June 2009

Could coming second be your winning strategy? During 15 years at the heart of the internet industry, we’ve seen the businesses behind hundreds of good ideas collapse. For every Google, Facebook and Twitter, there have been a thousand failures. Why? Being on the leading edge means living at the bleeding edge. Resources are burned fast as teams invent the products, the processes and the routes to market. That’s why, in developing business strategies for digital media, we often find ourselves coaching management teams on the benefits of Second Mover Advantage. Why invest everything you have to trail-blaze when you could coast in second, getting 80% of the rewards for 50% of the effort? That’s why when we sneaked an advanced draft of ‘Secondomics’ we found a book that proved that this was one of the missing principles of success. From economics to psychology, game theory to biology, first time author Graham Bower has uncovered one of those principles that helps explain how the world works.

Full review coming soon – just waiting for the final draft of the book.
Release candidate edition is available on Lula

Buy Secondomics now | Read our interview with Graham Bower | Read the Digital Book Club review

May 2009

Twitter: micro blog, presence application, new era messenger tool, the next Facebook – whatever you think about this funky young platform, you have to acknowledge that it’s become the new ‘must-have’ for every big marketing strategy. This is the first book to properly tie it all together in a clear, simple and effective way.

Buy The Twitter Book now | Read the Digital Book Club review

Twitter: micro blog, presence application, new era messenger tool, the next Facebook – whatever you think about this funky young platform, you have to acknowledge that it’s become the new ‘must-have’ for every big marketing strategy.

Having played with it for about three years, I’ve been puzzled by two things:

• The level of interest a brand needs to have for people to want to follow it
• The amount of talk and hype, often from those who never even used the platform

So when O’Reilly announce they’ve published The Twitter Book, you have to be interested. Tim O’Reilly has that rare art of both being able to make the complex simple, and being a deep subject expert at the coalface. He writes his own blogs, Tweets his own Tweets, and pulls no punches when hype is ahead of substance.

The book starts as a deceptively simple 1.01 of how to use the tool, but the insights are rich and the tips easy to follow.

What’s Twitter great for?

• Sharing news and commentary
• Sharing breaking news and experiences
• Mind-reading the market

For experienced online marketers, here are a couple of ideas the book explores that might be useful:

• Tracking trends using TwitScoop and Twopular
• Advanced search and how to find what you want
• How to get the most from TweetGrid
• Sending smart replies with @

And along the way there are a few words of warning: why marketers shouldn’t sink into the depths of automatically direct messaging, the challenge about frequency ‘Twitter often…but not too often’, how to know your followers without being intrusive, and sound advice for a bunch of likely mistakes marketers new to Twitter will make.

The Twitter book also explores some of the etiquette in a young digital environment, such as how to tune out of a conversation politely, how to cite previous posts and the smart use of TinyURL et al to fit web addresses into 140 characters.

Reading between the lines and tweets, you come away with a stronger sense of what Twitter can do, and how to use it smartly. Teach new digital tool comes with its own processes, approaches and evolving rules. This gives the starting point for where Twitter is right now. Enjoy.

April 2009

Kann man zukünftige Entwicklungen von Märkten vorhersagen? Die revolutionäre Antwort in diesem Buch lautet „ja“. So zeigt der Autor anhand vieler Praxisbeispiele auf, dass Märkte, genau wie die Natur, den Kräften der Evolution (Weiterentwicklung) und Divergenz (Abweichung) unterliegen. Daher gilt es, so der Autor, nicht nur diese langfristige Dynamik von Märkten zu kennen, entscheidend ist, dass man damit markenstrategisch richtig umgeht. Im Detail erklärt er, wie man starke Marken in dynamischen Märkten aufbaut und pflegt. Die Erfolgsformel dazu lautet „zuerst Divergenz, dann Evolution“. In diesem Zusammenhang kritisiert er heftig die einseitige Kreativität von Werbeagenturen, die Marken in vielen Fällen mehr schadet als nutzt. Er zeigt aber auch auf, dass jede Marken- und folglich Unternehmensstrategie zum Scheitern verurteilt ist, die sich gegen diese Dynamik der Märkte stemmt. So hinterfragt er kritisch viele gängige Wachstumsstrategien, die kurzfristig funktionieren, aber langfristig kontraproduktiv sind. In diesem Zusammenhang macht er auch deutlich, dass Markenführung immer Chefsache sein muss. Ein Muss für jeden Markenverantwortlichen, der seine Marke(n) sicher in die Zukunft führen will. Fazit: Das ist das Strategiebuch unter den Markenbüchern.

June 2008

In 'Don't Make Me Think', author Steve Krug, a professional web usability consultant demystifies the subject of how people use the web with clear, practical--and often amusing--common sense advice and succinct examples.

The basic design principle is that the consumer should not have to think. i.e.: Don't Make Me Think. All the various points and tips focus n the premise that the users should be able to navigate around a well thought out and well designed site with minimal pain or strain.

Buy Don't Make Me Think now | Read the Digital Book Club review

April 2008

Joseph Jaffe challenges the status quo of marketing, bringing a confrontational freshness to the channel mix and the nature of consumer engagement. In the digital landscape brands need to build awareness and image by taking part in conversations, and this book explains both why and how. Firms need to accept a step-change in their relationships with customers, and ‘Conversations’ is a great catalyst for encouraging them to dare to think of a taking leap beyond the standard media plan or campaign idea. Marketing is changing, but not all firms will adapt.

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April 2007

Fishing From a Barrel is an exploration of the processes, planning and tools available to marketers using Behavioral Targeting to reach online audiences. An in-depth look at:

• The role of behaviourally targeted advertising


• Why targeting campaigns consistently result in higer ROI and greater marketing impact


• The process of behavioural data capture and analysis


• Harnessing behavioural targeting to meet unique challenges of online communication and marketing

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February 2006

Billed as a 'hyperconnected peek at the world of blogs', Biz Stone unpacks
the rise of blogging and delivers a simple, accessible, 'how to' guide for those
who want to get to grips with one of the latest crazes to hit the online
mainstream. Publishing tools that would have cost $100,000 a few years ago, are
now given away for free, letting anyone enjoy the benefits of powerful content
management systems. But the technology is only the starting point: what should
you write and why? Stone has some intriguing answers.

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Buy Who let the blogs out? on Amazon.co.uk

January 2006

Chronicles of the future don't come richer, better grounded or more intense
than Mitchell's trilogy of the networked world. Me ++ untangles the way
fleshware weaves into the urban futurescape with such clarity and intensity
you're left reeling. But here's a warning: if you are one of those who 'want a
simpler life, choosing to unplug and to live off the grid in Idaho', then this
is not for you. Mitchell describes himself as an electro-nomadic cyborg;
'Disconnection would be amputation. I am part of the networks, and the networks
are part of me. I show up in the directories. I am visible to Google. I link
therefore I am'. Mitchell is head of the MIT Lab's academic program in Media
Arts and Sciences, and former dean of MIT's School of Architecture and Planning.

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Buy Me++ on Amazon.co.uk

December 2005

This month's edition of DSC's Book Club features the debut novel from media pluralist Richard Eyre. In a change from the usual marketing texts we enjoy a classic whodunit, but one with a few business lessons along the way.

There's adrenalin rushing through the corridors of Acrobat television, and it's even stronger in the boardroom than under the hot lights down on the live studio floor. Eyre takes us inside the doors of a youth channel that's broken the mould, but not the markets. Punchy programming, naked ambition, hungry for acquisition; now under attack.

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Buy The Club on Amazon.co.uk

This debut novel comes from a real insider, a media pluralist whose portfolio
of non-execs straddles print, television and online, and whose history also
includes running ad agencies, radio stations and TV networks. He's stuck to home
turf and the backdrop for the cast to play out their lives is rich in the detail
of London's media life; probably rich enough for more than a few to see
themselves. Eyre jokes about "trading corporate life for a typewriter in the
shed" but he's taken his corporate characters with him on the journey.

Yet The Club is more than a whodunit. Eyre has crafted a fable for those in
an industry he knows so well. The price of success is a debris field:
reputations and marriages are shattered, health spent, lives wasted. The
messages are not even thinly veiled: "Welcome to The Club Ladies and Gentleman"
members can expect to earn more, be more famous, get tables in all the right
restaurants; so come with us, run with us on our journey to this wondrous
place."

When we meet to discuss the book in the open-air café of the Embankment Park,
just south of the city's media district, I can't help but appreciate how much
Eyre has taken his own advice.

September 2004

The Communications Challenge addresses itself to the `how to` question in the development of marketing communications in a changing media and technology environment. Subtitled ‘a practical guide to media neutral planning’, the book lives up to its name by being packed with case histories and examples of research and working methods. In it, a picture emerges of innovation, new practices and methods as well as the updating of established thinking.

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June 2004

Matt Haig, independent consultant advising organizations on creating integrated marketing solutions, challenges his readers to examine their own problems with branding. What are the seven deadly sins of branding? Haig describes them well: they’re amnesia, ego, megalomania, deception, fatigue, paranoia, and irrelevance that stand behind the biggest failures in brand marketing. All filled with an abundance of recent cases studies. As marketers we can learn as much from examining the causes behind these failings as we can from the MBA-taught models of success that we strive to follow.

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Buy Brand Failures: The Truth about the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time on Amazon.co.uk

June 2004

The Tipping Point is a book about change. In particular, it's a book that presents a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does. The Tipping Point does not challenge the notions of brand and response marketing, but instead provides a window through which to view and re-view markets, plans, products, and ideas. It is a health check to strategy, a model for marketers a framework every marketer should learn, a tool to embrace with passion.

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Buy The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference on Amazon.co.uk

November 2003

Richard Harper's passion is to develop tools and techniques for understanding user behaviour in workplaces, mobile settings and the home. After 20 years of various experiments he is the person to predict what our future homes will look like. Will our fridge make the shopping itself using the internet? Will the lights switch on when we tell them to do so? Intelligent homes have be the domain of futurologists and visionaries. Now with the new technologies progressing so quickly we may find oursevles in a smart home sooner than expected.

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Buy Inside the Smart Home on Amazon.co.uk

October 2003

Since intense competition propelled Brand to become the key differentiator and corporate success factor we have all been transformed into Brand Warriors. That’s the theory at least although reading through the trade press one wonders how many companies are yet to put into place the tools behind their fighting rhetoric. Following the success of her first title Fiona Gilmore returns on fighting form with the ‘High Wire’ edition, assembling a series of personal accounts of the meaning of Brand as witnessed through the eyes of seventeen executives who have driven their high profile organisations’ powerful brand strategies.

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Buy Brand Warriors on the High Wire on Amazon.co.uk

August 2003

Although all marketers will enjoy the wake-up call, Lateral Marketing gears itself primarily to strategic marketers in the driving seat of product development, target market strategy or marketing mix control. The roadmap includes a choice of paths: new product development, market reassessment, rebuilding the marketing mix. It helps answer such questions as: which nonpotential customers could be reached, what else could a product be used for, which other needs could be satisfied.

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Buy Lateral Marketing: New Techniques for Finding Breakthrough Ideas on Amazon.co.uk