Vicomte top marketing book recommendations

“What should I read to understand Marketing better”?

I get that question often from MBA students, or from entrepreneurs. The answer is: it depends on your own personal context and application.

To get you started on your own discovery of the wonderful world of marketing, and besides my own two books (of course), these 3 curated lists may help. They are all easy to download on your favorite book provider.

1. On Marketing “Dark Magic” Basics (insights, branding, portfolio management, connections, renovation and innovation, pricing, metrics…)

• “How to think like Leonardo Da Vinci” / Michael J Gelb

The book above is the most topical one for a “Renaissance Brand lover". If you are a Da Vinci fan like me, enjoy these 3 additional sources before you dive into other classics: 1) “The Ugly Renaissance” / Alexander Lee, 2) “Da Vinci’s Ghost” / Toby Lester, and 3) “Da Vinci’s Demons” / TV series in the USA on Showtime

• “The Effective Executive” / Peter F. Drucker
• "Power Brands” / Jesko Perry et all (McKinsey)
• "Marketing and Finance: Creating Shareholder Value" / McDonald M.; Smith, B.; Ward, K.
• "Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie Or Die" / Eric Siegel
• "Power Pricing: How Managing Price Transforms the Bottom Line" / Robert J. Dolan & Hermann Simon
• “The Consumer Consulting Board: consumers shaping your business” / Insites Consulting
• "The Power of Habit” / Charles D. Hudigg
• “Hooked” / Nir Eyal
• “Nudge” / Richard H Thaler & Cass R Sunstein
• “ How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know“ / Byron Sharp
• “Value Proposition Design: How to create products & services customers want” / Alexander Osterwalder et all
• “Z.E.R.O. Zero Paid Media as the new marketing model” / Joseph Jaffe & Maarten Albarda

2. On Thinking Wider: "Marketing In a broader Societal Context"

• "Against The Gods: The story of Risk” / Peter Bernstein
• "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" / David J. Epstein
• “Dream Big: the Brazilian Trio Behind 3G Capital” / Christiane Correa
• “Growth: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies” / Jim Stengel
• “No Ordinary Disruption” / McKinsey Global Institute team
• “How We Got To Now” / Steven Johnson
• “Better with Age” / Peter Hubbell
• “The Second Curve: Thoughts On Reinventing Society” / Charles Handy
• “The Entrepreneurial State” / Mariana Mazzucato
• “The Wisdom Of Crowds” / James Surowiecki

3. On Staying Young Forever, on Entrepreneurship, and on Intrapreneurship.

• "The Start-Up of You” / Reid Hoffman & Ben Canocha
• “Multi-Potentialities: why some of us don’t have one true calling” / Emilie Wapnick (TED talk)
• “Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: How contrarian entrepreneurs create and capture extraordinary value” / Daniel Isenberg
• “Zero to One” / Peter Thiel & Blake Masters
• “Restaurant Man” / Joe Bastianich
• “Dealing with Darwin” / Geoffrey Moore
• “Angel Investing” / David S. Rose & Reid Hoffman
• “Venture Deals” / Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson
• “Start Up Boards” / Brad Feld
• “Applied Corporate Finance” / Aswath Damodaran
• "Narrative & Numbers" / Aswath Damodaran
• “Finish Big” / Bo Burlingham