I speak a lot about the epidemic of disengagement, and try to share some of what I know about how to create products and content people care about

But there’s never enough time. I always have to leave a lot out. THIS IS UNFORTUNATE. I’ve got a lot to say.

What often gets left out are the references to books that have been so formative to my approach (now the TCI approach) to research and strategy. These books have been foundational to the we go about helping our clients ENGAGE customers, drive loyalty, capture hearts and minds. They were my early textbooks and more recent inspiration for creating high-value content and products that transforms people’s lives. They will help you engage in lifelong love affairs with your customers, too.

So, here they are. I suspect you’ll learn as much from them as I have.

Enjoy,

T

#1: Lovemarks: A future beyond brands

Author: Kevin Roberts

Why You Should Read It:  Blew my mind when I first read it, as a young marketer – a vision for brand love that, while very emotional and not so quantifiable, laid a foundational belief system for how we could and should be trying to connect with our customers.

#2: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Change

Author: Simon Sinek

Why You Should Read It:  Straight-up inspiration on how to create change in your company and in your customers’ lives, largely through content. Big thought shifts. My favorite bit: “Dr. King gave the ‘I have a dream’ speech, not the ‘I have a plan’ speech.

See also: Sinek’s TED Talk: How Great Leaders Inspire Change

#3: Coaching: Evoking Excellence In Others

Author: James Flaherty

Why You Should Read It:  Beautiful methodology and systems for using narrative to help surface new possibilities to people and create behavior change, something all great transformational content does.

#4: A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

Author: Warren Berger

Why You Should Read It:  Most ineffective customer research, design and even marketing strategies fail in that they start with the wrong question, asked at the wrong level. Berger is a master at showcasing just how unlimiting asking the right question can be. Can be a power tweak to almost any part of your business or work: vision, product design, strategy, customer research, marketing, etc.

#5: If the Buddha Got Stuck

Author: Charlotte Kasl

Why You Should Read It:  Modules of wisdom on how to get unstuck, including compassionate healing from past stuckness, traumas – can use in your content or to shift your own stuck programs, thinking, teams

#6: Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness

Authors: Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

Why You Should Read It: Too often, we build products and content to solve a customer problem with logic. News flash: humans aren’t always logical. This book is a perfect primer on behavioral economics: the biases and decision shortcuts common amoung we perfectly illogical humans, and how different institutions can help people make better decisions.

#7: Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do

Author: BJ Fogg

Why You Should Read It: Fogg’s models for how computers can drive behavior change apply (IMO) to all products and marketing. He also originated the most elegant, useful model of behavior change for businesses/products that I’ve ever come across. This cuts through decades and decades of research and distills human behavior change down into models we use literally daily at TCI, and most effective behavior changing products I’ve ever seen use, as well.

See also: BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model

#8: Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence

Author: Rick Hanson

Why You Should Read It: All about the evolution of the brain and self-directed neuroplasticity. This provides the basis for content that helps customers feel better, more grounded, less distressed and more able to make change.

#9: Mental Models
Author: Indi Young

Why You Should Read It: My number 1 rule of customer research is this: DO IT. This is the actual primer on building research-based customer journey models from a design thinking perspective. (Side note: At TCI, we take a pretty different approach to the initial question, the integration of quantitative data, who we define as “customer” in customer research, etc. from what you’ll see in this book. But I’ve never seen a better resource for actual model-building.)

#10: The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

Author: Eric Ries

Why You Should Read It: Most product and R+D folks have probably already read this. Because of the challenges marketers face in getting budgets for content programs, I urge every single marketer to learn Lean Methodology and apply it to content programs. Launch an MVP, get feedback, optimize and iterate from there.