PPB January 2019

WATER COOLER Good Reads Improve your professional skill set and your company’s success with books written by advertising and branding professionals. As we’re entering the coldest months, it’s a good time to cozy up with a few great reads. Whether your focus is on building your personal brand or your company’s, getting the word out about new products, announcing your website launch or latest blog post, or growing your social media following, it can be helpful to learn about other perspectives or strategies used by professionals navigating the marketing and advertising realm. We scoured the depths of the web and found a few standout suggestions. (Note: these books have at least a 4.5-star rating on Amazon.) Bigger Than This: How To Turn Any Venture Into An Admired Brand by Fabian Geyrhalter Geyrhalter, a brand strategist who helped create more than 60 brands, shares how to turn commodity products into valued items. He discusses the eight traits that brands must use, which include story, belief, cause, heritage, delight, transparency, solidarity and individuality. ($14.95, five-star rating) Branding Pays: The Five-Step System to Reinvent Your Personal Brand by Karen Kang Kang, who has been referred to as the “master of personal branding,” shares her five-step process, which involves positioning, message, brand strategy, ecosystem and action plan, as well as a discussion about promoting through social media and blogging. Professionals have dubbed her book a must-read for those looking to transform their personal brands. ($15.95, 4.7-star rating) Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, studies word-of-mouth marketing, viral online content, how social influence shapes what we do, and why some products or services skyrocket in popularity and sales while others flop. ($14.50, 4.5-star rating) The Culture Engine: A Framework For Driving Results, Inspiring Your Employees, and Transforming Your Workplace by S. Chris Edmonds Edmonds, the founder and CEO of The Purposeful Culture Group, shares how to set up an internal structure that yields success for any business, with topics including how to outline and enforce organizational culture, how to better engage employees, and how to demonstrate desirable behaviors and attitudes. ($19.41, 4.6-star rating) | JANUARY 2019 | 77 THINK