Here I could discuss a never-ending quantity of books a good webdesigner, creative, strategic planner and any other person whose job is related to the Web and social media could purchase. No way! However I can share with you a few very interesting publications, which will bring you happiness and inspiration over the long winter nights.

I chose to build various themes, so that any one of you can quickly find one or more books to purchase or to offer.

The Great Masters, those worth reading once a year

BOB GILL

Buy on Amazon

BOB GILL - Graphic Design as a Second Language

BOB GILL - Graphic Design as a Second Language

PAUL ARDEN

Buy on Amazon

PAUL ARDEN - any book you find

PAUL ARDEN - any book you find

SAUL BASS

It is very difficult to find publications specially dedicated to Saul BASS. Even his mythical DVD, in which he talks about his art of Title Design seems impossible to find. YouTube withdrew it for infringement of copyrights. Check out books compiling some of his works or the site listing his work on Title Design. The uncontested initiator of contemporary graphic design.

SAUL BASS

MARTIN PARR

For the creative mind, it is normal to get inspiration in every form of art – well that’s my point of view. Before even touching a computer (or before computers invaded our homes), I used to use miles and miles of film with a Kodak Instamatic and other cameras. Take your inspiration from photography! Martin PARR is one of those photographers you can’t get enough of!
Buy on Amazon

MARTIN PARR - by Val Williams

MARTIN PARR - by Val Williams

PAUL RAND

Buy on Amazon

PAUL RAND - by Steven Heller

PAUL RAND - by Steven Heller

Study cases, campaign cases

Looking at how others work is awe-inspiring. Looking at their creative processes, their briefs, their results… Here are three books, two of them being updated every year, which are real mines of information.

2 KILO – KESSELS KRAMMER

Buy on Amazon

2 KILO - Kessels Krammer

2 KILO - Kessels Krammer

ART DIRECTORS ANNUAL

Buy on Art Directors Club

ART DIRECTORS ANNUAL

ART DIRECTORS ANNUAL

DESIGN IN EUROPE

Buy on Design in Europe

DESIGN IN EUROPE

DESIGN IN EUROPE

Social Media and Marketing

Since everything is social now and we have the opportunity to get to read the marketing secrets of some of the biggest specialists, here is a sample of the huge amount of publications available.

THE TWITTER BOOK

Buy on O’Reilly

THE TWITTER BOOK - Tim O'Reilly, Sarah Milstein

THE TWITTER BOOK - Tim O'Reilly, Sarah Milstein

PURPLE COW, THE BIG MOO

Buy on Amazon

PURPLE COW and others - Seth Godin

PURPLE COW and others - Seth Godin

THE LONG TAIL

Buy on Amazon

THE LONG TAIL - Chris Anderson

THE LONG TAIL - Chris Anderson

THE TIPPING POINT

Buy on Amazon

THE TIPPING POINT - Malcolm Gladwell

The creative’s inspiration and reference

There’s always a need for a breeze of novelty and inspiration. Often looking at a combination of colors, a shape or an illustration is enough to get back into motion. Get inspired. Improve. Give a new interprétation. Innovate. All these images surrounding us nourish us in the end. Don’t forget : you are the sole master of your own style. Know how to work it without copying.

SERIALIZE

Buy on Amazon

SERIALIZE: Family Faces and Variety in Graphic Design

SERIALIZE: Family Faces and Variety in Graphic Design

AN EYE FOR COLOR

Buy on Amazon

AN EYE FOR COLOR - Olga Gutierrez De La Roza

AN EYE FOR COLOR - Olga Gutierrez De La Roza

LOS LOGOS 1, 2, 3, 4

The logo bible in 4 volumes heavy as a ton of bricks. Compiled by Büro Destruct. A must have.
Buy on Gestalten

LOS LOGOS - Büro Destruct

LOS LOGOS - Büro Destruct

OBEY

Let those who have never seen the world-famous red, white and blue portrait of Barak Obama cast the first stone at themselves ! Here is an essential book by Shepard Fairy, a brilliant illustrator, an inimitable style, a treat for the eyes.
Buy on Obey Giant

OBEY - Shepard Fairey

OBEY - Shepard Fairey

THE ART OF REBELLION 2

Buy on The Art of Rebellion

The Art of Rebellion 2 - Christian Hundertmark

The Art of Rebellion 2 - Christian Hundertmark

From theory to practice

Here are a few books explaining the jobs in communications, advertising, graphic design and how to go from theory to practice. How to conceptualize, think, learn tricks, jargon and eventually become the 21st century’s Paul Arden. One important thing : follow the rules but think out of the box.

THE ADVERTISING CONCEPT BOOK

Buy on Advertising Concept Book

THE ADVERTISING CONCEPT BOOK - Pete Barry

THE ADVERTISING CONCEPT BOOK - Pete Barry

THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN

Buy on Amazon

THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN - Dan Roam

THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN - Dan Roam

HOW TO BE A GRAPHIC DESIGNER WITHOUT LOSING YOUR SOUL

Buy on Amazon

HOW TO BE A GRAPHIC DESIGNER WITHOUT LOSING YOUR SOUL - Adrian Shaughnessy

HOW TO BE A GRAPHIC DESIGNER WITHOUT LOSING YOUR SOUL - Adrian Shaughnessy

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF CREATIVE ADVERTISING

AVA Academia, publishing house, has many other titles that could be of interest to you. Don’t hesitate to have a look at all their publications.
Buy on AVA Academia

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF CREATIVE ADVERTISING - Ken Burtenshaw

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF CREATIVE ADVERTISING - Ken Burtenshaw

THE ART OF LOOKING SIDEWAYS

Phaidon Editions publish magnificent, unique books. I recommand another one further down : A smile in the mind.
Buy on Phaidon

THE ART OF LOOKING SIDEWAYS - Alan Fletcher

THE ART OF LOOKING SIDEWAYS - Alan Fletcher

DESIGNING UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE

I strongly recommend this book. To tempt you, here is a description in English : These questions formed the starting point of the research, which resulted in a report exploring the meaning of ‘universal knowledge’ as well as the process of collecting, structuring, designing, and publishing it. Designers and researchers from different fields have set standards for the classification and design of complex data collections and have thus exerted an enormous influence on how knowledge is communicated.
The report explores this topic as well as the possibilities of ‘universal design’ and presents new approaches to visualize complex information.
Buy on The world as flat land

DESIGNING UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE - Gerlinde Schuller

DESIGNING UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE - Gerlinde Schuller

A SMILE IN THE MIND

Achat sur Phaidon

A SMILE IN THE MIND - Beryl McAlhone

A SMILE IN THE MIND - Beryl McAlhone

We like the web from every angle

I’m really into webdesign. I’m also into ergonomy and usability. Books on theory are important but nothing is better than experience and online resources …

ERGONOMIE WEB

Buy on Eyrolles

ERGONOMIE WEB - Amélie Boucher

ERGONOMIE WEB - Amélie Boucher

ONLINE SUCCESS : instructions for use

Buy on Taschen

ONLINE SUCCESS : instructions for use - Julius Wiedemann

ONLINE SUCCESS : instructions for use - Julius Wiedemann

TASCHEN WEB COLLECTION

Buy on Taschen

the TASCHEN

the TASCHEN

In brief…

If you don’t find a book to offer yourself or someone else on this list, come back next year. By then, I will have prepared another collection for your shelves… or to please your nephew.

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The brand benefits of CRM and Social Marketing Programs are obvious.  Value exchange creates loyalty and potentially advocacy – By providing a benefit you will be most successful if you also consider the value expectations of your audience. Providing value will ensure your customers continue engaging with your brand in the social landscape. In the sense of making brand advocates of your consumers your exchange might even inspire them to share the value you provide with others.

In terms of marketing communications, many of your online ‘friends’ or fans will only remain a ‘friend’ as long as you keep providing a value exchange in your services, content, newsletters, tweets or updates. The same value exchange already exists in other services that include loyalty programs, memberships and clubs where there are high levels of consumer interaction and the value of being involved has tangible rewards. Its also good to remember that these activities sometimes have a high cost.  Even if you are on smaller programs of involvement the exchange still needs to be in place, small tokens of appreciation always work well.

The ubiquitous social term ‘friend’ should not be mistaken as being similar to friends in the real world. The value of exchange needs to be balanced and considered for the long-term relationship. Short term goals or sales in favour of a brand might not sustain a relationship withits  circle of friends. Brands cannot assume that they have a bond of friendship strong enough to get away with delivering content that benefits the brand alone or doesn’t maintain the relationship. This one way relationship will not work online anymore. So if someone becomes your online ‘friend’ it is the brand that needs to earn the friendship and nurture the relationship, not them. Make sure you continue to deliver value of service, content etc in your exchange with your online ‘friends’ or they will move onto other ‘friends’ ready to give them attention.

So what benefits and value are you providing for your consumers beyond your product?

It could mean that Twitter is hitting a plateau and the buzz surrounding the platform is waning this month.  Nielsen’s findings are that there is only 40% retention rate of users. As the hype that has drawn users to Twitter wears off a slowdown in growth of Twitter can only be expected.  Twitter could “only” expect a  10% growth if rate of that trend continued, but lets face it, thats not a bad number

In a coincidental and timely article released on the same day  from the BBC Technology News “Twitter hype punctured by study” ,  a cited Harvard study shows that only 10 % of people in the service  create 90% of the content, and that many accounts lay abandoned after an initial setup. This should not be surprising, in the blogosphere the numbers, while better,  define a fact, that keeping up and publishing in these mediums requires constant attention and many start with good intentions to do just that. Few actually make it. The Social Technographics profile tool presented by Forrester might be applied to Twitter as well  as it  shows a clear break down on the behaviors: A small % of people  are creators, a larger % being  critics, a larger % being collectors, an even larger % joiners, spectators and last of all in-actives. The take away is that there are many more watching and listening than creating, and creators and critics do have an influence that cascades down to the collectors,  joiners and spectators.

A New York times article from this week also said “that according to a 2008 survey only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days meaning that “95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.” Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, said that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but it’s probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views.”

I don’t think this spells the end of the blogging or social media. Quite the contrary, E Marketer also posted a  Women Who Blog   article this week showing results from “2009 Social Media Study” finding that women are turning to all sorts of social media for fun, entertainment, community and connection. “More than one-half (53%) of the US female Internet population of 79 million actively participated in some type of social media at least weekly. Of the female social media participants, 75% took part in social networking and 55% used blogs.” Remember this is only half of the equation , and its a highly influential half.

And Nielsen’s report from last week showed that Time Spent on Facebook was up 700% in the past year. So social media networks and other social services are well established in mainstream internet usage and behaviours.

What is apparent about Twitter is that it is a broadcast medium.  In a typical online social network the top 10% of users accounted for 30% of all production, in Twitter at the moment its a bit disproportionate. On the Harvard team’s blog they said  “This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network,” So Twitter is really another or new  form of media, an information network or real-time search engine rather than as a social network. People have a stronger loyalty to their social networks than their online sources of information. What Twitter does for the avid follower or information seeker is that it aggregates a lot of information on groups of people whom you might want to read what they are thinking , seeing, hearing. If your information pundits are known for good information and good sources or commentary then you have a reliable and interesting information source.

Twitter’s challenge is to grow a loyal user-base and at the moment it appears to be slowing. So “the jump on the bandwagon ” hype is probably an adoption or awareness phase. Like most product lifecycles it will taper off and most likely fall unless Twitter manages to win user loyalty.  Let’s watch and see over the next few months whether a growth is sustained or more of a detractor phase appears and the service’s usage declines.

The word Twitterverse entered the lexicon of social media  in a big way in the past few months.  Its appeared on NPR (National Public Radio ) in the Washington Post, spawned a blog by Emily Chang, of Ideacodes in SF  and  the 1st or beta edition of a  Twitterverse map.

I think the map is the  best and possibly the least abstract representation of  a fast emerging world and was produced by Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks, PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley. He released a beta version of what he calls the Twitterverse v 0.9  last week ( see  Gazing into the Twitterverse). What he and partner Jess3 have produced is a spiral universe that begins to place an order to a complex set of relationships  surrounding Twitter from search, communication, mobile, analytics, relationship management, advertising and events. The spiral representation seems to be like that of solar system revolving around a central star in long tendrils representing  a map of tools and applications  for conversation management and measurement emanating from the vortex of Twitter.

So what does the word Twitterverse mean and where does it originate from?

The Urban Dictionary provides a broad user friendly meaning online. “the cyberspace area of twitter. This naturally extends beyond twitter.com to anywhere you can twitter, which includes cell phones.”  It appears that the cyberspace area is largely undefined or is vague.

Wordspy , a blog on the word lovers guide to new words,  attributes the origins of the word to Twitterverse to Adam Pasick, “SXSW and the Twitterverse,” Monkey Daemon, March 12, 2007

Adam described Twitter as “a sort of minute-by-minute blog that you send and receive from a computer or text message. All too often this takes the form of scintillating entries like “I’m eating breakfast,” and other stuff that you really don’t need to know about other people. But the allure at SXSW is that all the cool kids are doing it. So if you want to find the cool parties, you have to read Twitter. It’s geek clique chic.”

As Brian Solis’ graphic representation illustrates, the Twitterverse has evolved since those early days.  The public, companies, the press, have all run to get on board to explore and exploit the platform as short form news, PR, promotion, and ideas to a range of tools that map the relationships  between information sources, their conversations topics,  circles of influence, and the broad sweep pf readers or “followers”.

To emphasize the size and significance of the microblogging platform Neilsen reports that time spent of time spent on Twitter has grown a phenomenal 3,712% in the past  year. Who ever coined the phrase Twitterverse is watching in awe as this new universe take shape and form day by day.

Top 10 Social Networking and Blog Sites Ranked by Total Minutes for April 2009 and Their Year-over-Year Percent Growth (U.S., Home and Work)

Its good to reflect why this remark maybe relevant. In recent presentation by an Brian Giesen, Ogilvy PR executive in Australia , where Ross Dawson presented the Influencer Landscape framework ( see above ) he attributed  the reasons of the shift in consumer belief to the following researched facts.

• – 75% of people don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertising.
• - In the US 81% look to word of mouth (be it online or offline ) for decisions.
• - Trust in Media Editorial is is at a low 56%.

No wonder the citizen journalist in us is alive and well, albeit with the aiding and abetting of the new wave of  social communications technologies.

The Driving Forces

The Democratization of Media , Social Media Integration, Social Media Aggregation, The Decline of Advertising  Impact and Peer Trust all play  a role that is aided by influence mechanisms or media channels and touch points, the influence aggregators, and networks. How they all interconnected is pivotal in determining  how people behave.

For brands and companies its the  consumer trust and transparency that  remains as a  paramount concern over and above their advertising. Both managing a reputation and those consumer benefits already ingrained in a product offering become important issues.   Companies and brands that break that consumer trust  run the risk of trying to manage very hard to contain negative consumer sentiments.   Let’s not forget the adage, when a consumer has a bad experience they  tell 8- 10 people and 3-4 people when its a good experience. As we have seen in digital its amplified many times over ,  a single bad comment,  video, picture can ruin a companies or brands reputation overnight as it spreads through a web of influence.

A consumer has an 81% trust in word of mouth. The only clear and trackable way of following sentiments (other than in controlled research,or  focus groups or spying )  is to trawl the digital world where unbiased streams of thoughts and conversations take place. The same conversation can be taking place in many places at the same time , so how do we know which one has more weight than the other? which one has more influence? and which one may potentially be passed on? The landscape of Influence lies not only in immediacy of the contact or proximity to an influential source but also in  the volume of the opinion where the audience is in a dispersed chain of distribution,  or visiting sites where the collective  filtering takes place  e.g. the  most popular  opinion will rise to the top as common consensus. The social media aggregators and the resulting long tail of residual,  searchable and  referential digital footprints creates a potentially long shelf life for an opinion.

In the  Influencer landscape there are domains of influence  both in the networks where audiences gather, meet and talk  and where commentary is redistributed, in the critics circles and social media aggregators. So what are these domains?

The Where :  Domains of influence

• - Blogs, Microblogs
• - Video and photo communities
• – Message boards and forums
• – Social networks

The How : Characteristics of influencers
Its important to define our influencers  by identify certain behavioral characteristics,  as we know these people are really a minority group. A majority of people in social networks or communities are “lurkers” , the observers and readers, only a few people are the real content creators or conversationalists.  In landscape of Influence people are placed in a hierarchy of behavioral importance. Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and the In-Actives.  There are very few Creators, more Critics, a greater number of Collectors and so on. Identifying your Creators and Critics  leads you to understand the influence they have on the greater number of  Collectors, Joiners and Spectators. Creators are the initiators of influence and they share a few basic identifiable characteristics. They :

• - Engage others in conversations
• – Inspire others to continue the conversation
• - Participate consistently
• - Are seen as credible
• - Compels others to want to hear what they say next
• - Create content that is ‘remarkable’

The What : Engaging

• - Process of Listening (Conversation maps)
• - Planning (Influencer maps)
• - Engaging (Programs)

If brands and companies want to engage in the Landscape of Influence its best to understand the lay of the landscape first. Tapping into and understanding your influencers is a growing approach and  knowing what can be influential or what motivates them as influencers is a priority .  The qualitative understanding what drives conversation and reaction  is of key importance.  Understanding the patterns of distribution  is  more of a  complex matrix, however, its is likely that on any given subject matter there is one or two main sources of primary influence and then there are many interested re distributors  who act as  networked satellites  surrounding the source in close proximity. In mapping this influence it is commonly referred to as hot spots , where a dense grouping of people , ideas and conversations are in close proximity to each other. Knowing , when and where to engage these groups requires a  business intelligence approach, involving key data points for a precision driven programs. The under pinning  of this are the relationships a brand or company will create as these are direct communications programs. Whether its blogger outreach programs, external community engagement, influencer scouring, the development of closed special interest communities there has to be a defined dialogue idea or a  value proposition in the engagement. The other thing to remember is that once you create a relationship , its ongoing and you must nurture and maintain it or lose it.

View the intiating source of the Influencers Landscape at  Ross Dawson’s Trends in Living Networks

P & G hosted an EMEA Digital Night at in Geneva bringing together its marketing , ecommerce , digital communications people and their agencies to participate in a digital and social media experiment on a real live campaign. At its outset it appeared to be a daunting proposal , to spearhead a full blown digital media campaign in two hours with the ultimate goal being to maximize the groups reach , push their influence, and market and sell the idea of donating for a Pampers & UNICEF program to eliminate Tetanus. The aim to raise 100, 000 GBP in 18 hours.

Pampers Save a Baby. One pack , one baby.

“A baby dies every three minutes somewhere in the world from tetanus. It is completely avoidable and Pampers is sponsoring and raising money for a UNICEF vaccination program worldwide.”

The ensuing two hours was bold and adventurous as assigned groups armed with a few basic executional assets and a donation landing page split off to devise and execute a fund raising campaign utilizing only digital channels. There were no set rules in what the approach needed to be other than it needed to be “executed with integrity”.

The groups immediately raced to begin and obvious point to turn to were their friends and associates linked in the various social networks. Facebook groups emerged , links appears, a donate widget application got added to personal pages and the conversation began in earnest. The emergence of strategy then began to permeate the groups as each devised campaign message and a reach strategy in how to maximize audience across a multiple touch points making the approach more sophisticated, pointed and less haphazard.

Blogs , YouTube videos, an influencer campaign on Tweeter and through Facebook , chasing and contacting high value donors , negotiations for impressions across online publishing networks linking multiple contact channels and coming together at a rapid pace. In a jaw dropping moment a little while latter a one million impression banner campaign appeared across one of Germany’s major newspaper sites. The buzz and influencer phenomena then took over with global reach. As the intensity of the push to raise money took hold , groups began to monitor their competitors actions and tactics, calling for quick decisions on how best to out wit the competition and move to next channel almost in a race to be first.

Viral campaigns riding on the back of Selma Hayak’s ambassadorship sprung up. Well designed internal direct email campaigns raced through the P & G network.Tell to friends campaigns in the social sites took hold.

A directed and awe inspiring frenzy of digital buzz. The results .. they are a secret .. but it worked.

Donate to one groups target @ www.justgiving.com.co.uk/pampersnewbaby

Save a Baby Blog link

YouTube submissions

Obama said in his opening speech, the way to make a government responsible is to hold it accountable… and transparent so that the American people can know what decisions are being made, how they are being made and whether their interests are being well served.

In order to achieve this level of transparency Obama has instructed public officials to draw on what citizens know. This means finding new ways of tapping into the knowledge and experience of ordinary citizens and involving them in shaping the policies that affect their lives.

It’s widely recognized through social media circles that candidates used the web and social media tools to connect to their followers and organize their campaigns. Some of the results for Obama in the leadup to his victory are astounding:

• Close to 500 million blog postings mentioned Obama
• 844,927 MySpace friends with 10,000 new friends on election day
• 144,000 followers on Twitter and following 168,314

Making sense of these numbers and drilling down to information which is useful calls for social media tracking tools such as Attentio, Nielsen-Online and BrandWatch. The need for such services is growing and in the coming year will become even more essential to any company or organization who has a need to know what people are saying. Another useful guide to reference isSocial Target to 63 companies who offer social media monitoring and analysis services worldwide.

brand.intelligence™ is used to help our clients to connect their marketing / communications with their business applications.

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” – Jeff Bezos, founder and ceo of Amazon.com.

brand.intelligence™ works like a brain. It has two interconnected hemispheres, one hemisphere is emotional and the other one is rational.

The emotional side is the brand management that is the application of marketing/communications techniques to a specific product, product line, or brand. It seeks to increase the product’s perceived value to the customer and thereby increase brand franchise and brand equity. It is:

1. Creating the promise. Means defining the brand.
2. Making the promise. A large part of marketing, which includes advertising and PR, is about positioning the company and its products in the minds of customers and against your competitors.
3. Keeping the promise. Means managing capability, consistent processes, technologies and systems which are reliable and usable, motivated people who are willing and able to dialogue with all the stakeholders and deliver the goods.

On the rational side, business intelligence drives business decisions. Understanding and forwarding the information to the right people creates a collective intelligence, which can have financial value.

In this new world, information and dialogue are kings. The more good information and the better contact you have with your audience the greater the probability that you will make winning decisions and investments.

What gives value to data is not the data itself but what you do with it. As more people share the same information, they understand each other better, communicate easier and make better decisions.

With the advent of the social media on the internet, brands should accept to loose a part of the control on their image. Brands need to behave differently. They really need to dialogue with their consumers (see article of January 9, 2009)! Marketers on their side need to become more aggregator than broadcaster. They have to help brands to create an open environment for collaboration and knowledge sharing.

brand.intelligence™ could help you to go further in the contact with the audiences through a better knowledge of data associated with a powerful creative proposal.