[Book Review] A Practitioner's Guide to Brand Associations

Source:  Ullrich Appelbaum

After languishing in the shadow of demand generation marketing for more than two decades, B2B brand marketing is experiencing a renaissance. Several recent research studies have provided insights about B2B buyers and the B2B buying process that make the value of a strong brand abundantly clear.

Most of what we know about building strong brands originated in B2C companies. In the 1930s, Procter & Gamble invented the business function that would come to be called brand management, and by the late 1950s, brand management practices had been widely adopted by U.S. consumer package goods companies.

Given the B2C origin of brand management, it's not surprising that many B2B marketers don't have extensive experience with some of the core principles of brand building.

If you're a B2B marketer who wants or needs to learn more about one of the fundamental concepts of building strong brands, you should put Ullrich ("Ulli") Appelbaum's new book on your reading list.

The Science of Brand Associations:  Win Minds, Win Markets (2025) provides a practitioner-focused primer on the vital role that brand associations play in building a strong brand. 

Ulli Appelbaum has more than 30 years of experience in creating brand strategies and building brands. He is the founder of First The Trousers Then The Shoes, a brand research, strategy, and training boutique. Previously, he held senior strategy roles at several leading advertising agencies, including BBDO, Leo Burnett, Fallon Worldwide, and SapientNitro. 

What's In the Book

The Science of Brand Associations contains four major sections.

In the first section (Chapters 1-4), Ulli Appelbaum provides a scientific definition of "brand" and "Brand Association Networks," and he uses principles of cognitive psychology and neuroscience to explain how brands are formed in people's brains.

He then describes how brands can carry meanings that extend beyond their functional attributes, and he shares research demonstrating the benefits of building strong and rich brand association networks.

The second section (Chapters 5-9) discusses how to use brand association networks to build strong brands. Appelbaum describes the types of associations brands should focus on (Chapter 5) and the critical role that distinctive brand assets play in building a strong brand (Chapter 6). In Chapter 9, he lays out 14 proven principles of brand growth.

In the third section of the book (Chapters 10-11), Appelbaum describes the reasons brands fail, and he discusses five strategies marketers or brand managers can use to overcome negative brand associations.

The fourth section (Chapters 12-13) addresses how to research and measure brand associations.

 My Take

The Science of Brand Associations will be a valuable resource for any marketer who is responsible for driving revenue growth at their organization. The book is short - just over 100 pages - and Ulli Appelbaum's writing style makes the book easy to read.

Advances in neuroscience and the behavioral sciences over the past several decades have given us a deeper understanding of how humans learn, how our brains store and retrieve information, and how memories impact human decision-making. To be effective, marketing must be designed to leverage how humans think and make decisions.

Appelbaum forcefully argues that brand associations are the single most important concept in marketing. He writes:

"In fact, understanding how brands are formed in the mind of consumers . . . and how to create and nurture strong and rich association networks around your offering . . . is the foundation of everything else we do in marketing and successful brand building."

Appelbaum supports this central argument with numerous references to the work of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists, as well as high-regarded research firms (including Ehrenberg-Bass, Ipsos, and Kantar) and respected marketing experts (including Byron Sharp, Jenni Romaniuk, and Kevin Lane Keller).

The Science of Brand Associations is purpose-written for practitioners. Appelbaum describes his book as "a sort of operating manual" that translates scientific research and evidence-based marketing principles into "practical and applicable actions intended to help brand stewards make better strategic choices and decisions . . ."

To support practitioners, Appelbaum includes several detailed "scorecards" that marketers can use to apply the principles and techniques he discusses in the book.

Appelbaum also includes several real-world examples in his book to illustrate various points. However, these examples are not very detailed. I wish that he had included at least a few detailed and rigorous case studies to support his most important points.

Even with this caveat, I strongly recommend that you take the time to read The Science of Brand Associations.

[Book Review] A Playbook for Leading Marketing in a VUCA (Volatile-Uncertain-Complex-Ambiguous) World

Source:  Greenleaf Book Group

Human beings are hard-wired to crave predictability and detest uncertainty. We all want to know that our decisions and actions will produce predictable outcomes or results.

The desire for predictability is equally strong among business executives, and for many years, business leaders have used management methods and processes designed to reduce uncertainty.

It shouldn't be surprising, therefore, that many CEOs and CFOs think that marketing should be reasonably predictable and become frustrated when marketing leaders can't answer what they see as straightforward questions.

Nor should it be surprising that many CMOs manage the marketing function in ways that are intended to reduce uncertainty, or that they lean into marketing methods and tactics that produce more predictable results.

These are the major issues that Kathleen Schaub addresses in her new book, Marketing in the (Great, Big, Messy) Real World:  Rewire Your Marketing Organization to Navigate Anything (River Grove Books, 2025) ("Marketing in the Real World").

In this important book, Schaub explains why the outcomes of most marketing activities are largely unpredictable, and explores what that inherent uncertainty means for managing the marketing function.

Kathleen Schaub is an author, speaker, and strategist on the future of marketing management. She led IDC's CMO Advisory practice for nine years, and she previously held senior marketing positions at several technology companies, including Sybase, Cadence Design Systems, and Vanstar. Schaub's extensive marketing leadership experience enables her to speak authoritatively about the intrinsic nature of marketing and the principles of effective marketing management.

What's In the Book

Marketing in the Real World contains a brief Introduction and three major sections.

In the Introduction, Kathleen Schaub argues that markets are what scientists call complex systems, and these systems have several characteristics that make them inherently unpredictable or, at best, only semi-predictable.

However, many CEOs, CFOs, and other senior leaders cling to the belief that the outcomes of marketing activities should be predictable. This view causes many senior leaders - including many marketing leaders - to attempt to bring marketing's uncertainty under greater control, something Schaub argues is essentially impossible.

Schaub contends that marketing leaders need to adopt new mindsets and management methods that embrace marketing's complexity and uncertainty and thus better enable marketing to succeed in the real-world environment. The rest of the book lays out Schaub's "playbook" for the necessary changes.

Part I of Marketing in the Real World (Chapters 1 and 2) sets the stage for the material in the balance of the book. Chapter 1 discusses the rapid rise of Taylor's "scientific management" methods in the early years of the twentieth century and explains why those methods don't work well when applied to today's marketing.

Chapter 2 introduces the new mindsets and operational shifts that Schaub argues are needed to enable marketing to thrive in a complex and uncertain environment.

In Part II of the book (Chapters 3-6), Schaub discusses the four mindset shifts that marketers and business leaders need to make to manage marketing effectively in the real world.

• Think Like an Investor (Chapter 3) - View marketing expenditures as investments that put funds at risk today with the objective of reaping significant gains in the future.

• Think Like a Navigator (Chapter 4) - View the market environment as constantly evolving, which means that marketing plans and the interpretation of marketing performance must be frequently adapted.

• Think Like a Statistician (Chapter 5) - Recognize that all future outcomes of marketing activities can only be described as probabilities.

• Think Like an Ecologist (Chapter 6) - Recognize that the performance of individuals on the marketing team is greatly influenced by the social, cultural, and economic context in which they work, and focus on developing an ecosystem that will facilitate high performance.

In Part III of the book, Schaub covers four operational processes or capabilities that have a significant impact on marketing success in a volatile and uncertain environment. She discusses the importance of leveraging both human intelligence and technological capabilities, the role of agile work processes, the use of integrated teams, and the importance of leveraging the attribute of complex systems known as emergence.

My Take

Marketing in the Real World will be a worthwhile read for anyone involved in leading or managing marketing in today's economic and competitive environment. The material in the book is insightful and well-organized, and Kathleen Schaub's writing is clear and engaging.

Schaub's book is particularly valuable in light of recent developments in B2B marketing. It's no secret that B2B brand marketing is experiencing a renaissance. A growing number of B2B marketers are recognizing the importance of having a strong brand, and several recent research studies have confirmed that importance.

Despite the increased attention, however, many B2B marketers continue to report that it is challenging to win support from their CEO and CFO for increased investment in brand marketing. This resistance usually stems from the difficulties involved in predicting and measuring the financial impact of brand marketing activities. In Marketing in the Real World, Kathleen Schaub provides perspectives marketing leaders will find useful in planning discussions with their CEO and CFO.

[Book Review] An A to Z Guide to the Craft of "Marketing with Words"

Source:  Kogan Page

Writing has been an integral part of my work throughout my professional career. I can't begin to calculate how many words or pages I've written over the past four-plus decades.

But even now, I regularly have questions about grammar, or style, or some other aspect of writing that I'm not sure how to answer. Over the years, I've assembled a small library of reference books to help me answer these questions.

I still have the Harbrace College Handbook I used in my undergraduate English course, and I frequently turn to Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. And, a couple of years ago, I added Ann Handley's great book Everybody Writes to my collection of go-to reference books.

I now plan to add Alan Barker's new book, The Complete Copywriter:  The Definitive Guide to Marketing with Words (Kogan Page, 2025), to my library of writing resources. The Complete Copywriter is an in-depth guide to writing marketing content, and it should be required reading for anyone new to the craft.

Alan Barker is Managing Director of Kairos Training Limited, a UK-based consulting firm focused on developing creativity and communication skills. He also runs the copywriting masterclass offered by The Chartered Institute of Marketing, one of the UK's premier marketing professional associations.

What's In the Book

The Complete Copywriter covers a wide range of subjects relating to writing marketing content. The book is structured in six parts.

• In Part 1 (Chapters 1-2), Barker discusses the attributes, skills, and habits needed to be a good writer, and he explains how copy (written content) works.

• Part 2 (Chapters 3-6) describes the three steps essential to planning any form of copy - understanding and profiling the reader, articulating the argument or proposition the copy will express, and determining what voice the copy will use.

• In Part 3 (Chapters 7-9), Barker explains how to structure copy for browsing readers and searching readers, and he devotes a chapter to the use of narratives (stories) in written content.

• Part 4 (Chapters 10-1) introduces the reader to the fundamental principles and rules of syntax and grammar.

• In Part 5 (Chapters 12-17), Barker describes how to develop a content strategy, and he explains how to create effective copy for several content formats, including websites, email, newsletters, press releases, and longer-form content such as white papers, blog posts, and thought leadership pieces. 

• In Part 6 (Chapters 18-19), Barker identifies the skills you need to be a successful copywriter, and he concludes the book with a detailed list of additional resources about copywriting and writing in general.

My Take

The Complete Copywriter will be a valuable resource for both beginning and experienced marketing writers.

For beginners, the book provides a thorough introduction to the craft of "marketing with words." Alan Barker writes clearly, and he makes the material in the book accessible to readers who don't have prior copywriting training or experience. He also includes numerous exercises throughout the book that should be particularly valuable for beginning copywriters.

The Complete Copywriter is also well-suited for beginning copywriters because it takes a broad approach to the subject. In the book's Introduction, Barker observed that most books about copywriting focus almost exclusively on advertising or sales copy, while marketing writers are now expected to produce several other types of content. This book focuses first on how to be a good writer and then discusses several specific content formats.

For experienced marketing writers, The Complete Copywriter will be an excellent reference book. Barker's treatment of content strategy and specific content formats is fairly basic, but I've found the chapters on syntax, grammar, and content structure to be useful.

So, whether you're a beginning or experienced marketing writer, The Complete Copywriter will be a useful resource.

[Book Review] How to Build the Strategic Human Relationships that Drive B2B Growth

Source:  Kogan Page

An old business adage states, "People buy from people." Other versions of the adage include:  "People buy from people they like" and "People buy from people they trust."

Whatever version, the adage makes the point that human relationships are vital to business success, just as much in B2B as in B2C.

This is the central theme of a new book by Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan. In Building B2B Relationships:  How to identify, map and develop key relationships to win more business (Kogan Page, 2025), Dr. O'Sullivan presents a compelling argument for the importance of high-quality person-to-person relationships in B2B, and he provides a detailed process for building such relationships intentionally and strategically.

Ryan O'Sullivan is a senior business executive, board member, business advisor, and university guest lecturer. He is currently a Global Account Manager at Introhive, a relationship intelligence and mapping company. Previously, he was a Regional Head (EMEA) at Infosys, a global IT services firm. Dr. O'Sullivan earned his PhD from the University of Portsmouth in 2022.

What's In the Book

Building B2B Relationships is structured in three parts.

Part 1 (Chapters 1-3)

In this part, Dr. O'Sullivan explains what trusted relationships are and why they matter in business. He also discusses the three attributes that are necessary to create trust - ability, integrity, and benevolence - and he describes how trust forms between organizations. Lastly, he introduces relationship mapping and explains why it's important.

Dr. O'Sullivan clearly states his view on the importance of relationships when he writes:

"It is my view, based on many years of experience, that strong relationships lie at the heart of successful B2B interactions. In a world where there is access to so much data and information, it is becoming harder and harder for many suppliers to offer a truly unique, differentiated product. Relationships are by definition bespoke and personal (even though of course they are often built in a business context), and thus continue to present the supplier with the opportunity to offer something different from their competition."

Dr. O'Sullivan also makes it clear that his book is focused on the importance of leveraging existing relationships. He writes:

"So, while there are many people out there today who can advise you on cold outreach strategies, this book takes a very different tack. It is focused on strategies to leverage your existing relationship network and will help to open your peripheral vision beyond what you might consider to be 'your network.'"

Part 2 (Chapters 4-6)

Part 2 of Building B2B Relationships describes Dr. O'Sullivan's three-step process for mapping relationships for business purposes, and he provides a simple but persuasive argument for each step.

• Step 1 is the initial identification and mapping of key stakeholders (". . . if you don't know who the key people are, how can you influence them?")

• Step 2 consists of research and intelligence gathering about the priorities of key stakeholders and other relevant factors (". . . if you know who they are but don't know what is important to them, why will they give you their time?")

• Step 3 involves the development of a detailed strategy for engaging the key stakeholders (". . . if you know who they are, and you know what is important to them, who is the best person to engage, through what channel, and with what message?")

Part 3 (Chapters 7-10)

Throughout Building B2B Relationships, Dr. O'Sullivan focuses on three specific use cases for relationship mapping - winning key deals, managing key projects, and managing key accounts.

In Part 3 of the book, he devotes a separate chapter to each of these use cases, and he concludes the book with a chapter discussing how to implement relationship mapping and how to take it to the next level.

My Take

Astute businesspeople intuitively understand the importance of creating and sustaining good customer relationships. But despite this recognition, relationship management doesn't always get as much attention as it deserves.

Many of us tend to think that strong customer relationships will naturally develop if we do the rest of our jobs well. We don't usually treat relationship management as a distinct "thing" that, in some circumstances at least, calls for a distinct, intentional strategy.

Building B2B Relationships provides a detailed roadmap for developing and executing an intentional relationship management strategy. As noted earlier, the book focuses on three use cases - winning key deals, managing key projects, and managing key accounts.

What these use cases have in common is that they are strategically important and can have a significant impact on a company's financial performance. Dr. O'Sullivan's relationship mapping process is clearly best suited for these kinds of game-changing scenarios.

Building B2B Relationships is well-written, but it often reads a little like an instruction manual. This is not a criticism of the author's writing style; it's simply a reflection of the book's subject matter.

Dr. O'Sullivan includes four case studies in the book, which help readers better understand how his relationship mapping process works in the real world. More case studies would have made the book even better.

Building B2B Relationships will be a valuable resource for anyone in a customer-facing role at a B2B company. The book will be particularly valuable for anyone involved in developing or managing a strategic account-based marketing or key account management program. If you're in such a role, you should put Building B2B Relationships on your reading list.

[Book Review] A First-Rate Guide to Optimizing the Value and Performance of Content

Source:  Content Science

Effective content has become critical to business success, as companies have faced successive waves of disruptive digital technologies. Therefore, the planning, creation, and management of content needs to be a core business competency.

This is the central message of Colleen Jones' new book, The Content Advantage, Third Edition:  Succeed at Digital Business With Effective Content (Content Science Publications, 2024).

The Content Advantage provides a detailed, evidence-based roadmap that business leaders and their teams can use to formulate a compelling content vision and strategy, design and implement efficient content operations, and optimize the performance of their organization's content.

Colleen Jones can speak with authority about content-related topics. She is the founder and president of Content Science, a professional services firm that works with companies in diverse industries to successfully implement content-dependent initiatives such as AI-enabled digital transformation, marketing automation and content technology selection and implementation, and customer experience improvement.

Before founding Content Science, Jones served as the fractional head of content and Mailchimp, and she has also led teams at Cingular Wireless and AT&T to improve customer experience across various touchpoints.

What's In the Book

The Content Advantage is about planning, creating, and managing all forms of content, or at least all forms of customer-facing content. It's not a book that focuses on content marketing per se, nor does it focus on specific types of functional content - e.g. marketing content, sales content, or customer success content.

Colleen Jones forcefully argues that content needs to be a core business competency and that content management should be a distinct business function.

Jones makes her views on this subject absolutely clear when she writes:

"This point bears repeating:  every company will need content as a core competency. And that competency will frequently cut across business functions . . . I now believe strongly in content as its own competency and that, at ideal maturity, it does not belong in other competencies or functions. Content is not design. Content is not marketing. Content is not product. Content is not information technology or engineering. Content is not support. Content is not public or media relations. Content is important to such competencies and functions, but content ultimately belongs in content." (Emphasis in original)

The topics covered in The Content Advantage will be familiar to readers with extensive content experience, but Jones brings a fresh perspective to many of these topics. Here's a brief overview of the major topics covered in the book.

Chapters 1-2 - How digital technologies are continually changing the requirements for business success, why many traditional approaches to content don't work, and why effective content is essential if a company wants to survive and thrive in a digital world.

Chapters 3-5 - Why having a vision for your content is important, and how to construct a compelling content vision and effective content strategies and tactics.

Chapters 6-7 - Understanding and leveraging the five dimensions of content effectiveness, and how to use principles of rhetoric and psychology to make your content more influential.

Chapters 8-9 - Why "content intelligence" is important, how to set up a content intelligence system, and how to use your content intelligence system effectively.

Chapters 10-11 - How to model the maturity of your content operations, and how to take your content operations to the next level.

Chapters 12-13 - What a "content system" is, why content systems matter, the three content systems that are critical for all companies, and how to successfully start an end-to-end ("E2E") content initiative.

Chapter 14 - An overview of the types of artificial intelligence, and a review of the important issues to consider when incorporating AI into your content operations.

My Take

The Content Advantage is an excellent book that will be a valuable resource for anyone involved in planning, creating, or managing content for their company.

Colleen Jones speaks authoritatively about content, and the book includes several graphics and tables that contain findings from research conducted by her firm, Content Science.

The book is well-organized and clearly written. It isn't exactly "light reading," but Jones' writing style makes the material approachable and easy to understand. She also includes several real-world examples in the book, which makes the material more engaging and relatable.

Jones makes a strong argument for placing content management in a separate organizational function with dedicated leadership and resources. However, this approach will create some challenges.

The most significant challenge is determining how the relationships between the "content department" and other functional business units will be structured and managed. For example, how can company leaders ensure that their content strategy is aligned with their marketing strategy? Who ultimately decides what types of content will be developed, and what messaging will be embodied in those content assets?

These types of issues are critically important, and they aren't easy to resolve. If anything, this reveals the vital role that content plays in business success. And that is the core message of The Content Advantage.

Looking Back, Looking Forward - 2025 Edition

Source:  Shutterstock

The beginning of a new year is what behavioral scientists call a temporal landmark, a date that is more meaningful than others. Temporal landmarks often prompt us to make significant life changes or commit to pursuing new goals. 

If you doubt the power of temporal landmarks, just consider how often we make "New Year's resolutions" to lose weight or begin a regular exercise program.

Like many marketers, I used the final few weeks of 2024 to reflect on what happened during the year and plan for 2025. My objective for this blog has always been to provide information and insights that are timely, thought-provoking, and useful. To achieve this goal, the content of this blog needs to evolve to account for the always-changing landscape of B2B marketing.

Another Year Dominated By AI

Artificial intelligence, specifically generative AI, was the hottest topic in marketing in 2024, as it had been in 2023. OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in November 2022 triggered an arm's race among technology companies to develop generative AI capabilities.

Spending on AI exploded in 2023 and continued at a blistering pace last year. In a November Forbes article, Beth Kindig, the CEO and Lead Tech Analyst of I/O Fund, wrote that AI-driven capital spending by four tech industry behemoths - Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon - will total about $240 billion in 2024, an increase of more than 50% compared to 2023.

Ms. Kindig's article also noted that AI-related capital spending will likely continue at these nosebleed levels into 2025 as the big tech companies build out AI infrastructure to meet demand that currently exceeds supply.

The capabilities of the large language models that power generative AI also improved exponentially in 2024. For a great overview of these technological advances, I recommend you watch this video by Christopher Penn, the Chief Data Scientist of Trust Insights.

Generative AI is already having an impact on many aspects of business including marketing, even though we are still in the fairly early stages of AI adoption. AI will have an even greater impact on marketing this year as more AI-enabled software applications become available, the adoption of AI increases, and marketers become more adept at leveraging AI's capabilities.

How This Blog Will Change in 2025

I plan to make a few changes in my approach to this blog in 2025. Most of these changes are based on my decision to apply greater selectivity to the content I publish here. This means I will probably publish fewer posts in 2025 than in previous years.

Since 2023, I've published three types of posts here - research round-ups, book reviews, and general information/opinion posts. Here's what I'm planning for each of these types of posts in 2025.

Research Round-Ups

These posts typically include brief descriptions of two to four research studies. In 2024, my three most popular posts were research round-ups.

Most of the generally available research about B2B marketing consists of surveys of marketers. While this kind of research can be useful, research that focuses on the thinking and behaviors of business buyers is even more valuable.

This year, I'll be looking for surveys of business buyers, and I'll also be looking for studies based on research methodologies other than surveys, such as the study I discussed in my most popular post of 2024.

Book Reviews

I published eight book reviews in 2024, and while no book reviews made the 2024 "top 10" list, I believe books remain an important knowledge resource for marketers. I'll continue to publish book reviews this year, but I plan to be more selective when choosing books to review. Therefore, I'll probably publish fewer book reviews in 2025 than in 2024.

General Information/Opinion Posts

In January 2023, I published a post that made the following argument:

"Marketing success in 2023 and beyond will depend on marketers' ability to leverage the capabilities of technology and data science and to effectively apply the principles of behavioral science that describe how people make decisions. These two distinct, but complementary, abilities now constitute the yin and yang of high-performance marketing."

This argument is even more true today than it was two years ago. The smart use of artificial intelligence has the potential to drive remarkable gains in marketing productivity, but those gains won't be realized unless marketers also design and implement strategies that reflect how business buyers actually make purchase decisions.

I've published several posts discussing the cognitive aspects of B2B buying over the past few years, and I'll continue to address those topics in 2025.

Leveraging behavioral science principles in marketing is necessary, but some marketers believe more is needed. A relatively small but growing cadre of B2B marketers are arguing that the current paradigm of B2B marketing is out-of-step with how most B2B buying decisions are actually made.

These marketers contend that we need a fundamentally different approach to B2B marketing, one that is grounded in an accurate understanding of real-world market dynamics and buyer decision-making.

I largely agree with this point of view so I'll be discussing this topic in several posts over the next few months.

Here's to a year of successful marketing in 2025!

[Book Review] A Pragmatic "How-To" Manual for Revenue Operations

Source:  Kogan Page Limited

The 2023 LinkedIn Jobs on the Rise list identified Head of Revenue Operations (a/k/a Chief Revenue Officer) as the fastest growing job title in the United States. 

In a 2024 survey of operations professionals by Openprise, 35% of the respondents said their company had a formal revenue operations (RevOps) department, and another 32.5% said their company had a functional RevOps team (but not a formal department).

These data points demonstrate that revenue operations has become an important management technique for many B2B companies.

Interest in revenue operations has been increasing because astute business leaders have recognized that the activities of their customer-facing functions (marketing, sales, customer service/customer success, etc.) should be coordinated and managed as components of a larger revenue generation process.

A new book by Sean Lane and Laura Adint - The Revenue Operations Manual:  How to build a high-growth, predictable and scalable business (Kogan Page, 2024) - seeks to provide a blueprint and instruction manual for building a high-performing revenue operations function.

Sean Lane and Laura Adint are well-qualified to write about revenue operations. Lane is a founding partner of BeaconGTM, a consulting firm that works with CEOs and revenue leaders to improve go-to-market execution. He previously spent over five years building the operations teams at Drift.

Laura Adint has 25 years of experience with technology companies and consulting with a specialty in operations. She was the Vice President of Field Operations at Drift, and she also served as the Vice President of Sales and Services Operations and Adaptive Insights.

What's In the Book

The Revenue Operations Manual contains an Introduction and 25 chapters organized in four major parts. Each chapter discusses a vital component of a world-class revenue operations function or an activity or skill that will enable an individual to become a successful revenue operations leader or an effective RevOps team member.

In the Introduction, Lane and Adint define "revenue operations" in terms of the business outcomes they contend the function should be designed to achieve. They write, "Revenue operations transforms siloed, unpredictable businesses into high-achieving, predictable, and scalable revenue machines."

The authors also use the Introduction to roll out what they call "The Revenue Operations Mindset." This mindset consists of six principles that reflect how individuals involved in revenue operations ("Operators") should view their work and role in the business. The six elements of The Revenue Operations Mindset are:

• "Operators are strategic partners, not a support function."
• "Operators focus on outcomes, not inputs."
• "Operators are the perfect blend of strategic and tactical."
• "Operators are lifelong learners and not afraid to be proven wrong."
• "Operators champion their work and are proud of the impact they create."
• "Operators believe in constant, incremental improvements and a 'better, better, never done' approach."

Part One (Chapters 1-3) of the book discusses when it's time for a company to invest in revenue operations and explains what Operators need to know about their company's business and how they can gain that knowledge.

In Part Two (Chapters 4-13), Lane and Adint discuss several key building blocks of a high-performing revenue operations function.

The authors use Part Three (Chapters 14-18) of the book to explain why the revenue operations team must form strong partnerships with the customer-facing functions of the business. They also offer several strategies and tactics the RevOps team can use to build such partnerships.

In Part Four (Chapters 19-25), the authors focus on the revenue operations team itself. They discuss alternative ways to structure the RevOps function in a company and describe the traits and behaviors that good RevOps leaders and team members exhibit and practice.

My Take

The Revenue Operations Manual will be valuable for anyone involved in revenue operations, and it should be required reading for anyone new to the RevOps field. The book is well organized and well written, and the authors' writing style makes the book easy to read, even though it contains an extensive amount of information.

This book was written by practitioners for practitioners. Sean Lane and Laura Adint cover issues that everyone involved in revenue operations will likely confront at some point in their career, and they provide practical advice based on their combined three-plus decades of experience working in several operations leadership roles.

While Lane and Adint stress that revenue operations is "inherently cross-functional" and should encompass the whole customer journey, The Revenue Operations Manual tends to emphasize issues and topics that relate primarily to sales. For example, the authors specifically discuss and provide advice about territory planning and incentive compensation design.

In contrast, the authors give much less attention to marketing-related issues and topics. For example, they don't provide specific advice on improving the productivity of content operations. If you want your revenue operations function to cover the entire revenue generation process, the RevOps team will need to be as involved in marketing operations as they are in sales operations.

One final thought. Regular readers of this blog may remember that I reviewed Revenue Operations by Stephen G. Diorio and Chris H. Hummel a couple of months ago. Diorio and Hummel's approach to the topic of revenue operations differs significantly from the approach embodied in The Revenue Operations Manual.

Both books are excellent, but I found Revenue Operations to be a challenging book to read. I recommend both books, but I suggest you read The Revenue Operations Manual first.

[Book Review] A Visionary System for Managing Revenue Growth

Source:  John Willey & Sons, Inc.

"Revenue operations" has been a notable topic of conversation in the B2B world for the past few years.

Interest in revenue operations has been increasing because astute business leaders have recognized that revenue growth results from a combination of several interdependent activities that should be treated as components of a larger revenue generation process. The objective of revenue operations is to manage the entire revenue generation process holistically.

There is a fair amount of literature about some aspects of revenue operations. For example, much has been written about the growing number of companies that have created a C-level "chief revenue officer" position to manage most or all of the company's revenue-generating functions.

Until recently, however, most of the published literature has not addressed revenue operations in a comprehensive way. A book by Stephen G. Diorio and Chris K. Hummel attempts to fill this gap. Revenue Operations:  A New Way to Align Sales & Marketing, Monetize Data, and Ignite Growth (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2022) provides a detailed discussion of revenue operations as a holistic growth management system.

Stephen Diorio and Chris Hummel are well qualified to write about revenue operations. Diorio is the Executive Vice President, Growth Strategy at Green Thread, a B2B practice focused on helping companies achieve more sustainable, scalable, and profitable revenue growth. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Marketing Accountability Standards Board and the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative.

Chris Hummel is the President of Green Thread and has been a two-time Fortune 500 CMO. He has also led sales, marketing, product, and digital teams at world-class companies like SAP and Oracle.

What's In the Book

Revenue Operations is structured in four parts. Diorio and Hummel use the Introduction and Part I (Chapters 1 and 2) to lay out the business case for a new approach to managing revenue growth, and they pull no punches when describing the current approach.

". . . organizations too often treat growth like a disconnected, functionally driven art form rather than the interdisciplinary science it should be. The core revenue-facing functions - Marketing, Sales, and Service - all operate in silos. Managers optimize the parts . . . while coordination between the three is episodic, temporary, and heavily influenced by the personalities involved . . . Even when this approach works, managers generally celebrate only the fact that growth happened,, since they usually cannot explain why."

The authors argue that companies need a new system for managing the revenue cycle, and they call that system "Revenue Operations."

According to Diorio and Hummel, Revenue Operations has two components - a management system that aligns the people in a company's revenue teams, and an operating system composed of technology, processes, and data.

In Part II of the book (Chapters 3-5), the authors identify and discuss the six "pillars" of the Revenue Operations management system. Chapter 5 discusses the three most common leadership models used for Revenue Operations.

• The Tsar - The company consolidates decision-making and operational control of all revenue-related functions under one leader.

• The Federation - The company creates rules of engagement among existing functional leaders to manage revenue growth activities.

• The Chief of Staff - The company merges marketing operations, sales operations, and similar roles into one unit that supports the marketing, sales, and service functions. This new unit is led by one Revenue Operations executive.

Part III of Revenue Operations (Chapters 6-10) discusses the nine building blocks of the operating system for Revenue Operations. According to Diorio and Hummel, this operating system combines technology, data, processes, and revenue teams to enable a company to generate consistent, predictable, and scalable growth.

In Part IV of the book (Chapters 11-14), the authors discuss the steps business leaders can take to begin implementing Revenue Operations, and they provide a framework for measuring the financial value of the Revenue Operations commercial model.

My Take

Revenue Operations is an ambitious book that addresses an important, broad, and complex topic. Diorio and Hummel deserve a great deal of credit for providing a comprehensive and systematic discussion of the concept of revenue operations.

Revenue Operations is a challenging book to read. It reads like a college textbook on an advanced academic subject. Most of the difficulty is due to the subject matter, although the authors tend to become repetitive in several places.

Diorio and Hummel acknowledge that their Revenue Operations "model" is nothing short of an entirely new system for managing revenue growth. Therefore, implementing this model will require business leaders to make several far-reaching organizational changes. And that will be challenging.

It's also clear that the Revenue Operations model envisioned by Diorio and Hummel depends heavily on several sophisticated technologies. For example, the authors' description of the Revenue Operations "operating system" in Part III of the book is filled with references to "artificial emotional intelligence," "AI-enabled service automation," "AI-enabled contactless selling innovations," "AI-driven simulation-based tools," "algorithmic segmentation, targeting, and coverage modeling," and many other similar capabilities.

This heavy reliance on sophisticated technologies will probably limit the number of companies that can fully implement the authors' Revenue Operations model.

Even with these caveats, Revenue Operations is an important book that business leaders responsible for revenue growth should read. Diorio and Hummel have provided a visionary approach to managing revenue growth, and that in itself has significant value.

[Book Review] A Primer on Using Benefits to Guide Marketing Decisions

Source:  BenBella Books

Successful marketing is the result of many distinct, but interdependent, decisions and actions. Marketers must understand the structure of markets and recognize that most are composed of multiple segments that differ in important ways.

To be successful, marketers must also make the right decisions about where (in what market segments) they will compete and how they will position their company and their offerings (their "brand") to win in those segments.

If marketing were a house, market segmentation, target market selection, and brand positioning would be the foundation and the "load-bearing" walls. And, just as the foundation and load-bearing walls are essential components of a well-built house, marketing segmentation, target market selection, and brand positioning are essential for successful marketing.

A new book by Allen Weiss and Deborah J. MacInnis addresses these topics:  The Brand Benefits Playbook:  Why Customers Aren't Buying What You're Selling - And What to Do About It (BenBella Books, 2024).

Allen Weiss is the founder and CEO of MarketingProfs, LLC and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Southern California. He has consulted with numerous high-profile enterprises including Intel, Texas Instruments, and AIG.

Deborah MacInnis is the Charles L. and Ramona I. Hilliard Professor of Business Administration and an Emerita Professor of Marketing at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. She has consulted with many well-known enterprises including Proctor & Gamble and Hallmark.

What's In the Book

The central message of The Brand Benefits Playbook is that marketers should make benefits the paramount concept when developing marketing strategy and planning marketing activities.

Weiss and MacInnis state their view in unambiguous terms when they write:  ". . . a focus on the benefits that customers want in the brands they buy can provide an integrated lens on marketing decision-making - from market segmentation, to target market selection, to brand positioning, and more."

The book contains nine "plays" (chapters), and the authors use the first two chapters to introduce the concept of benefits and explain why focusing on benefits is critical for marketers.

In the first chapter, Weiss and MacInnis define benefits as, ". . . the desirable outcomes that customers expect to receive from your brand." Then, they discuss the three types of benefits customers might want from brands - functional, experiential, and symbolic - and they argue marketers should consider all three types when deciding how to market their brand.

The authors also use the first chapter to argue that focusing on brands can help marketers:

• Avoid "marketing myopia"
• Identify potential competitors
• Identify paths to growth
• Develop new product ideas
• Better understand shocks and trends

In the second chapter, Weiss and MacInnis discuss why organizations should focus on brands. They note that customers have perceptions about the benefits a brand offers and make choices based on those perceptions. They also observe that organizations earn revenue when customers purchase brands and that marketing activities are often organized around brands.

Weiss and MacInnis conclude the second chapter by describing perceptual maps and explaining why they are valuable and how they are used.

In the remaining chapters, the authors discuss several ways brand benefits can be used in marketing. For example:

• Play #3 explains why marketers should segment their market based on brand benefits.

• Play #4 discusses why marketers should use brand benefits when choosing target markets and positioning their brand in those markets.

• Play #5 and Play #6 explain how to determine whether a proposed brand positioning will be credible and defensible, and how benefits factor into making that determination.

In the final chapter (Play #9), Weiss and MacInnis discuss three ways to grow a brand, and they conclude the book with four brief appendices that expand on some of the topics covered in the main text.

My Take

The Brand Benefits Playbook is well-written and easy to read. And, the topics Weiss and MacInnis cover in the book are all vital for successful marketing.

The argument for using benefits as the basis for making fundamental marketing decisions is also compelling because a focus on benefits fosters an understanding of competitive dynamics that is meaningful and actionable.

What prospective readers should know is that The Brand Benefits Playbook addresses these important topics at a fairly basic level. If you have limited experience with market segmentation, target market selection, and brand positioning, the book will be a worthwhile read and a good starting point.

Once you've read The Brand Benefits Playbook, I recommend two other books for further learning.

• On brand positioning - Positioning for Advantage:  Techniques and Strategies to Grow Brand Value by Kimberly A Whitler (which I reviewed here)

• On market segmentation and related issues - The Organic Growth Playbook:  Activate High-Value Behaviors To Achieve Extraordinary Results - Every Time by Bernard J. Jaworski and Robert S. Lurie (which I reviewed here)

[Book Review] A First-Rate Guide to Making Your Content "Impossible to Ignore"

Source:  McGraw Hill

As marketers, we communicate with potential buyers and hope they will remember our messages when they decide to make a purchase. Unfortunately, scientific research has demonstrated that our audiences forget most of the content we share, up to 90% by some accounts.

But, what if we could create marketing content that our audiences are more likely to remember? That's the topic of Carmen Simon's book, Impossible to Ignore:  Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions (McGraw Hill, 2016). This book provides a detailed discussion of science-based techniques for making your content more memorable and impactful.

Carmen Simon is a cognitive scientist who specializes in neuroscience research. She is currently the Chief Science Officer at Corporate Visions, a consulting firm that helps companies improve marketing and sales effectiveness. She is also an instructor in the continuing studies program at Stanford University. Simon holds doctorate degrees in both cognitive psychology and instructional technology.

What's In the Book

The central message of Impossible to Ignore is that memories lie at the heart of all human decision-making, and the purpose of the book is to explain how business professionals can leverage research findings from neuroscience and cognitive psychology to create communications their audiences are more likely to remember.

The first two chapters of Impossible to Ignore lay the foundation for the concepts discussed in the rest of the book. In Chapter 1, Simon describes the role that memories play in human decision-making. She observes that humans are naturally wired to seek rewards, and they rely on memories to predict the reward potential of their decisions and actions.

Simon also uses Chapter 1 to introduce 15 variables that can be used to influence others' memory. Those variables are context, cues, distinctiveness, emotion, facts, familiarity, motivation, novelty, quantity of information, relevance, repetition, self-generated content, sensory intensity, social aspects, and surprise. 

In Chapter 2, Simon writes that memory is particularly important in business communications because we typically share information with an audience at a given point in time, and we hope they will remember and act on that information at some point in the future. Therefore, if we can influence what the members of our audience remember, we can increase the odds they will make the decision we want them to make.

Most of Impossible to Ignore is devoted to discussing the 15 variables that business communicators can use to influence the memories of their audiences. Several of these variables are covered in multiple chapters. So, for example, Simon discusses the importance of making messages and content distinctive in Chapters 1, 4, 5, and 8.

Simon makes three important points about using the 15 variables.

• Several of the variables should be used in each communication.

• But .  . . it's not necessary to use all 15 variables in every communication. That would be counterproductive.

• The context of each communication matters. The trick is knowing which variables to use, how much to use them, and when to use them.

Near the end of Impossible to Ignore, Simon includes a chapter discussing several aspects of how the human brain makes decisions, and she concludes the book with a checklist for creating memorable content.

My Take

I don't usually review books that were published more than a couple of years ago, but I'm making an exception for Impossible to Ignore.

I first read Carmen Simon's book in early 2017, and I wasn't overly impressed. I thought the book was difficult to read, and while I recognized the subject matter was relevant to marketing, I questioned how useful Simon's ideas would be in B2B marketing.

When I read the book again a few weeks ago, my reaction was entirely different. I now think this book contains a wealth of valuable information for marketers.

So, what changed? The simple answer is that I was better prepared to appreciate Impossible to Ignore when I reread it earlier this year. Since 2017, I've become more focused on the importance and value of using behavioral science principles in marketing.

Over the past seven years, I've read close to a dozen books and dozens of academic journal articles dealing with human decision-making, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics. I've used principles of behavioral science in my work, and I've written about the subject frequently at this blog. So, when I picked up Impossible to Ignore a few weeks ago, I was better prepared to recognize the value of Simon's book.

This time, I found Impossible to Ignore to be well-written, engaging, authoritative, and accessible. The book contains numerous science-based tips and tactics for making messages and other content memorable, and Simon also includes real-world examples to make her ideas relatable.

While I don't think Impossible to Ignore should be the first book you read about the use of neuroscience and cognitive psychology in marketing, I strongly recommend it if you have a good foundation of knowledge about these topics. If you're new to these topics, here are two great books to get you started.

• Decoded by Phil Barden (which I reviewed here); and

• Alchemy by Rory Sutherland (which I reviewed here).

[Book Review] Jonah Berger Unveils the Hidden Power of Words

 " Saying you 'recommend' rather than 'like' something makes people 32 percent more likely to take your suggestion."

"Adding more prepositions to a cover letter makes you 24 percent more likely to get the job."

"And saying 'is not' rather than 'isn't' when describing a product makes people pay three dollars more to get it."

Source:  HarperCollins Publishers

These are just a few examples of the power of language cited by Jonah Berger in his latest book, Magic Words:  What to Say to Get Your Way (HarperCollins Publishers, 2023).

Jonah Berger is a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and the best-selling author of Contagious, Invisible Influence, and The Catalyst. 

He has published over 80 articles in top-tier academic journals, and his work is frequently covered in popular media outlets like The New York Times and Harvard Business Review.

Berger is a recognized authority in the field of consumer language research, which can be generally defined as research concerned with the language used and consumed by marketplace participants such as consumers and marketers.

Recent advances in natural language processing and machine learning, together with affordable access to massive computing power, have raised interest in the field of consumer language research and made larger, more meaningful studies technologically feasible and economically practical.

Most marketers recognize that effective content is essential for marketing success. However, marketers don't always realize that minor changes in the specific words they use can have a major impact on content effectiveness. Magic Words is a worthwhile read because it raises marketer awareness of this important topic. 

What's In the Book

Jonah Berger spells out his rationale for writing Magic Words in the Introduction.

". . . while we spend a lot of time using language, we rarely think about the specific language we use. Sure, we might think about the ideas we want to communicate, but we think a lot less about the particular words we use to communicate them . . .

The right words, used at the right time, can change minds, engage audiences, and drive action . . .

This book uncovers the hidden science behind how language works and more important, how we can use it more effectively."

(Emphasis in original)

Berger devotes most of the book to a discussion of six categories of magic words. Specifically, he focuses on words that:

• Activate identity and agency (Chapter 1)
• Convey confidence (Chapter 2)
• Ask the right questions (Chapter 3)
• Leverage concreteness (Chapter 4)
• Employ emotion (Chapter 5)
• Harness similarity (and difference) (Chapter 6)

In Chapter 7 of Magic Words, Berger argues that words ". . . not only influence and affect the people who listen to or read them, they also reflect and reveal things about the person (or people) who created them." (Emphasis in original) Therefore, he contends, language science techniques can be used to detect and reveal societal beliefs and biases.

Chapter 5 of Magic Words exemplifies the kinds of insights found throughout the book. In this chapter, Berger explores why emotional language enhances engagement in most circumstances. He discusses the value of tapping into both positive and negative emotions and why it's important to move frequently between positive and negative emotions whenever possible. He also explains why creating some uncertainty can enable your content to hold attention.

My Take

Magic Words is a thought-provoking book that would be useful for anyone who needs to communicate more effectively and persuasively. The fact that just about everyone has this need at least occasionally explains the widespread appeal and popularity of the book.

Magic Words is a particularly valuable resource for people like marketers and salespeople whose professional success is largely dependent on their ability to be effective and persuasive communicators.

The book is also an easy read because Jonah Berger's writing style is engaging. He is an academic with the rare ability to make a complex topic accessible to a non-academic audience. He uses real-world examples and anecdotes throughout the book that any reader can relate to.

One of the book's most important lessons for marketers is that the "magic words" discussed in the book aren't equally magical in all circumstances. Which words will work best depends on the context in which the words are used.

In Chapter 4, for example, Berger writes that concrete words are usually more effective than generic words. Concrete language signals that you understand the specific needs of a prospect or customer, and it makes your message easier to understand and more memorable. However, Berger also writes that abstract language often works better when the goal is to convey the potential of an idea, a new product, or a new business.

In every category of the magic words he discusses, Berger points out that there are "exceptions to the rule," or more accurately, that some circumstances will call for a different, and perhaps contradictory, approach.

So, in the end, Magic Words does two things that make it a valuable read for marketers. First, it demonstrates the power of specific language choices. And second, it reinforces the over-arching principle that context should ultimately dictate the choices you make. If you're involved in creating content, Magic Words should be on your reading list.

[Book Review] Why Marketers Should Think Like World-Class Poker Players

Source:  Penguin Random House

The idea that marketers need to think like world-class poker players may seem a little odd, but that's the primary lesson I take from Annie Duke's book, Thinking in Bets:  Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts (Portfolio/Penguin, 2018).

Thinking in Bets isn't specifically about marketing, but it describes an approach to thinking about decisions that would serve marketers well. So, if you haven't read Thinking in Bets, I recommend you add it to your 2024 reading list.

Annie Duke is a recognized authority in the field of decision-making, but her professional journey has been a little unusual. She graduated from Columbia University with degrees in English and psychology, and she has a master's degree in cognitive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She had finished her PhD coursework at UPenn when she became ill and was forced to take a leave of absence.

During her leave of absence, Duke moved to Montana and began to play poker. She became a professional poker player and, over a twenty-year career, she won numerous high-level poker tournaments, including the prestigious World Series of Poker. During her career, Duke won over $4 million in poker tournaments.

Duke retired from professional poker in 2012 and just last year completed her doctoral work and earned a PhD in cognitive psychology from UPenn. She's now a sought-after corporate speaker and a consultant on decision strategy.

What's In the Book

Annie Duke describes the primary purpose of Thinking in Bets in these terms:

"The promise of this book is that if we follow the example of poker players by making explicit that our decisions are bets, we can make better decisions and anticipate (and take protective measures) when irrationality is likely to keep us from acting in our best interest."

Duke's core argument is that the significant decisions we make in life are essentially bets on the future, and she elaborates on this argument in the first three chapters of the book. She writes:

". . . our decisions are always bets. We routinely decide among alternatives, put resources at risk, assess the likelihood of different outcomes, and consider what it is that we value. Every decision commits us to some course of action that, by definition, eliminates acting on other alternatives."

According to Duke, uncertainty is the factor that makes our decisions like bets in a poker game. When you place a bet in poker, you can't know for sure that you will win the hand. And, when we make any significant decision, we can't know with certainty that our decision will produce the desired results.

One key to becoming a better decision-maker is developing the ability to effectively cope with the uncertainty that's inherent in all significant decisions. She writes:

"What good poker players and good decision-makers have in common is their comfort with the world being an uncertain and unpredictable place. They understand that they can almost never know exactly how something will turn out . . . instead of focusing on being sure, they try to figure out how unsure they are, making their best guess at the chances that different outcomes will occur."

Duke acknowledges that becoming comfortable with uncertainty is easier said than done. She observes that the human brain evolved to create coherence and certainty, and this makes us prone to illogical thinking and several cognitive biases. Duke describes the hazards of such illogical thinking and cognitive biases throughout Thinking in Bets.

Lastly, Duke devotes more than half of her book to a discussion of several tactics that will help us develop our ability to "think in bets" and make better decisions.

In Chapters 4 and 5, Duke describes how we can use a "decision group" or a "decision pod" to help us maintain our decision-making discipline and thus improve our decision-making skills. In Chapter 6, she discusses scenario planning, backcasting, premortems, and several other valuable tactics that she calls forms of "mental time travel."

My Take

Thinking in Bets is a valuable resource for any marketer. Annie Duke's writing style is informal and engaging, and she makes liberal use of stories that are always on point and often amusing.

As I mentioned earlier, Thinking in Bets isn't specifically about marketing. However, the decision-making principles described in the book are universal. I would argue that Thinking in Bets is especially relevant for marketers because the outcomes of most significant marketing decisions depend on the reactions and responses of other human beings. This means that marketing decisions often involve greater uncertainty than other kinds of business decisions.

Thinking in Bets is a self-help book in the sense that it focuses primarily on how we can improve our individual decision-making. However, Duke offers several suggestions for how business leaders can improve decision-making in their organization.

Duke argues that it's particularly important for business leaders to encourage skepticism and the expression of dissenting views in their decision-making processes. One way to operationalize skepticism and dissent is by using "red teams."

Duke describes the role and value of red teams in these terms:

"Just as the CIA has red teams and the State Department has its Dissent Channel, we can incorporate dissent into our business and personal lives. We can create a pod whose job (literally, in business, and figuratively, in our personal life) is to present the other side, to argue why a strategy might be ill-advised, why a prediction might be off, or why an idea might be ill informed. In so doing, the red team naturally raises alternative hypotheses."

Thinking in Bets won't teach you how to make specific marketing decisions, but it will help you make better marketing decisions.

[Book Review] "Escape from Model Land" by Erica Thompson

Source:  Basic Books

Predictive mathematical models touch our lives virtually every day. Every weather forecast we watch, hear, or read is formulated based on multiple atmospheric models. And that's just one example.

Predictive models have also become an integral part of modern marketing. For example, marketers use mathematical models to determine the optimal mix of marketing programs (marketing mix models), identify the attributes of their best prospects, and personalize marketing communications and other forms of marketing content.

The primary function of most mathematical models in marketing is to identify patterns in existing data and then apply those patterns to predict the likely future outcomes or results of marketing decisions or programs.

The use of predictive models in marketing is poised to increase significantly because of continuing advances in artificial intelligence. If you need proof of this growth, just look at the explosion of generative AI applications since the public release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November 2022.

All this makes it vital that marketers have a basic understanding of how mathematical models are constructed, how they work, and why they don't always produce accurate forecasts. This makes Escape from Model Land:  How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It (Basic Books, 2022) a book all marketers should read.

Escape from Model Land was written by Erica Thompson, an associate professor at University College London (UCL) and a Fellow at the London Mathematical Laboratory. Previously, she was a senior policy fellow at the Data Science Institute at The London School of Economics and Political Science. Thompson holds a PhD in physics from Imperial College.

What's In the Book

Escape from Model Land contains ten chapters. In the first six chapters, Thompson focuses on the attributes and limitations of mathematical models. She observes that people who design and build models work in a wonderful place she dubs "Model Land." In Model Land, she writes, all the assumptions that underlie a model are "literally true," and all the uncertainties are quantifiable.

The problem is that these conditions don't exist in the real world. Thompson writes, "Deep or radical uncertainty enters the scene in the form of unquantifiable unknowns:  things we left out of the calculation that we simply could not have anticipated . . . In that case, your carefully defined statistical range of projected outcomes would turn out to be completely inadequate."

Escape from Model Land discusses several other limitations of models. For example, Thompson observes that all models are oversimplifications of the real world, which means they provide an incomplete picture of reality. She writes, " We might think of models as being caricatures . . . Inevitably, they emphasize the importance of certain kinds of features . . . and ignore others completely."

Thompson also points out that a model builder makes numerous choices when developing a model - what to put in, what to leave out, what scientific and mathematical approach to take, etc. Therefore, a model will reflect the values, education, and culture of the model builder, which means that it only presents one perspective of a given situation when, in fact, several perspectives are possible.

Throughout the book, Thompson exposes the limitations and "blind spots" of predictive models, but she does not argue they should be relegated to the junk pile. Near the end of Chapter 1, Thompson includes a passage that describes the challenge she hopes the book addresses. She writes:

"I have tried to find a balanced way to proceed in between what I think are two unacceptable alternatives. Taking models literally and failing to account for the gap between Model Land and the real world is a recipe for underestimating risk and suffering the consequences of hubris. Yet throwing models away completely would lose us a lot of clearly valuable information."

Thompson uses the final chapter of Escape from Model Land to offer five suggestions for addressing this challenge.

• Define the Purpose - "As a starting point for creating models, we need to decide what purpose(s) they are supposed to be put . . . Most models are not adequate for the purpose of making any decision, although they may be adequate for the purpose of informing the decision-maker about some parts of the decision."

• Don't Say "I Don't Know" - "If we can give up on the prospect of perfect knowledge and let go of the hope of probabilistic predictions . . . there are alternative narratives in each model which in themselves contain useful insights . . . We know nothing for certain, but we do not know nothing."

• Make Value Judgements - "All models require value judgements . . . When you understand the value judgements you have made, write them down . . . Allow for representations of alternative judgements without demonising those that are different from your own."

• Write About the Real World - "When you're explaining your results to somebody else, get out of Model Land and own the results . . . in what ways is this model inadequate or misinformative? What important processes does it fail to capture?"

• Use Many Models - ". . . gathering insights from as diverse a range of perspectives as possible will help us to be maximally informed about the prospects and possibilities of the future."

My Take

Escape from Model Land is well-written, accessible, and engaging. Erica Thompson does an excellent job of making the complex, technical aspects of mathematical models easy for those of us who aren't trained data scientists to understand.

This book is not specifically about marketing, but it contains a message that is important and timely for marketers. Over the past several years, marketers have increasingly relied on data to inform their decisions, and recent advances in artificial intelligence will likely increase this reliance.

There's no doubt that data analytics and AI can help marketers make more evidence-based decisions, but these tools also have limitations that often go unrecognized - or at least underappreciated.

The apparent precision of numbers and the halo of scientific validity surrounding AI can easily create an illusion of certainty that gives us a false sense of confidence in the outputs these tools produce.

Escape from Model Land reminds us that marketing should always be "data-informed," but never totally "data-driven." 

[Book Review] An Authoritative Road Map To High-Impact Content Marketing

Source:  Kogan Page

Last November, I published a review of Robert Rose's new book, Content Marketing Strategy. Rose's book is one of the best I've recently read, and it's an important addition to our library of content marketing literature. If you haven't read Content Marketing Strategy, I recommend that you add it to your reading list for 2024.

Shortly after I finished Rose's book, I discovered and read Purna Virji's new book, High-Impact Content Marketing:  Strategies to Make Your Content Intentional, Engaging and Effective (Kogan Page, 2023). This is also an excellent book, and I enthusiastically recommend it.

Purna Virji is a globally recognized content strategist and marketer whose work has been featured in The Drum, Marketing Land, Adweek, and other publications. She is currently Principal Consultant, Content Solutions at LinkedIn, and before joining LinkedIn, she was Senior Manager of Global Engagement at Microsoft.

What's In the Book

High-Impact Content Marketing contains 12 chapters that are packed with strategies, insights, and frameworks designed to enable marketers to conceive and produce intentional, engaging, and effective content.

Purna Virji uses the first two chapters of the book to explain why many content marketing efforts produce underwhelming results and to describe the essential building blocks of long-term content marketing success. These two chapters are particularly important because they reveal the perspective that Virji brings to the material in the balance of the book.

In Chapter 01, she argues that marketers struggle to achieve success with content marketing because they often get five basic choices wrong.

1. Focusing on outputs vs. outcomes (a/k/a content quantity vs. business results)
2. Chasing trends vs. being grounded in strategy
3. Prioritizing short-term vs. longer-term
4. Creating for machines vs. humans
5. Not balancing creation vs. distribution

Virji uses Chapter 02 to discuss what she calls the "four essential element pairs" of long-term content marketing success.

1. Behavioral science and learning design
2. Empathy and inclusion
3. Copywriting and selling skills
4. Strategy and measurement

The balance of High-Impact Content Marketing covers several topics that Virji argues are critical for the development of a high-impact content marketing program. These include:

• Needs analysis (internal and customer) - Chapters 03-05
• Competitor content audit - Chapter 06
• Content marketing strategy and measurement - Chapter 07
• Copywriting strategy - Chapter 11
• Content distribution techniques - Chapter 12

Virji also includes two chapters that explain how to use brainstorming to come up with high-impact content ideas.

My Take

High-Impact Content Marketing is an excellent book that should be considered required reading for anyone involved in content marketing. The book is well organized and well written, and Virji includes numerous real-world examples, which make the book more engaging and relatable.

She also provides several practical tips and frameworks in the book, which will enable readers to more easily apply the principles and techniques she discusses.

One particularly valuable aspect of the book is that Virji includes a discussion of "instructional design" principles and explains how content marketers can leverage those principles to create more effective content.

At the beginning of this review, I mentioned Robert Rose's new book, Content Marketing Strategy, and I noted that it is one of the best content marketing books that I've recently read. Rose's book and High-Impact Content Marketing address different aspects of content marketing, but these books are highly complementary.

Purna Virji's book provides a road map for creating effective content, while the primary focus of Rose's book is the organizational structures and processes that are needed to effectively manage a content marketing function. By applying the principles described in both books, marketers will greatly increase their odds of achieving content marketing success.

So, the bottom line is:  If you're involved in content marketing - and especially if you're responsible for leading your company's content marketing efforts - you need to read both of these valuable books.