Out of the Quicksand · Aug 25, 2026

The Book I'd Recommend If I Was Starting Marketing Again Today

What are the best marketing books to learn marketing from scratch?

These are the 15 marketing books a CMO would keep if rebuilding a library from zero, three per theme: foundations, creativity, strategy, culture and storytelling, and psychology. The picks run from Kotler and Keller's Marketing Management and Ries and Trout's Positioning to Cialdini's Influence and Ariely's Predictably Irrational. If you use AI for marketing, the fundamentals matter more every month, because you are the one who has to guide the AI.

Saturday morning, tea in hand, coffee and I never quite got along, and I found myself wondering: if I had to rebuild my marketing library from zero, what would I keep?

Not an exhaustive list. Just the books that actually changed how I think, one per theme, three options each so you can pick what fits your stage.

Foundations

Marketing Management — Philip Kotler & Kevin Keller
The academic reference. Still the book that structures the whole discipline.
This Is Marketing — Seth Godin
More current: empathy and niche audiences over broadcast theory.
The 1-Page Marketing Plan — Allan Dib
The most actionable of the three, literally one page.

Creativity

Lose Your Mind: The Path to Creative Invincibility — Josh Pais
The one that changed how I personally work. But honestly, any good book on creativity will unlock something.
A Technique for Producing Ideas — James Webb Young
The shortest, the most cited, a five-step formula from 1965 that still holds.
Steal Like an Artist — Austin Kleon
Light, fast, perfect for a weekend read.

Strategy

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind — Al Ries & Jack Trout
The classic. Own a space in the mind rather than change the product.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing — Al Ries & Jack Trout
Rules that survive the trends.
Play Bigger — Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead & Kevin Maney
Category design instead of just positioning within one. Especially relevant if you're building something genuinely new.

Culture & Storytelling

Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead — David Meerman Scott & Brian Halligan
The freemium, fan-first playbook the Dead ran decades before "community-led growth" became a buzzword.
Building a StoryBrand — Donald Miller
The customer as hero, the brand as guide.
Contagious: Why Things Catch On — Jonah Berger
The science behind word of mouth.

Psychology

Influence — Robert Cialdini
THE book on the levers of persuasion.
Made to Stick — Chip & Dan Heath
Why some ideas survive and others don't.
Predictably Irrational — Dan Ariely
The biases that govern every decision, not just marketing ones.

And one last one: Dans les sables mouvants. I'll let you judge the conflict of interest — but if it weren't on this list, the list would be dishonest.

One thing that matters more every month: if you're using AI to do marketing, these fundamentals aren't optional. You're the one who has to guide the AI, not the other way around. Skip the fundamentals and you get generic output, fast.

And if, like me, you prefer questions to ready-made answers, my book is available as a free ebook. No definitive truths, just questions to keep a marketer thinking.

Get the free ebook →

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