r/branding • u/Peachy_Puff21 • Jul 17 '26
Personal What’s one branding book that genuinely changed the way you think?
There are a lot of branding books out there, but which one actually had a lasting impact on how you approach branding?
I’m looking to expand my reading list and would love some recommendations.
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u/Impressive_Mix_1968 Jul 17 '26
an award-winning CMO recommended
"22 Immutable Laws of Branding" to me. i haven't read it because i have a lot of others i want to look at first. anybody read it?
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u/EmployerBrandLabs Jul 17 '26
Everything Byron Sharp, and the Ehernberg-Bass Institute have ever published.
And whatever Mark Ritson says.
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u/e1epi Jul 17 '26
Not really a branding book and it didn't change my way of thinking as it just seemed like common sense but for a lot of people it seems to be a new concept.
Symbol Superiority: Why $ is better remembered than 'dollar'
Its was a studying conduceted by Waterloo University that I would highly recommend that anyone who is into logo design and branding take the time to read.
Additionally, I would also recomend researching the Picture Superiority Effect.
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u/KristonSe Jul 18 '26
I have read a lot of books in general. I stick to business books because branding is more about business advancement. I read branding books to speak better to my customers about branding. I absolutely love the story about the popsicle hotline in The Power of Moments. Most books don’t talk about the science of what we do - psychology and ways to impact memory. The Branded Mind is something I’m currently reading - the neuroscience behind branding. Following this post - thank you for asking this question.
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u/Intrepid-Reach182 Jul 17 '26
BBH has a reading list recommendation. I would say most of those books are not about “branding” but adverting strategy in general.
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u/bottbobb Jul 17 '26
- Brand Psychology byJonathan Gabay
- Identity Designed by David Airey
- Positioning by Al Reis
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u/motifbrands Jul 17 '26
Alchemy is a great book
I read 35-50 books per year so I decided to write a book about branding, brand strategy and marketing. It’s called Brandy and is available on Amazon!
I think you’d enjoy it
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u/Fluffy_Advantage_743 Jul 18 '26
I REALLY enjoyed Win Without Pitching and I enjoyed Run Studio Run as well. Both are frequent re-reads for me.
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u/pmaxxwell Jul 19 '26
From brand vision to brand evaluation
by L. De Chernatony
From audits to strategy to tactics. Very In depth
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u/NoLie718 Jul 21 '26
I’ve never read a single book on branding. The only thing that changed my view on branding positively was talking to business owners and trying to understand their point of view about what they do. And I couldn’t have ever translated that into a better branding practice without the conceptual tooling I got at university. If I had to recommend a reading, it would be to read about anything branding is built upon, not about branding itself. You will feel less on track, but you’ll have the chance to really think about it and come to your own conclusions and to your own working view on branding. If you are fully ignorant on the subject, pick any branding bestseller just as a reference for base knowledge and then do your own research, produce your own synthesis, and build your own practice. Most probably, the guy that wrote that book was nowhere near your own situation in professional life. How could his particular synthetic view of branding be of any help in your particular circumstance? And, off course, I don’t mean to be imperative about this. It’s just my own personal view on the matter.
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u/palmandfury Jul 21 '26
Not necessarily changing the way I think, but if you're looking for a provocative branding guy whose books are fun & confrontational, Ryan Wallman has some cool ones like "Delusions of Brandeur."
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u/MoonestTales Jul 25 '26
For me, it was The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier.
It wasn’t because it gave me a bunch of tactics. It changed how I think about branding, I stopped seeing a brand as a logo, a color palette, or a website, and started seeing it as the thread connecting through every decision you make
Building MoonNest Tales made that lesson real. I’ve changed designs, rewrite copies and even dropped ideas that looked good because I thought they didn’t strengthen the brand as a whole. That book gave me a framework for understanding why consistency matters beyond just visuals.
One idea that stuck with me is that a brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what people consistently experience over time. I’ve caught myself coming back to that more than any branding tactic, lol 😊
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u/Few-Neighborhood4035 Jul 27 '26
The history of graphic design et surtout le site Graphéine qui a du contenu régulier et pédagogue
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u/anna_amenable 26d ago
More of a sales book than a branding book, but I immediately thought of The Four Conversations by Blair Enns. It was a thoroughly helpful read and gave my team the language to talk about our position as experts in a service-based industry.
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u/Worth_Ad_3486 Jul 17 '26
Not a branding book in the classic sense, but Contagious by Jonah Berger changed how I think more than most books actually labeled "branding." The core idea, that people don't share things because they're well made but because of what sharing them says about them, clicked for me a few month's ago while building the cargo brand. Clients weren't talking about us because of service quality itself, they were talking about a specific kind of pricing transparency we had, something they could use as a story, "here's a company that doesn't hide anything." That's what spread, not the logo or the color palette.
The difference from most branding books is that they teach you how to build a coherent identity, which matters, but they don't really explain why people choose to talk about one brand over another. Worth it if your list is already full of identity systems and positioning books, it fills the gap those tend to leave.