe-to-toe with tech giants, founded Inclusology, and now I'm tackling a second PhD because I believe in the work, even at is most discouraging. DEI-ing is my no-holds-barred guide to creating real change. I’m all about busting AI bias and building DEI that sticks, not just some feel-good fluff.
This book had me saying, “Finally!” It taught me to let go of the nonsense and focus on what really matters. Mark Manson doesn’t hold back, and I appreciate that. This book is a reality check on how limited our time is—death is coming whether we like it or not—so we better start living right.
It’s not just a book; it’s a guide to cutting the crap and enjoying life before it’s too late.
New York Times Bestseller In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people. For decades, we've been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let's be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it." In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn't sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is-a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today.…
I’m a Grammy-nominated musician and creative who actually loves music, not as a vocation but as a cathartic practice and art form. Because I love music and the process of creating I also understood that no matter how much I love music that the love of it had nothing to do with the business of selling music. If I wanted to maintain the love I had to learn the business and find a way to continue to cherish the art while familiarizing myself with the business of art. I found peace and a deeper understanding of where I stood in the business and understanding that helps to keep the artist sane.
Unlike most music business books that are full of legalese and require an advanced degree, this book is written by a musician who appreciated the business but held firm to their creativity. The explanations of terms and anecdotes about why those terms matter and their practical application, helped me navigate a number of contracts as well as learning how to cope with and make lemonade from my bad business decisions. Though a little out of date in regards to advanced technologies and changes in the current business of music, there is still valuable information as we have to remember that the entertainment business builds new structures on top of old concepts. At its core these scenarios, terms, and industry hustles still apply.
Offers information for songwriters, performers and singers, and producers on the industry, including hiring managers and accountants, establishing a budget, and copyright and contract law
I’m a Grammy-nominated musician and creative who actually loves music, not as a vocation but as a cathartic practice and art form. Because I love music and the process of creating I also understood that no matter how much I love music that the love of it had nothing to do with the business of selling music. If I wanted to maintain the love I had to learn the business and find a way to continue to cherish the art while familiarizing myself with the business of art. I found peace and a deeper understanding of where I stood in the business and understanding that helps to keep the artist sane.
A great guide to starting over, Do Cool Sh*t resonated with me so much while I was working a 9-5, touring, and being a multi-hyphenate at the same time. This book is about shedding the idea of what is “practical” while embracing the concepts of taking chances, failing, learning, failing some more, and understanding that all of these steps are necessary to convert dreams into realities. It’s a personal journey to being content, not complacent, understanding that sometimes it’s leaping off the edge, both feet at the same damn time.
Miki Agrawal opened Slice Perfect, her first farm-to-table pizzeria in New York City with zero experience and no capital. Since then she has watched her business grow exponentially, including a partnership with Zappos.com founder and bestselling author Tony Hsieh with whom she is opening her dream restaurant, Slice: Las Vegas. She's also become become an angel investor for other promising start-ups. In Do Cool Sh*t, she shares her own adventures in entrepreneurship, offering solid, easy-to-follow advice aspiring entrepreneurs can use to start their own business, fund it on a shoestring budget, convene the perfect brain trust to brainstorm a business…
I’m a Grammy-nominated musician and creative who actually loves music, not as a vocation but as a cathartic practice and art form. Because I love music and the process of creating I also understood that no matter how much I love music that the love of it had nothing to do with the business of selling music. If I wanted to maintain the love I had to learn the business and find a way to continue to cherish the art while familiarizing myself with the business of art. I found peace and a deeper understanding of where I stood in the business and understanding that helps to keep the artist sane.
I wish I could add the trilogy of Austin Kleon books; with Steal Like an Artist and Keep Going completing the trilogy. Show Your Work was the first book that I read that spoke to me about letting your supporters in on the creating. The sharing of exclusive content has become a staple for independent and major-label artists, Instagram, Tik Tok, and social platforms all rely on the need to share. For me this book was the progenitor of this line of thinking, encouraging the creative to share and disperse with the secrecy of process and move toward converting investors in one's product to investing in the person.
In his New York Times bestseller Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon showed readers how to unlock their creativity by stealing from the community of other movers and shakers. Now, in an even more forward-thinking and necessary book, he shows how to take that critical next step on a creative journey getting known. Show Your Work! is about why generosity trumps genius. It s about getting findable, about using the network instead of wasting time networking. It s not self-promotion, it s self-discovery let others into your process, then let them steal from you. Filled with illustrations, quotes, stories, and…
I am a Creative Director turned Brand Strategist who loves creating clarity for brand transformations. I do so for small companies and Fortune 500s alike, but the thrill is the same. At the end of the day that hands-on (actually more of a ‘brain on’) work coupled with my books on branding and my podcast Hitting The Mark (where I talk with some of today’s most mesmerizing founders about the intersection of brand clarity and startup success) is doing my part in creating more admired brands in this world. I hope the books on this list will inspire and enable you to do the same for your own company.
From brand strategy to design, from validation to cultivation, Marty’s delightful read will make you not only understand what branding is, but you will turn into a design advocate along the way. And, more importantly, it will make you understand what’s at the heart of any great brand: Customer experience. Marty further has a captivating style of storytelling. I promise you won’t be putting this book down once you started. Large typography and fun design make it a quick ‘airplane read,’ which is a format that definitely inspired me as an author.
THE BRAND GAP is the first book to present a unified theory of brand-building. Whereas most books on branding are weighted toward either a strategic or creative approach, this book shows how both ways of thinking can unite to produce a "charismatic brand"-a brand that customers feel is essential to their lives. In an entertaining two-hour read you'll learn:
* the new definition of brand * the five essential disciplines of brand-building * how branding is changing the dynamics of competition * the three most powerful questions to ask about any brand * why collaboration is the key to brand-building…
I'm a Distinguished Professor in the Michael Graves College, Kean University. I’ve written over twenty books about advertising, graphic design, branding, personal branding, creativity, and drawing. On May 17, 2022, Routledge will publish my new book, Strategic Creativity: A Business Field Guide to Advertising, Branding, and Design. I’ve won numerous awards for my design, writing, and research, including awards from the National Society of Arts and Letters and the National League of Pen Women. In 2015, I received the Human Rights Educator award, 2016 Kean Presidential Excellence award for research, 2013 Teacher of the Year, and the Carnegie Foundation lists me among the great teachers of our time.
You can find the latest international advertising news and views at Contagious.com and you can find what makes advertising contagious in this book. Contagious is a global resource for the marketing industry and this book encapsulates their secrets. It’s a must-read for any strategist, creative, producer, or marketing pro. What I admire aboutThe Contagious Commandments' approach is they emphasize thinking about the intersection of creativity, technology, and behavioral psychology, and never forgetting that the ideas you generate should not only positively impact the brand but society as well.
Contagion may alarm doctors but marketers thrive on it. Some concepts are so compelling you have to share them. But what makes an idea so infectious you can't keep it to yourself? And how can brands produce these kinds of ideas intentionally rather than by chance?
Contagious, the globally renowned intelligence resource for the marketing industry, is dedicated to identifying and interrogating the world's most exceptional creative trends. And in The Contagious Commandments, Paul Kemp-Robertson and Chris Barth condense this valuable research into ten strategic takeaways for your own marketing revolution.
Taking inspiration from disruptive campaigns from the likes of…
Vanitha Swaminathan is the Thomas Marshall Professor of Marketing at the University of Pittsburgh and the Director of the Katz Center for Branding. Her research focuses on branding strategy with a particular emphasis on digital branding. She has published in various leading marketing and management journals including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science, and Strategic Management Journal. She is currently serving on a three-year term on the American Marketing Association Board of Directors and previously served in AMA’s Academic Council as President. She has co-authored the Fifth Edition of the world-renowned textbook Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity, along with Professor Kevin Lane Keller.
David Aaker’s Aaker on Branding is a must-read for those interested in the principles of branding. The book’s author David Aaker is known as the Father of Branding and is a prolific author, and branding expert. This book combines principles of branding from across his various books and is thematically organized into various topics including creating a brand vision, and creating and managing brands, among others. Readers of this book will also learn about maintaining the brand’s relevance over time. An excellent compilation of the principles that drive branding success.
"Aaker on Branding" presents in a compact form the twenty essential principles of branding that will lead to the creation of strong brands. Culled from the
six David Aaker brand books and related publications, these principles provide the broad understanding of brands, brand strategy, brand portfolios, and
brand building that all business, marketing, and brand strategists should know.
"Aaker on Branding" is a source for how you create and maintain strong brands and synergetic brand portfolios. It provides a checklist of strategies,
perspectives, tools, and concepts that represents not only what you should know but also what action options should…
I left the corporate pigeonhole in 2015 and flew out into the Great Expanse. Ever since, I have been a catalyst for people’s self-expression across different media and formats. My work is a direct consequence of this motivation. I am a person branding coach, writer, editor & book coach and voiceover artist. I prefer depth over width, silence over noise, calm over chaos. My thinking is a blend of structure and free flow. My work is more than just work to me: it is a core part of my being. Being of a contemplative nature, I often ask myself big questions about value- creation, impact, empathy, collaboration, etc. I live in the Indian city of Bangalore (Bengaluru) with my family.
I am a person branding coach. I help people build their person (aka individual) brands. I know
that the single most potent asset of every entrepreneur is their person brand. The more
distinctive this is, and the more convincingly the person communicates it, the better for them
and their business. Your person brand signals who you are, what you do, your core values, and
why someone should work with you, instead of with someone else. David McNally and Karl
Speak examine this concept threadbare and, in simple language, explain how you can build your
brand as an individual.
In this second edition of their classic book on personal brand, David McNally and Karl Speak show that developing a personal brand is not about constructing a contrived image. Rather, it is a process of discovering who you really are and what you aspire to be. The hallmark insight of this new edition is that the best way to establish a strong and memorable brand is to make a positive difference in the lives of others through making lasting impressions that build trusting relationships.
McNally and Speak take you through the process of identifying the key components of your brand,…
Since I was young, I was fascinated with how the mind works; how all of our thoughts, feelings, memories, decisions, and actions come out of this lump of flesh in our heads. I studied consciousness, psychology, and neuroscience both at university, and on my own for decades. Once I started working in marketing, for many of the biggest and best brands in the world, I realized that marketers tend to have deep misconceptions and misunderstandings for how the mind actually works. My goal is to bridge the gap between all of the knowledge we have about the brain, and how that could be helpful to brands and marketers.
This book goes even deeper into the neuroscience of brands, and how consumers make their decisions using mental models. This is a bit more academic, but can give a deeper and richer understanding of the processes at play in the unconscious mind when it comes to consumer decision making.
The Mental World of Brands provides a compelling new startpoint for developing new and better relationships between brand and consumer. It asks: how does the brain work? How does it form memories and associations, and how can we make best use of this knowledge to leverage brands and protect and expand market share?
The book shows how awareness is generated, how people put meanings to brands, and the importance of memory, emotion and language. It also discusses the use of brand research, not just as a separate academic area, but as an important part of the brand representation process.
Since I was young, I was fascinated with how the mind works; how all of our thoughts, feelings, memories, decisions, and actions come out of this lump of flesh in our heads. I studied consciousness, psychology, and neuroscience both at university, and on my own for decades. Once I started working in marketing, for many of the biggest and best brands in the world, I realized that marketers tend to have deep misconceptions and misunderstandings for how the mind actually works. My goal is to bridge the gap between all of the knowledge we have about the brain, and how that could be helpful to brands and marketers.
The Hidden Power of Advertising opened my eyes to a whole new way of understanding brands and marketing.
He makes a compelling case for how advertising works at an unconscious level,
and how marketers mostly ignore this powerful and hidden side of brands. He
shares powerful, eye-opening studies done directly on advertising campaigns,
and uses real-world examples to give practical advice that’s far from the usual
marketing advice.
The way advertising works is not so transparent after all. Advertising does have some sort of hidden power which enables it to influence us without our realising it.
The Hidden Power of Advertising presents a radical new challenge to traditional thinking about the way consumers interact with and process brand communication. For over 70 years the universal assumption has been that advertising is only effective if it consciously persuades consumers to choose a particular brand. In such circumstances attention is critical, which is why most of the advertising industry's creative resource is focused on achieving the highest possible levels of…
