The Unexpected Books That Changed How I Think About Marketing

Every list of books for marketers has the same titles on it (and they're great!). But my POV: the best inspiration comes from outside the field, from surprising sources. After all, curiosity is linked to exploration of the unknown. Favorite unexpected marketing reads, below.

Culture Code, Clotaire Rapaille: Cultural anthropologist Clotaire Rapaille sheds light on the underlying cultural codes that make us American, or German, or French, or Chinese, or Italian, and how they invisibly shape how we behave in our lives.

Marketing Takeaway 1: In consumer research, you can’t listen just to what people say; they don’t actually know why they do the things they do, it’s subconscious. That’s why polls and surveys are so often misleading and useless. It’s the structure of what people say, not the actual content, that’s key.

Marketing Takeaway 2: Marketers are in charge of not just reinvesting in the emotional bank account of their brand, but more important: maintaining cultural diversity in the world, and communicating to the global community the power and fascination of culture at large.

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, Jacob Goldstein: An irreverent and accessible read on the history of money, and the present-day implications of that history, by the co-host of NPR’s Planet Money podcast.

Marketing Takeaway 1: The “market” has always been a combination of commerce and public discourse, starting with the original Greek agora. You can’t sell stuff, at least sustainably, outside the context of community gathering and lively discussion. Human connection is at the heart of commerce, and together those two = marketing.

Marketing Takeaway 2: The Chinese and the Lydians — a kingdom in present-day Turkey — invented coins at the same time, around the 7th century B.C., purely coincidentally. There are no new ideas. (Only the same ones executed better — with more skill, more budget, more long-term commitment, more fruitful circumstances, or better timing).

Marketing Takeaway 3: In the 1930s, amidst the economic devastation of the Great Depression, FDR took the U.S. off the international gold standard. The U.S. had been on the gold standard since the 1800s. There were pluses and minuses, which Goldstein goes into in easy-to-digest detail, but the point FDR made is that the gold standard was “as artificial as any other monetary arrangement,” in other words a social construct that people around the world had decided to adopt, not as a fact of science but as a social choice; hence, the power to choose something else (and for the record, economic historians have shown that after any government gave up the gold standard, their economy improved). The marketing lesson is that everything — best practices, proven frameworks, even laws of growth — is ephemeral, by virtue of society at large being an impermanent social construct. Without getting too existential about it, the point is that good marketing can be based on data, case studies, research, and experience — but also requires imagination.

You Were Born For This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance, Chani Nicholas: A choose-your-own-adventure-style exploration of your birth chart, through three keys: your sun (life’s purpose), moon (physical and emotional needs), and ascendant and its ruler (motivation for life).

Marketing Takeaway: I’ve never been a huge astrology person, but it was a fun and useful exercise exploring my natal chart and all its implications about my talents, challenges, and opportunities. The biggest takeaway for me was that despite modern culture’s cultivation of the need for external validation, everyone, everywhere, has inner drives, motivations, and desires. Strong brand positioning builds up from a foundation of a deep human motivation; strong marketing speaks to that innermost truth in an authentic, clear-eyed, non-manipulative way.

Sitting Pretty, Rebekah Taussig: A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate Rebekah Taussig.

Marketing Takeaway: “The goal is not to avoid falling or needing help. The goal is to be seen, asked, heard, believed, valued as we are, allowed to exist in these exact bodies, invited to the party, and encouraged to dance however we want to.” Marketers have a profound responsibility — as essential as doctors’ oath to do no harm — to recognize and celebrate consumers in all their individual, diverse, human glory. Whoever your target audience is, it contains multitudes because humans contain multitudes. Whatever your role within marketing, it is your duty — your privilege! — to ensure your work is relevant for, acknowledges, and respects humans.

Hit Makers, Derek Thompson: Atlantic senior editor Derek Thompson explores how culture happens and why things — from The Weeknd's music to Obama’s speeches — become popular.

Marketing Takeaway 1: “Digital blockbusters are not about a million one-to-one moments as much as they are about a few one-to-one-million moments.” Virality stems from one or multiple “mass contamination events” in which something reaches thousands of people instantaneously and then a fraction of those people pass it along, ultimately spreading an idea, song, recipe, meme, video, directly to millions of people. So the consumers that matter most aren't the early adopters, but their friends, family, followers, and imitators — i.e., the audience of your audience.

Marketing Takeaway 2: Most consumers are both neophilic (curious to discover new things) and neophobic (afraid of the new). So the trick is to nail the “familiar surprise.” In other words, “To sell something familiar, make it surprising. To sell something surprising, make it familiar.”