Here are 100 books that Be Your Own Brand fans have personally recommended if you like
Be Your Own Brand.
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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 love this book because it nails the essentials of entrepreneurship. The author is a serial entrepreneur, venture investor and philanthropist who has set up and scaled up enterprises in Silicon Valley and India. He presents a set of principles, values and strategies to help entrepreneurs gain a lasting advantage – as opposed to a temporary one. He writes in simple English without resorting to jargon. The fact that he delivers his wisdom in nuggets makes it engaging and useful for the reader. At a time when most of the world merely skims the surface of anything, Desh Deshpande advocates depth — a philosophy I follow, too.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
As someone who’s lived through burnout and now helps people prevent it, I know firsthand that productivity isn’t about doing more—it’s about doing what matters, when it matters, without sacrificing your sanity, health, or relationships. Reclaim Your Workday was born from years of coaching teams and leaders to focus deeply, communicate clearly, and work sustainably in our always-on world. These books challenge the myth of hustle culture and offer practical ways to reclaim your time, attention, and energy—so work supports your life, not the other way around.
As a performance coach and speaker, I find his research relevant and doable. After Deep Work, I incorporated many of his findings into my business.
With Digital Minimalism, the content and strategies—along with the reasons why we need to minimize our digital world—were presented in a relatable and realistic way. Newport doesn’t say we should throw our phones away and never go online again. He’s practical, with examples of people seeking more solitude and less noise.
It’s the ultimate guide to focus in an era of distraction and a foundation for any sustainable productivity practice.
Many modern knowledge workers now spend most of their brain power battling distraction and interruption, whether because of the incessant pinging of devices, noisy open-plan offices or the difficulty of deciding what deserves your attention the most. When Cal Newport coined the term 'deep work' on his popular blog, Study Hacks, in 2012, he found the concept quickly hit a nerve. Most of us, after all, are excruciatingly familiar with shallow work instead - distractedly skimming the surface of our workload and never getting to the important part. Newport began exploring the methods and mindset that foster a practice of…
I have devoted my career to helping leaders navigate challenging transitions into new roles, build their teams, and transform their organizations. Strategic thinking is a key foundation of my work as an executive coach and advisor at Genesis Advisers and a professor at the IMD Business School. Whether executives are taking new roles or driving large-scale transformations, they must be able to rapidly analyze the context, craft good visions and strategies, and mobilize people to realize them. I try to equip the leaders I work with with the mental frameworks, tools, and skillsets to adapt and succeed in the first 90 days and beyond.
I liked that this book highlighted how supposedly tried-and-true approaches to innovation fail to deliver results.
The book’s insights about how to drive radical innovation informed the advice I now give executives about how to approach organizational transformation, starting with an ambitious vision, communicating the “why,” and enlisting great people to go on the journey with them.
It helped me to understand that building organizations to develop disruptive technologies requires leaders to envision things that may sound crazy until they are realized.
What Valuable Company Is Nobody Building? The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine. If you are copying these guys, you aren't learning from them. It's easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. Every new creation goes from 0 to 1. This book is about how to get there. "Peter Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how". (Elon…
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
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 was thinking of writing a book like this when I saw it in a bookstore! Someone had already written it! It tells us how various people from diverse backgrounds chucked their profession or job (because they didn't like it or didn't find it suited to themselves) to do what they really wanted to do.
I can relate strongly to this book because this is what I did too, a few years ago. The chapters are written in the first person by the people who jumped. This gives the reader a greater sense of live action.
Each story has a lesson or two. Read a story, mull over what you learned from it, and then move to the next one. This book should help you set the "caged bird of your heart" free.
If you're at a crossroads, this is the book you need to read to begin chasing your dreams. Includes a foreword by Sheryl Sandberg.
Do you have a little voice in your head telling you to pursue the thing you love? Leaving a comfortable job to pursue a passion is a brave, bold move - but it's far from impossible. In this inspiring read When to Jump founder Mike Lewis has curated a community of people to share their stories about taking the leap into the unknown - people from all walks of life who left the safe inertia of…
What other topic brings together human behavior, culture, business, the media, and more? And what other career allows you to use that understanding to produce compelling, entertaining, and persuasive communications across broadcast, streaming, social, outdoor, in-store, new product development, and other channels? That’s why I’m passionate about it. And that’s the passion I want to instill in my students, readers, and clients. So, who am I? I’m a professor and marketing consultant (copywritnig, creative direction, and marketing strategy) with large and small clients, and nearly 10 books on the topic. Read these books and I think you’ll become passionate about this topic too!
I love this book because it is clear, concise, and a fast read. This is one of those books you can truly complete in one sitting, but the ideas in it will keep you thinking for years.
In addition, it has lots of charts that make it easy to understand the concepts – while many other branding authors complicate their descriptions and definitions of these concepts. As a result, it has become one of my gold standards when I judge my writing.
Finally, it’s probably the book I cite and quote the most with my clients when I need to explain a brand-building concept to them. One more thing: If it doesn’t turn you into a design advocate, nothing will.
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…
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…
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
Jason Falls is an award-winning marketing strategist, author of three books, and host of two marketing-related podcasts. He has been listed as one of the most influential voices in the world of social media and influencer marketing.
This was the book that inspired me to switch careers. Wipperfürth details the rise of brands like Doc Martens, Napster and Pabst Blue Ribbon, all of which were WOM success stories. But he did so before the practice of word-of-mouth was openly practiced and promoted by agencies and consultants around the world. Still, you can see the brilliance behind the power of turning your brand over to your customers and how engineering that can happen.
A guide to successful branding without typical marketing practices introduces the concept of consumer-driven, or word-of-mouth, branding, in a practical guide that addresses such challenges as media saturation, consumer evolution, and the erosion of image marketing. 50,000 first printing.
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…
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.
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
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.
Admired brands usually look great. And they do so on purpose, and consistently. If I may tempt you to dig a bit deeper into the wonderful visual journey that is brand identity you may just get hooked. Alina’s book was a big inspiration for my first book and it will show you the power of great branding and design. If anything, you will turn into an educated client the next time you hire a designer. Those savings alone will be worth the money you spend on this book pick.
The bestselling guide to branding, updated with emerging trends and technologies Designing Brand Identity provides in-depth guidance for the entire branding team, with a universal five-stage process for brand development and implementation. From research and analysis through launch and governance, this book provides expert insight on all aspects of the process, and describes the best practices that build better brands. This updated fifth edition includes new and expanded coverage of social media cross channel synergy, crowdsourcing, SEO, experience branding, mobile devices, wayfinding, and placemaking, with 30 all-new case studies of top brands from various industries around the world. Fuel recognition,…
