The CMO Reading List: Top Marketers Share Their Favorite Business Books In 2015

Have you read anything good lately? This year, we asked leading marketers which business books made the biggest impact on their work in 2015. Their responses included a wide-range of topics.

From long-time favorites like The Lean Startup to 2015’s Losing the Signal, reading suggestions from the CMOs profiled in our “Get to Know” interview series  make for an expansive reading list.

Here are ten business books CMOs told us they enjoyed this year, along with reviews for the most highly recommended reads.

10 Books CMOs Recommended in 2015

1. StrengthFinder by Tom Rath
2. The Essentials by The Harvard Business Review
3. The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
4. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
5. Small Message, Big Impact by Terri Sjodin
6. The Mobile Mindshift by Ted Schadler, Josh Bernoff, and Julie Ask
7. Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull
8. Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Dr. Michael Braungart
9. Losing the Signal by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff
10. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Book Reviews by CMOs

Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In has been a favorite since its release in 2013. After reading it earlier this year, Irit Singer, CMO for the mobile video and photo sharing platform Mobli, said she found the book very inspiring.

“She is an amazing role model for women in business, and looking at her story gave me lots of things to be personally proud of, and even more importantly, a bunch of areas in which I could improve,” said Singer.

Bizzabo CMO Alon Alroy told us the best business book he read this year was The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz.

“I loved it, and kept telling myself I wished I’d read it before. It’s a book I personally recommended for any C-level position,” said Alroy.

Michelle Denogean, CMO for Edmunds.com, says her company chairman is an avid read and often circulates books throughout the organization.

“One of my favorites from the past several months is called The Mobile Mindshift,” said Denogean, “The book talks about the shift in consumer expectations caused by the mobile revolution. Consumers now realize they can get what they want, anytime they want, from their mobile device.”

Denogean says every marketer needs to think about the mobile moments that matter in their business.

Creativity, Inc. by Pixar’s Ed Catmull was recommended by The Discovery Channel’s Chief Communications Officer David Leavy.

“It’s not the latest I’ve read, but one of the most insightful,” said Leavy, “I’d highly recommend it to anyone that’s ready to invest in building and nurturing their organization’s creative culture.”

Scholastic CMO Dani Nadel, a marketer whose primary focus is books, said Jacqui McNish and Sean Silcoff’s Losing the Signal was an entertaining and engrossing cautionary tale about a tech giant unable to evolve quickly enough.

“This is the story of how RIM revolutionized an industry and built an empire, but lost it to the hands of Apple and Google by 2010,” said Nadel, “It reinforced the need to manage growth, embrace change, while never losing the spirit of evolution and innovation.”

In addition to asking about their favorite reads, Marketing Land’s “Get to Know” series gives a behind the scenes peek into the lives of CMOs from some of the world’s top brands. Every interview includes details like:

• What a typical day looks like for Prudential’s lead marketer Mark Hug.
• Clif Bar marketing VP Michelle Ferguson’s favorite hobbies.
• The social networks North Face CMO Aaron Carpentar uses when he’s not working.

Drop us an email if you know a CMO from a leading brand who you think should be featured on Marketing Land in the coming year.