Someone asked me to recommend some good marketing/branding books. I wrote a piece about business books for Muse http://wp.me/pqoXT-13 that covers off a few good ones; it also doubles as a kind of warning about business books in general. My favorite, however, isn’t (officially) a branding or marketing book at all, yet Robert Poole’s 2003 history of the National Geographic Society may be the best book about organizational branding that I’ve ever read. It’s called “Explorers House: National Geographic and the World It Created.” If you want a brief summary, I wrote about it in one of my Contrabrand essays: wp.me/pqoXT-1N.webloc.
Another off-piste suggestion is Michael MacCambridge’s history of the NFL, called “America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation.” Again, not officially a book on branding, but a remarkable book on branding nonetheless.
