Cathy O’Neil is a data scientist who studied maths at Harvard, taught at MIT & worked at D. E. Shaw. In her book, Weapons of Math Destruction, she expresses concern about algorithmic influence in a number of fields. I’ll summarise the book here for anyone who hasn’t read it.

Richard Rumelt is Professor of Business & Society at UCLA. In 2011 his book Good Strategy Bad Strategy brought clarity to the theory of strategy and illustrated it with practical examples. I’ll summarise its central themes for those who haven’t read it.

In The Anatomy of Humbug, Paul Feldwick outlines six theories of how advertising works: Salesmanship, seduction, salience, social connection, spin, showbiz. I’ll summarise them all below.

In their book The Long and the Short of It, Les Binet and Peter Field analyse the IPA’s Databank of 996 campaigns that were entered into the IPA Effectiveness Awards between 1980 and 2010. Here’s 8 lessons from the study for those who haven’t yet read the book.

In his book Delusions of Brandeur, Ryan Wallman takes a satirical swipe at the nonsense that exists within our industry. The book is beautifully designed by …Gasp! and published by …Gasp! Books. Here’s my 5 favourite spreads.

Since 2010, Professor Byron Sharp’s book How Brands Grow has become one of marketing’s most influential texts. It concludes with 11 law-like patterns, discovered by analysing data spanning many decades, countries & categories. I’ll summarise the laws, along with a supporting quote, here.

In Seducing the Subconscious Robert Heath makes a counterintuitive claim: The less attention an ad receives the more powerful its affect. The book supports the theory with research on attention, processing, filtering, learning and memory. This post summarises the research as well as Heath’s provocative conclusion.

In his book Alchemy, the Ogilvy Vice Chairman, Rory Sutherland describes the surprising power of ideas that don’t make sense. In the opening pages Rory lists 11 rules of Alchemy. I’ll summarise them here in case anyone finds them useful.

In “It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be” the late Paul Arden, Creative Director at Saatchi and Saatchi, offers up some of the lessons he learnt during a lifetime in advertising. Here’s 10.

Back in 2019 the LinkedIn B2B Institute commissioned the first-ever B2B cut of the IPA dataset. In the report that followed, Les Binet and Peter Field explored the 5 principles of growth in B2B marketing. Here’s a summary.

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002. His book Thinking Fast & Slow distills his work on human decision making. In doing so, it highlights both the brilliance & limitations of the human mind. Here’s a summary.

In his book Priceless, William Poundstone describes coherent arbitrariness; the theory that people don’t judge prices in absolute terms but relative to their context. The book goes on to explain the many ways that our perceptions of value are not fixed. Here’s 7.

James Webb Young believed that the production of ideas was as definite as the production of Fords. In 1942, he published his five-step process in the book A Technique For Producing Ideas. I’ll summarise it here for those who haven’t read it.

Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy, by Phil Barden, ends each chapter with a one-page distillation. I’ll use these 6 pages to summarise the book for those who haven’t read it.

I recently finished reading Building Strong Brands (1996) by David Aaker. It finishes with 10 guidelines that provide a good overview of the book’s main themes. I thought I’d summarise them here in case others find them useful.

I read Richard Shotton’s book The Choice Factory back in February after winning a copy through Neil Perkin’s newsletter, Only Dead Fish. Here’s a summary of the 25 behavioural biases that the book covers.

During a recent re-read of Truth, Lies and Advertising I distilled Jon Steel’s ten rules for qualitative research.

So, with a little creative license, I thought I’d share my notes in case others might find them useful.