By David L. Rawle
Contributing Writer

Continuous learning inevitably makes work more stimulating and more successful. Even in this era of sound bites and instant messaging, it is still worth turning to books for more in-depth ideas.

If, like me, your New Year’s resolutions include reading books that strengthen your marketing skills, here are six titles I can highly recommend.

Brand Sense: Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight and Sound, by Martin Lindstrom.

Most of us think of marketing through sight and sound, but what about the other senses?

For example, 75% of our emotions are generated by what we smell. Smart marketers appeal to all of the senses.

Based upon the largest study ever conducted on how our five senses affect the creation of brands, Lindstrom profiles the top 20 brands based upon their sensory awareness; Singapore Airlines, Apple and Disney are the top 3. He also provides tools for evaluating a brand’s place on the sensory scale.

How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market, by Gerald Zaltman.

This is a great analysis of how the brain works in the context of purchasing decisions. Zaltman reports that 95% of thinking happens in our unconscious.

That means two things. First, in terms of market research, we’re better served studying what people do than what they say.

And, second, in terms of marketing, we need to consider more aspects of customer thinking, especially emotions, associations and context.

There is no question that brand loyalty is determined more by emotional responses than by rational analysis.

Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force, by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba.

The Zaltman book is incredibly informative but a somewhat challenging read. This one is much more fun because it focuses on companies we all know: Southwest Airlines, IBM and the Dallas Mavericks.

The authors present a six-step program for building customer evangelism: 1. Customer Plus-Delta, continuously gathering customer feedback; 2. Napsterize Your Knowledge, share and share alike; 3. Build the Buzz, tap into word-of-mouth networks; 4. Create Community, encourage your customers to mingle, either physically or virtually; 5. Make Bite-Size Chunks, devise smaller offerings to get customers to bite; and 6. Create a Cause, focus on making some part of the world a better place.

Life After the 30-Second Spot: Energizing Your Brand With a Bold Mix of Alternatives to Traditional Advertising, by Joseph Jaffe.

Like Seth Godin, the next recommendation, Jaffe uses a sensational title to get our attention.

Trust me, the 30-second spot isn’t dead and never will be. But this book is a great introduction to the new media advertising possibilities, including the Internet, video games, word-of-mouth advertising and more.

Jaffe also introduces a clever concept to replace the traditional return on investment, which, of course, is one of the hot buttons of the measurable world of interactive.

Jaffe calls it RUE, a measurement of marketing’s relevance, utility and entertainment.

All Marketers are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World, by Seth Godin.

See what I mean about Godin’s title?

What he is really talking about is that we are in an age of consumers being motivated by irrational wants rather than objective needs.

So, for example, Georg Riedel creates a vast array of wine glasses claiming that each one is best for a specific wine. In truth, in a blind taste test, the wine tastes exactly the same in a $1 tumbler.

But consumers think it tastes better in Riedel’s special glasses because they want to believe that.

According to Godin, successful marketers don’t talk about features or even benefits.

Instead, they tell a story; a story we want to believe, a story that fits our worldview, a story we intuitively embrace and then share with our friends.

ProfitBrand: How to Increase the Profitability, Accountability & Sustainability of Brands, by Nick Wreden.

Most of this book is about analyzing the profitability, or potential profitability, of your various customer segments and then marketing to those segments in ways that will resonate most powerfully with them.

Saying we’ve moved from a customer economy to a demand economy, Wreden presents a coherent picture of today’s marketing landscape. He says that our target is no longer market segments but profitable customers; that the customer insight is no longer databases and analysis, but customer collaboration.

Indeed, we don’t define our brands. Our customers do.

David L. Rawle is chairman of Charleston-based Rawle Murdy Associates Inc., a marketing, advertising and public relations firm. E-mail him at drawle@rawlemurdy.com or visit his blog at http://davidrawle.blogspot.com >

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