There are a few important points to make on this reading list:
• the majority of these books are far from introductory texts and are not exactly light reading (so please read overviews/synopsis/reviews before committing to a book),
• many of these books are not specifically ‘branding’ books, but are extremely relevant to branding and brands,
• these are certainly not ‘how-to brand’, or ‘step-by-step guide to branding’ books,
• they are not ‘high-street’ brand books,
• they are not design books.

These books are important references should you wish to expand your knowledge on, and begin to consider further, the ever-changing landscape of brands and branding. I also intend to update this list when I find any literature I feel should be added, so please keep checking back. Should you know of books you feel might be added to this list then please make a suggestion in the comments. Happy reading.

Essential reading:

Arvidsson, A. (2006) Brands. Meaning and value in media culture, London: Routledge
This book is authored by someone I consider to be an important voice on branding. The key tenet is that brands have become an important tool for transforming everyday life into economic value. The first part of this book traces the historical development of branding, whilst the second part evaluates new media, contemporary management and overall media economics to present the first systematic theory of brands: the brand as a key institution in information capitalism.

Lury, C. (2004) Brands: the logos of the global economy, London and New York: Routledge
A key book analysing what a brand is, what it does, and why it is such an important cultural force in society today.

Moor, L. (2007) The Rise of Brands, Oxford: Berg
Another book which offers a great study of what a brand is; from it’s earliest examples dating back to the Roman era, to it’s spread from commodities, into its use for charities, places, countries and governments. For an introduction to how brands have changed, and become increasingly central in contemporary society, then look no further than this book.

For anyone who works in, or has an interest in, branding the three books above are essential reading.

Further reading:

Benkler, Y. (2007), The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Networks; brands today cannot ignore the power of networks. This book introduces a comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, describing how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing.

Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society: Second Edition. Oxford and Malden: Blackwell.
A new economy based on the networked society. The importance of networks, nodes and flows, to modern society.

Drucker, P. F. (1993) Post-capitalist Society, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd
Although 20 years old this book gives an amazing insight into the changes that are affecting politics, business and society, where the basic economic resource is no longer capital but is knowledge. A great introduction to what is described as the ‘knowledge economy’.

Elkington, J. (1999) Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business, Capstone.
This book, from the person who introduced the idea of the ‘triple bottom line’ explains how companies and brands can work for people, planet and profit. An inspiring book for anyone who thinks companies should do more than make a profit for themselves.

Ind, N. (ed.) (2003) Beyond Branding: How the New values of Transparency and Integration are Changing the World of Brands, London: Kogan Page.
This book outlines how the brand should, and can, be put back at the heart of an organization. Brands which work as social, cultural, and economic tools. If you believe, as I do, that brands can be a positive influence in society then read this.

Kornberger, M. (2010) Brand Society. How Brands Transform Management and Lifestyle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This book takes some important academic literature and references, and marries them with industry perspectives. In combining these perspectives it aims to show how brands have the power to transform both the organizations that develop them and the lifestyles of the individuals who consume them.

Lessig, L. (2005) Free Culture: The nature and future of creativity, New York: Penguin
A book from “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era” ( The New Yorker), in which Lessig considers the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. If you’re interested in the conflict between open-source and IP then you should listen to what Lessig has to say on control and freedom.

Lury, C. (1996) Consumer Culture, Cambridge: Polity
This book analyses consumer culture, the changing relations between the production and consumption of cultural goods, and importantly the powerful role consumption plays in our lives, providing new ways of creating social and political identities.

McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media, the extensions of man, Oxford and New York: Routledge.
If you ever say ‘the medium is the message’ or refer to ‘the global village’ and haven’t read this book… well just read it.

Ramaswamy, V. and Gouillart, F.J. (2010) The Power of Co-Creation: Build It with Them to Boost Growth, Productivity, and Profits, New York, Free Press
If you have heard anything about co-creation, then Venkat Ramaswamy (with C. K. Prahalad) was the person who coined the term. Co-creation involves redefining the way organizations engage individuals—customers, employees, suppliers, partners, and other stakeholders—bringing them into the process of value creation and engaging them in enriched experiences. This book shows multiple examples of how companies, large and small, have harnessed the power of co-creation, creating value for both company and people.

Shirky, C. (2010) Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age, London: Penguin
Shirky reveals how new technology is changing us from consumers to collaborators, unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world. It is the ‘cognitive surplus’ of the ‘crowd’ which can change how our world works.

Surowiecki, J. (2005) The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few, London: Abacus.
This book will change how you think about the ‘crowd’. In particular who you think is smarter; ‘experts’ or the ‘crowd’.

Toffler, A. (1980) The Third Wave, London: William Collins Sons & Co Ltd
An amazingly prescient book, written over 30 years ago, introducing the ‘Third Wave’ (The First Wave – Agricultural revolution, The Second Wave – the Industrial civilization, The Third Wave – the digital age). Toffler introduces us to the idea of the ‘prosumer’ and the collapse of the producer/consumer dichotomy. This book was so far ahead of it’s time it’s unreal.

Turow, J. (2006) Niche Envy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
A very concerning book explaining the intrusiveness of the filtered ‘world’ that technology shows us today. Discover what implications your online activity has for the customization of your online experience. We are not all the same.

Willmott, M. (2001) Citizen Brands: Putting society at the heart of your business, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Why brands should behave as citizens, relating to society as a member of that society. This book shows how brands need to build goodwill and trust if they want any chance of developing ‘relationships’ with consumers.

Brands are never ‘finished’. They aren’t static. They’re not spacial. They should always be in a state of development. They should always be in a state of evolution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

I attended their most recent talk which was by Paul Ormerod, an economist, author and entrepreneur. His talk was a fascinating overview of something which I already find particularly interesting, the influence of networks. Although the nature and length of the talk didn’t allow for great detail Paul questioned common assumptions about how and why people make the choices they do. He primarily questioned the assumption of the role incentives has to play in people’s decision making, and introduced the importance of narratives and networks.

How do people make decisions? Are they always rational? Do people’s networks affect their decisions?

What I took away from the talk was the importance, increasingly so, of people’s networks. Their connections, influences and motivations. The notion of an individual message from company to consumer incentivising a purchase needs to be reconsidered. It’s certainly not that simplistic now and it probably never was.

Being involved in, or being able to create, an network of involved people – a community with a shared purpose – is something brands really need to be paying attention to.

For more information on Creative Mornings

For more information on Paul Ormerod

Danny Baker is a unique presenter, with a sharp wit and intelligent approach. He combines being likeable with being knowledgable, never coming across as aloof or condescending. His show has a clear purpose, sports entertainment, with a coherent tone, witty, fun and intelligent. However, this is where brands can learn from The Danny Baker Show. The show is never rigid, it is never too structured, it is always able to flex and adapt to what is happening at that time. And it needs to be this way as the bulk of the show’s content is contributed by it’s listeners, and this is my point.

At the start of the show Danny Baker will set up some leading questions to which he encourages listeners to call in a contribute stories. Examples of this might be ‘What are the strangest items you have used as football goalposts?’, ‘What is the most convoluted name for a league in Britain?’, etc. The questions are set ups for listeners to contribute, but they also clearly reflect the witty, silly, left-field approach of Danny Baker.

Throughout the rest of the show listeners call in sharing their stories in response to one of Danny’s questions. The listeners are contributing a great deal of the content for the show, but not only the content but the values of the show too. The stories are generally witty and funny, and are often things you simply couldn’t make up. The flexibility of the show goes further though, contributors might answer a question from weeks ago, or might even simply tell a story which vaguely relates to what was being discussed that week. The show feels loose and relaxed, it develops and evolves through the contributions of the listeners, but it never loses it’s core purpose or approach.

Danny Baker perfectly creates an environment where shared values and purpose are always there without the show ever being rigid. Listeners contribute because they want to be a part of the community, to share their story, the value to them is to be a part of the show. The show can veer wildly off-topic at times but Danny Baker revels in these tangents and encourages them. There is a clear affection and respect for Danny Baker, in what he does and how he does it. His knowledge and intelligence combined with his self-deprecation, wit and humour allow him to create an environment where contributors can genuinely co-create his radio show without ever taking it over.

And this is what brands can learn from The Danny Baker Show. If you can create an environment which encourages people to contribute freely to it, where they will feel valued whilst adding value, where there is a core purpose without being rigid and inflexible, where your authenticity is clear to see, then you can genuinely develop your brand through collaborative contribution. You may get contributions you never expected, but surely that is a good thing.

(image © Twin Peaks)

In the previous post mentioned I discussed how brands are not spacial entities. Yes various elements of a brand exist spacially, such as the products, visual designs, people, but the brand itself if taken as being the values, beliefs and purposes does not. A brand exists temporally and in so doing cannot be fully understood in spacial terms but must be considered both in its historical process and as part of its current environment. In other words its current form is co-constituted by its history, its present environment, and its potential futures.

In relation to brands existing temporally in order to understand brands better we must search for a way to consider temporality rather than spacially. This is where we can look to Bergson, and more recently Kember and Zylinska, and the definitions of intellect and intuition. Bergson discussed how the intellect considers spacially, how intellectually we cut temporal processes up in to static things in order to see them (photos, for example). This is of course vital to every-day living and establishing relations. However, if we are to consider a brand in continuous, durational terms then we need to also consider intuition.

‘Instead of a discontinuity of moments replacing one another in an infinitely divided time, it will perceive the continuous fluidity of real time which flows along, indivisible’ (Bergson, H. 1946: 127).

Intuition is a method by which we can consider brands better, a way of using ambiguous, but relevant, forms of metaphor and comparison to paint a picture which cannot fully be explained intellectually. What intuitive thinking will allow are considerations of a brand as a whole, not as slices in time. Intuition can not, and should not, replace intellect but it can give a more full a picture if not dismissed entirely in preference of facts and figures.

As I said at the beginning of this post these are thoughts on brands which are in process, they aren’t intended to be an ‘answer’ to anything but just to be thought-provoking. If you are interested in this approach to intellect and intuition then I have added a short reading list below of work which will explain some of the key points so briefly covered in this simple introductory post.

I find our ‘Western’ obsession with intellectual knowledge and dismissal of intuitive thinking depressing, and I believe that it stifles creativity. However, people far more knowledgable than me have written about this already.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Einstein

Reading List
Bergson, H. (1946) The Creative Mind. An Introduction to Metaphysics, New York: Citadel Press
Bergson, H, (2007) [fp 1911] Creative Evolution, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
Deleuze, G. (2002) ‘Intuition as Method’, Bergsonism, trans. Tomlinson, H. and Habberjam, B., New York: Zone Books
Grosz, E. (2004) ‘Intuition and the Virtual’, The Nick of Time. Politcs, Evolution, and the Untimely, Durham and London: Duke University Press Books
Kember, S. and Zylinska, J. (2012) Life After New Media: mediation as a vital process, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press

Note: As part of my MA I have been studying with Sarah Kember, who has just launched her book of the course, Life After New Media. It is many of her ideas on understanding mediation rather than media, intuition rather than intellect and performativity rather than representation that are making me re-evaluate my understanding of brand. I can’t begin to go in to the detail in this short article, but suffice to say it is very much worth a read if you work with media, which of course brands do.

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We often talk about the ‘position’ of a brand, but is the position of a brand still relevant?

My point put simply is this: let’s consider the brand to be not the elements, such as the logo, website, product, etc, but to be the values, beliefs, mission, purpose, behaviour, principles. Of course the brand elements are important but let’s agree that the brand itself is the less tangible; in humanist terms the ‘experience’ that develops through all its stakeholders.

If we use this definition of the brand then we could say that, although of course the brand elements exist spacially, does the brand? Do a brand’s values, beliefs, purpose, etc exist spacially at all or do they only exist temporally? And so if a brand only exists in time should a brand have a static brand ‘position’ at all? Is the definition of a brand as having a ‘position’ helpful, is it suggestive of a rigid, inflexible, set-in-stone entity that inhabits a fixed space?

Using this definition let’s say that a brand only exists in time and not in space. That a brand should not have a fixed ‘position’ as it is always in development, in redefinition. But redefinition by whom? In our networked, digital economy the content and value of brands are increasingly being created by all the stakeholders, and by stakeholders I mean the company, staff, users, etc. We are aware how digital technology has encouraged conversations between a company and its ‘users’, and, importantly, between users themselves. We are also familiar with the agile development of digital products, the learning school process and the increasing value user insight brings to ‘co-created’ content. What technology is facilitating has changed the way businesses can work and develop.

So what makes us think that the old, static model of building a brand still works? A brand is not purely an economic tool created by and for a company.

Societal, cultural and economic environments are constantly changing, and so if a brand is social, cultural and economic shouldn’t it be flexible? Shouldn’t a brand always be open to informed development by all its stakeholders? Maybe we should forget about putting brands in a ‘position’ and instead ensure the focus is on their principles and purpose.

Maybe we should be encouraging flexible, participatory, evolutionary, Beta brands. As Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones said recently, “Everybody out there creates an image for you, and you become it”. Or, more accurately: You are always in a state of ‘becoming’.

Note: As part of my MA I have been studying with Sarah Kember, who has just launched her book of the course, Life After New Media. It is many of her ideas on understanding mediation rather than media, intuition rather than intellect and performativity rather than representation that are making me re-evaluate my understanding of brand. I can’t begin to go in to the detail in this short article, but suffice to say it is very much worth a read if you work with media, which of course brands do.

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The Hayward Gallery at London’s Southbank is currently showing an exhibition titled Greenwich Degree Zero by Rod Dickinson & Tom McCarthy. It is a fascinating experiment asking how the media represent history and can media, or mediation, reimagine history. I’ve included the information from the exhibition below. Anyone interested in the place of media in society should certainly get along and take a look. And it’s free.

‘In Greenwich Degree Zero, Rod Dickinson and Tom McCarthy re-imagine the afternoon of 15 February 1894, when a French anarchist named Martial Bourdin was killed as the bomb he was carrying detonated.

The explosion took place on the slope beneath the Royal Observatory in London’s Greenwich Park, and it was generally assumed that his intention had been to blow up this building. Lying on the First Meridian, at exactly 0° longitude, the Observatory was a prominent public building, the place from which all time throughout the British Empire and the world was measured and regulated.

Nonetheless, the exact nature and motivation of Bourdin’s act remained unclear. Some rejected the theory that he had been trying to destroy the Observatory. They claimed instead that he had been transporting the explosive to a safe hiding place after the Autonomie Club, a meeting spot for European anarchists who had sought refuge in London following clampdowns on the continent, was placed under police surveillance.

Many on the left believed he had been duped into killing himself by a double-agent working for the police, who wanted to help the passage of Lord Salisbury’s Aliens Bill (which urged a tightening of asylum laws) through parliament by instigating an ‘outrage’.

In Greenwich Degree Zero, Rod Dickinson and Tom McCarthy re-imagine Bourdin’s act as a successful attack on the Observatory. They do so by infiltrating and twisting the media of Bourdin’s time, reproducing extant newspaper reports re-worked to fit their version of events.

They present a film made with a hand-cranked Victorian cinematic camera capturing the moment of the Observatory’s destruction and photographic images depicting the building’s ruins. By adhering to these formal contours, they tie history inextricably to the processes, institutions and technologies through which it is both represented and interpreted.

Greenwich Degree Zero is a work about mediation and repetition, interrogating the notion of ‘event’ by retrieving an occurrence which did not quite take place from its event-degree zero while still holding it in the negative space of non-event.’

(image from Southbank Centre webpage for exhibition)

A previous blog post, Zeno’s paradox of the tortoise and Achilles, used an ancient tale to give advice on why brands shouldn’t try to emulate, or inhabit a position already occupied by, competitor brands. This tale is relevant in simplistic terms, don’t try and copy anyone else is always good advice, but thinking in more depth about brands is the ‘position’ of a brand a misnomer?

My point put simply is this; lets consider the brand to be not the elements, such as the logo, website, product, etc, but to be the values, beliefs, mission, purpose, behaviour, principles. Of course the brand elements are important but the brand itself is the less tangible, in humanist terms the ‘experience’ which develops through all stakeholders.

If we take this as being the brand then we could say that, although of course the brand elements exist spacially, does the brand? Do a brand’s values, beliefs, purpose, etc exist spacially at all or do they only exist temporally? And if a brand only exists in time, and is always subject to development by all stakeholders, then should a brand have a static ‘brand position’ at all? Is the definition of a brand as having a ‘position’ helpful, is it suggestive of a rigid, inflexible, set-in-stone entity which inhabits a fixed space?

What I am hoping to look into further is whether a brand, using this definition, only exists in time and not in space. That a brand should not have a fixed ‘position’ as it is always in development, in redefinition. That if a brand is social, cultural and economic then not only should the brand be fluid but its social, cultural and economic environment is also constantly changing.

Flexible, participatory, evolutionary, beta brands. Should a brand always be in a state of ‘becoming’?

Note: As part of my MA I have been studying with Sarah Kember who has just launched her book of the course, After New Media. It is many of her ideas on understanding mediation rather than media, intuition rather than intellect and performativity rather than representation that are making me re-evaluate my understanding of brand. I can’t begin to go in to the detail on this short blog post but suffice to say it is very much worth a read if you work with media, which of course brands do.

The book is a collection of advice and answers to the most common questions of how to start and run a design business. There are some fantastic contributors who have a wealth of knowledge in the industry, and I was extremely happy for David to include a contribution from myself regarding one of our recent decisions at 1977 Design to develop some of our own projects and brands.

Here’s hoping that the book proves a useful tool to those setting up, or continuing to work, in the design industry.

Buy the book here

See David Airey here

Never try and get your brand to a position already held by a competitor. By the time it takes you get to them they will have moved further away from you.

(Second post on this coming soon)

Text reworked from original text on MathAcademy

Image © Nicolas de Camaret