Have a little extra time on your hands this month and want to invest it wisely in worthwhile summer reading? We have some ideas for you! In this article, we share some of the online sources we read to stay up on best practices in branding, rebranding, and marketing.
Marketing and brand editorial publications worth reading
These recommendations try to avoid the obvious. For example, many of us still look at The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Journal. We’ve become better marketers thanks to Marketing Profs and other sites that offer professional development and education. Instead, our list suggests five slightly-off-the-beaten track publications that may not be on your radar yet.
- Strategy + Business, particularly the strategy section, offers articles on business strategy and related issues that may affect the decisions made by brand and marketing executives. It speaks from a business lens that reminds us to keep the big picture front and center.
- Morning Brew’s Marketing Brew Newsletter. Time pressed? The Marketing Brew newsletter serves up a bite-sized newsletter to keep you on top of both the very important and the very interesting happenings in marketing, martech, advertising, and more.
- Raconteur. This publication, which bills itself as “Content for business decision-makers,” offers fresh articles weekly addressing top-of-mind marketing topics and trends. Cruise beyond the marketing section and you’ll find well-presented information on finance, healthcare, technology, and other topics.
- Renegade Thinkers Unite Podcast. If you prefer listening to reading, the brilliant and personable Drew Neisser interviews CMOs from companies of all sizes and industries. Prefer a video version? Renegade Thinkers is presented in both formats. Because of Drew’s energy and charm, these fast-paced podcasts are both refreshing and useful – kind of like a dip in the pool on a hot summer day.
- Knowledge@Wharton and KelloggInsight are blogs from universities with a strong tradition of marketing excellence. The links provided here go directly to the marketing sections of each. At their best, these pages bring retail appeal to academic marketing topics and make us smarter in the process. These sites also carry excellent articles on digital marketing basics and beyond.
To gain industry-specific points of view, we regularly check out the “gold standard” online publications such as Modern Healthcare and Financial Brand. To remain up to date on marketing technology, we venture beyond the excellent yet obvious sources (such as Forrester and Gartner), looking to ChiefMartec.com and others for their advice.
Learn from those in the arena: content published by brand strategists and related consultancies
There’s a lot to be learned from the doers. The marketing and brand consultancies are helping companies better understand, bring to life, and manage their brands. From their position on the front lines, they can spot critical trends and issues. And they are generous enough to share what they are learning on their blog and insights pages – and they do so in a very engaging manner. Here are some of our top sources:
- Prophet Thinking. As they contemplate how to unlock growth in the face of disruption, practitioners at Prophet produce a host of valuable research and resources. A special bonus for readers is the “Aaker on Brands” category of articles in which brand strategy pioneer David Aaker shares his wisdom.
- Landor Thinking. Masters of brand design and customer experience, Landor’s professionals offer deep and pointed insights into the nuances of creating world-class brands through blogs and articles.
- Lippincott Insights. Lippincott’s devotion to pairing strategic rigor with bold creativity shines through in these articles that help readers ask themselves the hard questions as they strive to build relevant brands that emotionally connect with customers.
- Interbrand Thinking. For years, Interbrand has brought valuable insights to brand and marketing professionals. These days, Interbrand offers perspectives on what’s next from Interbrand’s experts and the world’s leading CMOs.
- Siegel+Gale Ideas. With a laser focus on the power of simplicity, this blog offers insightful articles and print and video interviews with CMOs, as well as original research around brand strategy, design, and experiences.
- BrandActive Insights. Not to brag, but our readership is growing fast. Marketers come here to learn best practices in brand implementation and marketing operations. (We don’t do brand strategy or design, as do the others on this list, so our blogs, whitepapers, webinars, and podcasts offer a different perspective. Instead, they focus on how to optimize rebrand implementation, improve the efficiency of marketing operations, ensure brand consistency, and more.) Insider tip: Look for valuable, downloadable content bonuses embedded in our blogs, with titles such as Rebranding assets: A checklist of over 150 branded touchpoints to 38 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for your rebrand.
We’ll stop here so you’ll have more time to dive into these recommended summer reads. And we’re betting that a least of few of these will make it onto your year-round reading list.
Did we miss a wonderful source that you know and love? Share it using the form below and we’ll include it in a future article.
