February 2010

Danny Meadows-Klue digs into the latest analysis of Google and finds a must-read for everyone in the industry.

The internet made everything available, Google made anything findable. Google has changed our worlds and our lives in a way unparalleled by any other brand. It’s become synonymous with the web and its name a verb for searching. Every industry sector has been touched by it and its presence extends into every country at every level. Whether you’re a marketer by trade, or a newcomer finding that the web has landed in your job goals for the first time, it’s hard to imagine discovery in search engines not being high on the agenda. As search engine marketing has grown to become the critical link in connecting customers with companies, interest in search marketing has crossed from the geeky world of search engine optimisation and mainstreamed.

Buy Googled now | Read the Digital Book Club review

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

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

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

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