In light of it being summer and time for some fun, I’m devoting each Friday in August to a post about my favorite brand resources.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll include recommendations for favorite articles, blogs, and podcasts on my favorite topic, brand — today, it’s 5 of my favorite brand books.

By limiting the list to 5, I have to exclude some really great books — but from those I do include on the list, you’ll get a flavor of some of the resources that have shaped my thinking and practice of brand building. And perhaps, you’ll want to check them out yourself.

#1.  Building the Brand-Driven Business: Operationalize Your Brand to Drive Profitable Growth
by Scott Davis and Michael Dunn –  the inspiration and education that led to my focus on “brand as business.”  Written by my friends and colleagues at Prophet, the brand consulting firm, this outlines the tenets of how to operationalize your brand.

#2.  The Brand Gap: Expanded Edition
– by Marty Neumeier — a provocatively simple primer on brands and how to bridge the gap between brand strategy and execution.  It’s written in “the visual language of the boardroom,” so the content is particularly memorable and impactful.

3.  Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
– By Jim Collins — Before Good to Great, Collins wrote this seminal text on the habits of companies that experience long-term corporate success.  Although the book rarely uses the term “brand,” I found the vision and values ascribed to these “visionary companies” aligns with the values and attributes that anchor my definition of a brand.

4.  Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders (Adweek Book S.)
– by Adam Morgan — instructional and inspirational.  This book discusses how “challenger brands” (hungry, aggressive, and savvy second- or third-rank brands) successfully compete against their market leaders.  The “8 Credos of Challenger Brands” serves as a manifesto for all brands.

5.  Managing Brand Equity
– by David Aaker — the first brand book I ever read.  Like a great text book, it taught me the fundamentals of brand management.  The framework for understanding, measuring, and implementing brand equity was eye-opening to me back in the day, and I continue to refer to it today.

Enjoy — and please let me know what some of your favorite brand books are!

P.S.  I realize this post might seem overly promotional, like I’m shilling for book authors or publishers.  And the truth is, because I am an Amazon Affiliate, if you buy one of these books after clicking on one of the links above, I get a whopping 4% commission on the sale (woo hoo!)  But please know I’m not doing this for commercial purposes — as always, I’m simply trying to share some of my knowledge in an effort to be helpful to my you.