Branding and Marketing Resources

Branding, identity, public relations, advancement, positioning, marketing—what does it mean and how can you cut through the jargon and expand your effectiveness as an institutional communications director? Read all about it! Listed here are a selection of my favorite resources, including some that are free.—Carol Cheney

Corporate Identity: Making Business Strategy Visible through Design Wally Olins, Harvard Business School Press, 1990. $50.00

Olins’s book was an epiphanous experience for me, providing, as it did, many insights into the linkages between corporate (institutional) culture and business strength. An astonishing number of schools are at a loss when asked to define the components that make up their image. Many mistake image for mission. And all too frequently the mission statement reflects a wish rather than the reality. “…all businesses already have an identity, and if that identity is explicitly controlled, it can be the single most powerful influence on the corporate culture.”

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Steve Krug, New Riders Publishing, Circle.com Library, 2000. $35.00

Says Roger Black in the Foreword, “Steve Krug is blessed with a kind of short-term memory loss that allows him to see every Web site as if he is looking at it for the first time. It is this freshness, combined with his amazing ability to accumulate practical experience from the way real people try to use the Internet, that makes this book so valuable.” We really like his advice on testing.

Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People Marc Gobé, Allworth Press, 2001. $24.95

This highly illustrated book really helps illuminate the magic ingredients that help you make connections with important audiences on a very personal level. In his introduction, Gobé lays out his ten commandments of emotional branding, and readers should not be surprised to find a heavy emphasis on building relationships and trust. Take a look at how well you are living up to the promises you make to your constituencies and how to build an effective communications bridge to sustain your mission AND market share over time.

Evolve!: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School Press, 2001. $27.50

Quoting from Harvard’s blurb (why reinvent the wheel?), “…Kanter argues that the Internet and its associated technologies have at once enforced and enabled a new way of living and working she calls ‘e-culture.’ Derived from basic principles of community—shared identity, shared knowledge, mutual collaboration—this phenomenon is transforming both the business and the human side of organizations.…Evolve! provides a blueprint for what organizations at all stages of Net change must do to incorporate the powerful principles of e-culture into their business. It reveals what to change, how to change, and also what enduring principles should remain.” (I am assuming you’ve all read Bowling Alone, right?)

Guerilla Advertising: Cost-Effective Tactics for Small-Business Success Jay Conrad Levinson, Houghton Mifflin, 1994. $13.00

Levinson, also the author of Guerilla Marketing, presents creators of ads and ad campaign planners with great basic information and interesting examples, focusing on your communications objectives. I love his exercise in which he shows the reader how to write a six-sentence statement of strategy. You should try it!

Marketing Workbook for Nonprofit Organizations Volume I: Develop the Marketing Plan
Gary J. Stern, Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, 199?, $25.00

Says my friend marketing guru Jeff Wack about Stern’s predecessor book, “...it shows schools how marketing-based planning contrasts with the operations-focused planning that passes for strategic planning at many schools.” This updated volume explains the six P’s of marketing and how to use them effectively. It contains many reproducible worksheets.

Marketing Workbook for Nonprofit Organizations Volume II: Mobilize People for Marketing Success
Gary J. Stern, Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, 1997, $25.00

According to Frances Hesselbein, president and CEO of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, this book “leads the way to making every member of the organization, volunteer and staff, paid and unpaid, an effective marketing representative.” Volume II also is loaded with handy worksheets.

MarketingProfs.com
This amazing website is free and provides members with periodic e-newsletters and lots of juicy information on all aspects of marketing. One really helpful how-to is creating a positioning statement. Go there, you’ll love this resource.

Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
Harry Beckwith, Warner Books, 1997. $21.95

Harvard’s chaplain, the incomparable Reverend Peter Gomes, talks about how we have to “tangibilitate” our distinctive attributes to those audiences we hope to influence. Beckwith’s book is all about the art and craft of promoting services—a lively read. You will love his advice on planning (including many fallacies) and how prospects think.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! Al Ries & Jack Trout, Harper Business, 1993. $15.00

“Once you open your mind to the possibility that there are laws of marketing, it’s easy to see what they are...After years of working on marketing principles and problems, we have distilled our findings into the basic laws that govern success and failure in the marketplace.” So say Al and Jack in the introduction of this fast-paced, easy and helpful book. It’s one of a whole batch written by Ries and Trout and Ries and Ries.