Episode 105: World Book Day special

Speaker 1  00:02
You welcome to the CIM Marketing podcast. The contents and views expressed by individuals in the CIM Marketing Podcast are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the companies they work for. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Speaker 2  00:16
Hello everybody, and welcome to the CIM Marketing podcast. And you know, on the sixth of March we are celebrating World Book Day, world but day, as many of you will know, the celebration of reading, authorship and the power of books. It's designed to improve literacy and interest in reading and in books. And on the sixth of March this year, as with every year, every school child in the UK and Ireland will be given a voucher to spend on books, many of them, as all parents will know, will also be asked to attend school dressed as their favorite literary character. And we have, I'm delighted to say, two of our very own literary characters with us today, in the shape of PR Smith and Bob shared. Paul Bob, how are you today? Great. It's great to have you on the show. Paul will start with you. Paul writes as PR Smith. He's a renowned marketing strategist and author and an international speaker, TED speaker, Ted talker, marketing author and founder of sostat planning methodology. CIM lists as one of the top three business methodologies in the world. His new book, The sostat Guide to your perfect digital marketing plan, is out this year, and he's written seven books already translated into eight languages, including the best selling Marketing Communications, which this year is in its eighth edition. Paul, can you tell us not so much about your back catalog of impressive marketing books, but this one that's coming forward, which is arriving on the scenes this year?

Speaker 3  01:53
Yeah, that's the suspect guide to your perfect digital marketing plan. And that is, well, it's been, I've been writing it and updating it every year, really, for more than 10 years. And this is the 2025, edition. It's the AI edition. So we've taken suspect the planning methodology and empowered it with with AI in each of the six sections, primarily five of the six sections, really, yep, so that's that's what the suspect guide is about.

Speaker 2  02:25
And what do you hope it will do for marketers? How do you think it might change the way, right?

Speaker 3  02:30
But it's cutting. It has an outrageous subtitle. So the suspect subtitled guide to your perfect digital marketing plan, and I know this will help people write the perfect plan, because I get feedback every week. I've got feedback coming in for the last 10 years saying suspect changed my life. It's a simple structure. You can learn in three minutes. What I have found, though, is that some of the interpretations of it by other people have not been accurate. In fact, I've had to approach a very large institution recently and asked them to withdraw an online planning webinar they had because it was inaccurate. But they did that. They obliged So, and then they referred to suspect incorrectly. So this book gives you the proper details of how to write a perfect plan and separating strategy from tactics, which is where a lot of plans become unstuck, and also the bit of internal marketing in the actions piece. And then we've you know how to ensure excellent execution. So suspect, in summary is, as you know, situation, where are you now? Objectives, where you're going, strategy, how do you get there? Tactics, the details, the strategy, the marketing mix, actions, the bit, that's not a lot of plans, that's internal marketing, excellent execution of the tactics and then control. How do we know we're getting there? Now we've applied AI to each of five of the sections, apart from the objectives, so I know it does deliver, and people tell me every day that it does help them to write great plans. And it's not just marketing they can apply. So stack to HR, to health and safety, to personal plans, even wedding plans. And people give positive feedback all the time. So it does seem

Speaker 2  04:04
to work. We will find out more about it later in the show, how you wrote it, how you came to write it, and how your creative processes work when we have that discussion later. We're also joined today by Bob Sheard. Bob shared a little introduction for many of you. He's a very well known guy. He is. He co founded the fresh Britain design agency 25 years ago with his wife Sophie, and he's helped design or redesign more than 250 brands globally, some of the biggest brands in the world, Levi's, LVMH, Nike, New Balance, team, sky. And circling back to his home county of Yorkshire with tog 24 the outdoor wear company, and newer design co he's got a book coming out this year called the brand new future how brands can save the world, which, again, is a very bold and provocative subtitle. How can they save the world? Bob, well,

Speaker 4  04:57
it's kind of interesting when you look. Look at the three things that have adversely affected the quality of our lives in recent years, COVID, conflict and climate change. And as a citizen of the world, when we look at how we can pull a democratic lever to see who manages those things for us on a global basis, it becomes unstuck, because it's effectively 195 countries, with 195 governments operating within their national boundaries to try and control something that ignores those national boundaries. And so as a citizen of the world, when you're looking to who can manage those things, it's very difficult. We don't have any democratic lever to pull. So the only democratic kind of expression that we do have is how we spend our money, which is what brings brands into focus. Because then, if we can buy the change we want to see, or buy brands that represent the future we want to live in, we can start to see the power of consumerism to shape the future, to create the space for brands to move into. When you look at the sort of size of some of the world's biggest brands, Apple is commensurate to the size of Italy. We don't all vote for Italy, but we all vote for Apple every time we use one of their products. So consumers, we can start to see how they can wield the power that will shift a space for brands to move into. And whilst the national governments can't move beyond their boundaries, commerce can and brand meaning is the newest expression of our own personal meaning systems as we evolved into countries, it went from our nation states giving us our sense of identity, our religions giving us our sense of identity, our jobs giving us our sense of identity, till gradually, we're in the first part of the 21st Century, and it's brands that give us our sense of personal identity and how we wear them, use them and consume them, will shape the future that we want to see, that will change as the rise of Generation Z emerges to become the world's biggest economic power in that they are more defined by what they do and what they know and less defined by what they own. And in there lies the opportunity for brands to start to grow by finding pathways to growth that don't require the making of things that people own, that require pathways to growth by monetizing knowledge, intelligence and experience, that connects with the next generation's desire to be defined by what they do and defined by what they know. So it's a really interesting aspect that will allow us to start to move from storytelling to story doing, and from the provision of things, to the provision of knowledge, intelligence and experience that connects to that desire to know and to do over own

Speaker 3  07:46
Bob, there's a big gap for a book like that you've written, and the idea of, you know, moving from storytelling to story, doing is powerful, and the power of the brand carrying people's beliefs and values, Where the political parties may not be doing it is incredibly powerful. There was a book that came out in the 1980s and I was so happy when it came out, shopping for a better world and and there was a there was a version of it done which was for shareholders, which is a lot more impactful, and sold 100,000 copies of it may seem like great for an author, but actually insignificant, to change lives of people. So it came and went, and I was very disappointed that it did. So I'm delighted to hear, Bob, you've written this book, which will kind of bring about, is it very common conscientious brands?

Speaker 4  08:34
Yeah, sort of interesting. And McKinsey published this year that sustainability as a priority for CEOs fell off their top five lists this year, which means you're faced with two choices. How do you align a CEO's objectives with a regenerative world? So can you connect the idea of being a regenerative, sustainable brand to a profit motive or to a shareholder value motive? And I believe that you can, we've tracked the top 50 most valuable companies in the world, and the top seven of those have brand roles that either inspire change, dream of change, or create change, so you can connect it directly to the multiple and enterprise value. The other thing is, if the CEO can't see the white rhino that is climate change, it's big, it's white, it's coming at us. We just can't get out of the way, and they choose to bury their head in the sand. Then our choice then is to find different CEOs, and it's to educate the next generation to become leaders of commerce and leaders of politics so they can tackle these issues head on.

Speaker 2  09:34
How do you get there? How do you start with this idea and selection of ideas and synthesize them into something that can become and be published as a book. It's a

Speaker 4  09:45
kind of collection of 25 years experience of dealing with over 250 brands and therefore dealing with 250 CEOs. I often joke that we've designed over 250 brands. It basically means we've been sacked 249 times. So. It puts us in an incredibly privileged position to deal with lots of brands from different sectors, and you start to see patterns emerge that maybe they can't see each CEO and his own company is like a goldfish in a goldfish bowl that can't see his own water, but we can see it from the outside, and if you can see 250, of them, you can start to see patterns that emerge that then you have to sort of crystallize and put down on paper. One of the kind of critical things I learned was growing up and watching things happen like, you know, sort of blowing in the wind becoming a really anthemic song for the civil rights movement. But blowing in the wind was written by a white guy about black rights, and it pissed off Sam Cook, who then wrote, a change is going to come. And so you start to see how art and culture became accelerants for the civil rights movement that then created the space for civil rights policy to move into. So it becomes incumbent on us as writers or artists or culturists or brand designers to start to design the space for movements to move into, and for policy to follow. It's

Speaker 2  11:08
interesting, isn't it? And Paul, your books started, I think it's fair to say, with a problem that you've observed internally and externally, that marketing plans were people finding them hard. They weren't all successful. People were doing them in the wrong way, and you were able to somehow synthesize all of these ideas and notions and discoveries that you'd made into a very successful framework which marketers love and enhances their role. Where does it start that? Where do you start and wake up one morning and say, goodness me, I'm seeing all this stuff. How can I turn it into something that looks it may not have been called that at the time, but Yeah, feels like sod stack.

Speaker 3  11:47
Yeah, it really didn't happen like that, although was born out of frustration. So when I was doing my masters in City University here in London, I was very frustrated when we did marketing planning and, you know, we were taught about how to write plans, and it was just so unnecessarily complicated and all over the shop. And we were given books that were like, three and four inches thick with approaches to strategy, and it got mixed up corporate strategy, from marketing strategy and all the rest It's all bundled in. It was a mess. And so I asked all my I was doing part time MBA, riding a little motorbike around London, having left my Belgium multinational to do this thing and sell Christmas crackers, market Christmas crackers in America to pay for my MBA. But I asked the two cohorts, as I was doing it part time, to send me in the years to come, just the contents page of the plans that they write, so I could try and study and see what way they were working theirs. And a lot of them did. And over two years, I had two cohorts, so two groups of about 30 people. It took 10 years from there to create sustac, which went through many different versions before I landed with sustack. But I knew so stack worked as soon as I introduced it in training to IBM and other companies around the world, that they immediately went, Wow, yeah. So it evolved over 10 years, really, 10 years of searching, thinking, playing with acronyms, and then so stuck came along.

Speaker 2  13:08
That's the sort of boiling down of the ideas, the synthesis of the ideas, the synthesis of experiences, which lead you to have the spark, if you like, to write this book, but then you've got to move to the execution phase. And this is true of any author, but it's something that lots of authors struggle with, or lots of potential authors struggle with, to the point that sometimes it stops them actually writing a book. But you two guys are people who are delivering you or writing a book. You're producing a book, your book's being published. Are there specific habits, routines or tools you use to actually bring your book? Books to life?

Speaker 3  13:44
Well, yes, in my case, yes, although I have been lucky, because when I did suspect it was for my own purposes, to be able to train people how to write better plans and to write better plans myself, that was its purpose. But the reactions I got wherever I took, it said, and one guy, one IBM guy, a Spanish fellow, very, very, very nice guy, begged me to write as a book. His name is Hugo Rubio, and I acknowledge Him in the front of every book, and I keep in touch with him. He's got, often done a PhD in Philosophy now, but so I thanked him, because he begged me, and it helped me to write the first one. I had another guy from Sri Lanka who said, You've got to put this into an online course, which I kind of begrudgingly did, another book that came the marketing communications came because I was asked by an editor from Cogan page who was in my audience of evening students. So I was really lucky, but most people were, you know, I was asked to write a book on marketing communications and the other ones, I was asked to write a book about suspect and helped with somebody else. But thereafter, the process certainly requires empathy with your reader and passion and excitement of discovery and having an inquisitive mind. I think if you don't have passion and enjoy writing, then it's going to be work. And I've never really considered writing to be work. It's pure pleasure, really, although it can be tedious and tough going and researching and chasing people. All the rest of it, but the empathy bit, to have the empathy to understand, what are the questions in your audience's mind that you could help find out and be hungry enough and interest enough to find interesting people to give you the answers. So I've always considered myself to be a student and to write the questions that students would want to have for my books, so that that probably makes them more accessible. But the process does require discipline. Does require, for me, rigorous schedules, you know, each week to have a certain target of how much I'm going to have written as a first draft. Be prepared to go back and rewrite if you've got an editor, or if you're doing it with a team, or getting reviews. Reviews is essential. You've got a budget that, in time wise, you have to have feedback from your drafts. And there's other ways of doing it, but that for me, I mean, I do lock myself in here, become a very boring person in my own little study, working away and achieving small tasks. I'm going to write half a chapter, or these three topics of this chapter this week, you know, and have the rest scheduled out so that you hit the deadline, if it's if you're working with publishers. Prided myself on delivering on time. A lot of people don't, and I just think it's unprofessional not to hit those deadlines.

Speaker 2  16:00
Bob, if you don't have discipline and passion and enjoy writing, you'll never get a book out. Agree with that,

Speaker 4  16:08
yeah, kind of this is my first book, so I haven't got the experience of Paul, but I tried the Hemingway approach, which was write drunk and edit sober. But then when I was sober, there was nothing ever written down. Straight away i away, I just found that for me, because I've got a day job, I had to get up at four o'clock in the morning for three months and just write. What I tended to do was just talk. I'm a bit of a talker, so I'm pretty badly dyslexic, so writing doesn't come that easy, and so I just talked into my dictaphone, and then that had that transcribed, and then edited the transcription. But I was really fortunate enough to meet somebody purely serendipitously. I'd been to a funeral in Peterborough. And my family were all sort of market traders from Bradford came down for this funeral, and we ended up all being barred from the Peterborough North Premier Inn. It got a little bit physical, so we got barred for the night. Next day, I went to a party, and in the morning, I was having breakfast with a woman who was in the same hotel, and we got talking, and I was telling her about being barred from the Premier Inn, and that was about to go to a school reunion up in Halifax, and I just thought, I'm never going to see this woman ever in my life. So I just told her everything that was going to go on. Anyway, she texted me later, and on, the boilerplate of her text was the fact that she was worked at number 10 and was in the Cabinet Office. So there's me talking about fighting and Halifax, and all of a sudden, intrigued this woman. And then I met her for breakfast, and I said, Look, I'm an absolute dyslexic optimist who is an idealist, and what I really could do with is a pessimist realist that can spell if you're happy to get involved and become a writing companion, I'd love the chance to work with you. Anyway, she said, Look, send me the first chapter. I'll have a look at it, and then I'll see if I can work with you. Anyway, she disappeared during the Gaza conflict, and then came back about a month later, and we had breakfast, and we talked for an hour, but nothing about the book. And I thought, this is where she lets me down. This is where she lets me down. And then eventually she just said, it reads like you're bipolar. He said it there's a passive part and an active part. And I said, there's probably some truth in that book. And she said, I'll help you put that together. So I ended up having someone to write for and then to bounce things off. So that was really, really serendipitous, fortuitous. And had it not been for for Emma, I don't think I'd have got

Speaker 2  18:32
the book out. You were used to writing and designing marketing campaigns, you know, from some of the world's biggest brands, but you found this somehow more challenging, different as well? Yeah. Well, I think

Speaker 4  18:46
when you're writing a book, or for me, when I was writing a book, it was an inward search for truth, and when I'm building a brand, again, that's about the excavation of truth, but it's about evangelizing that truth. So it's very much more a shorthand versus this, which was very much a long hand. I mean, I found it quite a cathartic experience. I mean, you wake up in the morning your brain's full of ideas, and just kind of have to get them out and then try and make sense of them. And that's how it worked

Speaker 2  19:12
for me. Well, for you, Paul, you're it's interesting that when Bob found the right person at the right time, there's a difference between him getting this book out in 2025 and maybe not it not coming out, or certainly not coming out until later. Sometimes other people have got to help you on the way.

Speaker 3  19:30
Yeah, certainly with my marketing communications book, as I say, which is eighth edition now, but in his first edition, the first half of the book was kind of General Communications and research and the psychology of communications, all of that. But Part Two was a chapter on each of the 10 communications tools, from advertising to PR and so on. And I sent a draft of each chapter to an expert, usually a practitioner, for each one. I was so nervous about writing, it really was almost overwhelmed at the beginning to be asked to write a book and. So that gave me some confidence. When the people start coming back saying, that's really, really good. I really like that. You need to change this so without the feedback in the loop, as Bob says, you know, to have a co author or somebody else helping you. Or could be your wife, could be a friend. In my first book case, it was individual experts that I literally rang, phoned, sent a letter in, asked, would they have a look at it? Might be harder to do it. Now, people are time poorer, so they mightn't be prepared to read a full chapter. You know, a few 1000 words is all they get through. Now they wouldn't get through 10,000 words, or whatever it is. So certainly the feedback loop that Bob talks about, yeah, to do it on your own is is dangerous. Why not use feedback from trusted people? Did you do yours with the publisher? Bob,

Speaker 4  20:41
no, no, we just drafted the whole thing, and then we were assumed, like the Beatles were going to get rejected 40 times, but we got picked up pretty quickly.

Speaker 3  20:49
Okay, and did they change it much? Did their editors change or suggest changes or styles or anything?

Speaker 4  20:54
Yeah, yeah. They Well, we had the whole manuscript, and then we sent it in, and then that, when it went to their, uh, their editor that came back, and they said, Look, we want a bit more of your voice in it, which I took to mean more swearing. So just loads more swearing in it sends it back. And they loved it. So nice to you. Reigns. Lovely, lovely,

Speaker 2  21:15
fantastic. I was going to ask you my next question to you, Bob was, what other if you were giving advice to any marketer looking to set out to write their first book, any advice of pitfalls they should avoid? Obviously swearing too much is not one of them.

Speaker 4  21:32
The only way to work out whether you can write a book or not is to write the book. There's no easy way of doing it. You just have to do it.

Speaker 3  21:40
Agree that you know, you've got to get out there and do it. It has to be addressed. You have to have a go at it. There's two ways. Actually, I would suggest that people might think about writing a book if they've got the urge to do it. One is to actually, don't write a book. Just write a blog and see how you get on with that. Do you get feedback? Do you get engagement? And maybe get your mates to engage with you on just, you know, to bounce stuff around. But does it get any traction? And then after 10 posts, you know, each each post could be a mini chapter or half a chapter, quarter chapter. That's one way. And in fact, if you self publish, which some people do, you're gonna have to do the marketing. And even if you don't, if you use a publisher, you know your your thoughts about marketing the book are always welcome, and they seem to want, want to use that. So I would say that you can also do something else, and that is, you can break your book down through blogs and see, do people do you enjoy? Do you enjoy Do you feel good when you look at it? Do you start tweaking and editing it? You probably do, and then the comments coming in will help you shape it and tidy it up and improve it. So I would suggest that that might be an alternative way for people take an easy first step to see if they've got writing skills, if they've got a way that will intrigue people or not, put your toe in the water and go beyond Twitter, RX, you know, go for a blog post.

Speaker 2  23:02
It's interesting. You can do it almost like this sort of advice to a novelist is, start with short storage. The advice to prospective book author is, perhaps, see if people like your blogs and smaller posts online. Interesting. You mentioned self publishing. Do you think it's a viable option or a good option in today's market? Is it something that you shouldn't think marketers should consider

Speaker 4  23:24
it's a great option in that it absolutely communicates that you believe in yourself. Interesting. You know, it's wonderful to have the affirmation of a publisher, but if you want to demonstrate self belief, then no better way than to Self Publish.

Speaker 3  23:39
Well, three of my biggest sellers. Two of them are with publishers in various editions. But this one the suspect guide, the 2025 AI edition. Well, every edition I have done myself, self published, which is rather painless. Here, you just write it in a Word document. Get the page size down to match what page size you want. Upload it. You know what? If you got feedback beforehand, that's essential. Upload it. Set up the marketing parameters, set up the price. So I decided to do the suspect book myself, and have done for last few years. And having said that, with with kind of casual proofers, there's been one or two typos, which I hope are all gone now, but it did it. Typos irritate people enormously, and you lose credibility. So you know, if you're writing books, make sure you got good proofers self publishing, you want to work hard on that bit and be prepared to change it and upload improved version rather quickly. If you can, you lose

Speaker 2  24:29
access to a lot of those services. Bob, if you go down the self publishing route, you got to be aware of those pitfalls, and you perhaps don't get the ongoing feedback like you did with your publisher saying that he or she wanted to hear more of your voice. So there are advantages to the other side of publishing as well. Yeah, and I

Speaker 4  24:45
think, but if you self publish, and it's a visual book as well, you've got that gives you the autonomy to design something beautiful,

Speaker 3  24:52
yeah, I have great discussions with my publishers over a book covers. One of them lets me commission my own designers to do it, and the other ones. We have great debates every time it comes around. It's quite, quite a sensitive one.

Speaker 5  25:06
CIM membership will help support and inspire you every stage of your marketing career. Sign up now for a range of exclusive benefits, including access to our monthly webinars. Find out more@cim.co.uk forward slash membership.

Speaker 2  25:18
What were your literary inspirations, Paul, what you know before you got to actually sort of starting on your pretty impressive catalog of marketing books, what were your own literary inspirations? Books that other people had wrote that have influenced you in your sort of world view?

Speaker 3  25:35
Ah, well, my worldview, yeah, I was definitely influenced hugely in my earlier years, and today, actually, these books have stuck with me. I'll just mention a few that really changed my life and to this day, have impacted me enormously. And it'll show my age, because people might not have heard of these, but you know, the prophet Carl good brand is, is a beautiful book. It's a very short little book. Is a beautiful book. I was a big fan of Herman Hess, the German writer, not the not the Nazi guy, but the German author, Herman Hess, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for the glass bead game, which is a big book, is an extraordinary book, a very powerful book, a very intense book. And and he wrote many books, actually, another one that he wrote that Herman Hess wrote that I really love to this day is Siddhartha and Siddhartha, s, I, D, A, R, T, O, J, to Siddhartha. Beautiful book really affected me deeply in lots of ways. Another one that affected me deeply and changed my view of the world is, of course, the classic, The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Piercy. I got my father to buy it for me. I always remember thanking him for it, even though I asked him if he'd get it for me, and he did. It was great. Read. They had profound impact on my life, not my business life, per se. Well, probably did affect my business life as well, but on my life, on my world. And there is a contemporary writer that I write a lot. It's worth checking this guy out, Gerry McGovern and Jerry's written about marketing automation and all sorts of stuff. 20 years ago, he was ahead of the curve. His stuff now he's got a book called transform, which is really good for all digital marketers. You really need to get your heads but he's gone into worldwide waste is a website he has now, and he's very influential on and kind of very critical of AI and environmental issues that are emerging. And he's just a great writer. In fact, I'd highly recommend his Sunday night. He publishes just a one page piece every Sunday. Gerry McGovern, a wonderful writer. Really, really impressed with Gerry McGovern. He impacts very hard with what he says,

Speaker 2  27:44
interesting and you Bob, what about who your big influencers? What that have changed the way that you think about marketing and life, and indeed, have spurred some of your ideas?

Speaker 4  27:53
Yeah, I think I must have been a bit of a weird kid because I read Marcus Aurelius meditations, the first kind of self help book from a guy that ran the world, and that was just incredible. And then I read Sun sous, Art of War, which just, you know, 1000s of years old, but that is effectively the sort of benchmark towards sort of marketing strategies, know yourself, know your consumer, know the battlefield. And that was incredible. There was one book I read, I read a few years ago, which I converted into a film for the LVMH group that then raised about a billion in investment funds on Asia. But the book I read that underpinned it was called factfulness, by Hans Rosling, and it's just an optimistic view of the world, and it proves that chimpanzees are more intelligent than politicians when it comes to predicting future trends in the world. It's just stunning, stunning book

Speaker 3  28:47
and world poverty Bob is factual. Let's say world poverty is reducing.

Speaker 4  28:52
Yeah, it's all about sort of you know, of the 8 billion of us on Earth right now, there is basically 1 billion in extreme poverty, meaning no source of food, fuel or water, meaning that those people have to have more children to get the food, the fuel in the water, and to sadly die along the way. And then the silver bullet to solving a stabilizing world at 12 billion at the end of this century is to educate the daughters of those countries, because educated daughters find other ways to getting food, fuel and water, other than having more children. So it's a kind of really interesting silver bullet.

Speaker 3  29:27
Thoughtfulness, I think, suggests that, through the stats, that actually we live in a better world than we think in. That world hunger is reducing percentage wise.

Speaker 4  29:37
It asks questions like, what is the average age of mortality in the world today? 6050, or 70? Ask politicians, they will say 50. As chimpanzees, they all get sort of 70, and it is 70. So it's kind of like a much more optimistic view of the world. One book that I read, which was. Really powerful in that it sings about curiosity and communal brilliance. Is Walter Isaacson's biography of Leonardo da Vinci and in that you kind of learn that the Vitruvian Man was actually a team sport. It was a collective effort amongst lots of artists led by Leonardo. But then also this kind of notion that on his very last to do list as a very famous man, one of the things on his to do list as an old guy was find out how a woodpecker brain works. So just that sort of Mad curiosity to still keep finding things out, even at that age to learn. For learning sake, I found very inspirational. And then on a personal level, where paid for our vision, designing brand visions. I think one of the best visionaries of recent history as Benjamin Franklin. So Walter Isaacson's other book on Benjamin Franklin, you know, invented little things, the lightning rod, daylight saving time, but then big things, like the United States of America, the pursuit of a more perfect union. Incredibly visionary and powerful. Then in terms of professionally, I think one of the books that was introduced to me by a guy called David Cockcroft was is CAA the powerhouse. It's all about the rise of CAA. And in that book, it talks about a very young Michael orvitz who was a tour guide on the universal lot. When all the power lay with the talent of Hollywood, it lay with the directors, it lay with the actors and actresses, and they were handled by various other agencies. And his job of three years was to ride around Hollywood on a bike handing out scripts. And he realized actually, the currency of Hollywood wasn't the talent, it was the script. And no one was repping the script writers. So he then said to a young guy in New York who'd just written the script for TV and been paid, sent a check for 300,000 for this script. He said, don't sign anything. Give me the script. I'll take it back to Hollywood. He then got the script. He found a very young, but untested director called Coppola. He then got an anchor tenant in Marlon Brando. He then got a young, untested actor in Al Pacino, got Robert Duvall in James Caan, so on and so forth, and packaged what became the Godfather, sold it to the studios for over a million. Went back to the script writer and said, right, start writing number two and number three. And paid him a lot more money. And so the idea in marketing and in branding is that we have a script, and how do we package around our script became a very powerful way in fresh Britain, which is our agency of how we build beyond just the brand vision and into the activation of brands as well. So that was really powerful

Speaker 2  32:43
for me. It's interesting how you both mentioned books, quite a few books, actually, which aren't in the marketing and business segment, and you've got professional value out of lots of books, it seems to me that aren't directly in that segment. I

Speaker 3  32:56
think you've got to read more broadly, haven't you, than just what's on your plate in front of you, or what you see on your desk. To broaden your mind, you've got to broaden your reading and your scope. But I would agree with Bob there that Sun Tzu is a masterpiece, couple of 1000 years old, still the best marketing book ever written. We can't get close to the genius of Sun Tzu. I'd also add Malcolm Gladwell tipping point as an important piece of work. Robert kild Dani influence is a really interesting book, and his appeal at the end of that book not to applaud or not to laugh at television programs that have got fake Audience laughter in it. You know, it's a really how, how the Vietnamese brainwashed the American soldiers that they captured. You know, that kind of stuff in a book about, ultimately, advertising, customer service and so on, so forth. So Cialdini is a master, a masterpiece to read, highly recommended kill Dani Gladwell, tipping point. And another book that I really like was Stephen woods, not, not so well known digital body language back in 2009 was given to me by a pal of mine. And he he kind of had the insight to suggest this is coming down the track. And Adam smart, the guy who gave me this book, and he was one of the xi beamers I used to work with, and he founded a company called clever touch, who really were the first in the UK and Europe to really advance in marketing automation back then, that's what 16 years ago. You know, a lot of why is doing now these guys were doing, didn't call it AI. They just call it marketing automation, if this, then that sort of thing. But then the book that he gave me was a book called digital body language by Stephen Woods back in 2009 and it was like a wake up call when I read a thought call. We could do this. You could automate this. That's so easy if you're prepared to spend the time working it out, you know. So that was, there was a real eye opener. And then the other classics on the strategy side, and Peter Doyle, the great professor, Peter Doyle from Warwick and. He once said to me, STP, segmentation, targeting, positioning, when he's talking about strategy, I'd never heard anybody kind of encapsulated so simply and beautifully Crossing the Chasm. I used it myself and the principles of the chasms between the innovative groups of people when you introduce innovations. That was a very powerful book. I applied it to business straight away every time I worked in innovations in B to B, Crossing the Chasm was my go to book, positioning, the most complex part of marketing, in my opinion. Bob might or might not agree with that, but positioning Jack trout and Al rise masterpiece. It's a fantastic book, and the mind of the strategist by Kenichi only. They really help in the strategy field, in leadership, Apple, Steve Jobs and the podcast Netflix says Reed Hastings. I find him a really interesting guy. And also Matthew Sayed in diversity, talking about diversity, there's just a few extra ones thrown in there, of course, Nina shake, I have to mention, she's way ahead of her time with deep fakes. It's all come true. You know what she was writing about a few years back, but I think she's a fantastic writer. Nina Schick, ahead of the curve. There's a few extra for you.

Speaker 2  36:08
It's a fantastic bibliography, but from both of you, we'll feature those in the show notes. Give a long list, probably a year's worth of books there for our audience to dig into, and we get themselves ready for the next World Book Day. We'll also get into the show notes, the links for your upcoming books. That's PR Smith's sostat Guide to your perfect digital marketing plan. That's the AI edition, which is out this year. And Bob shared the brand new future, how brands can save the world, which is published in May 2025, by lid publishing. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time and insights today, and a great way, I think, to commemorate World Book Day. And good luck with your books. And hope they go well and sell well this year as they come out, we'll be looking out for them on the shelves as they come out. That's PR Smith and Bob Sheard, thank you very much indeed for your time today on the CIM Marketing podcast. Thank you. Cheers.

Speaker 1  37:08
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