Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Marketing & Sales

The most important brands in the world make us feel something. They do that because they have something they want to change. And as customers, we want to be part of that change. These companies have a reason to exist over and above making a profit: they have a purpose. Yes, we love the product they make. But the thing we love most about them is the change they are making.

Countless enterprises fall apart the moment they scale; their positive results fizzle, they lose valuable time and money and the great electric charge of potential that drove them early on disappears. In short, they suffer a voltage drop. Yet success and failure are not about luck - in fact, there is a rhyme and reason as to why some ideas fail and why some make it big. Certain ideas are predictably scalable, while others are predictably destined for disaster.

From the moment we wake up and unlock our phones, we're producing data. We offer up our unique fingerprint to the online world, scan our route to work, listen to a guided meditation or favourite playlist, slide money around, share documents and update our social media accounts. We reach for our phones up to 200 times a day, not knowing which companies are storing, using, selling and manipulating our data.

Ten years ago the idea of getting into a stranger's car or walking into a stranger's home would have seemed bizarre and dangerous, but today it's as common as ordering a book online. Uber and Airbnb are household names: redefining neighbourhoods, challenging the way governments regulate business and changing the way we travel. In the spirit of iconic Silicon Valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, a new generation of entrepreneurs is sparking yet another cultural upheaval through technology.

While most books and press focus on the more sensational moments of creation and conclusion, The Messy Middle argues that the real key to success is how you navigate the ups and downs after initial investment is secured. It will give you all the insights you need to build and optimise your team, improve your product and develop your own capacity to lead. Building on seven years of meticulous research with entrepreneurs, small agencies, start-ups and billion-dollar companies, Scott Belsky offers indispensable lessons on how to endure and thrive in the long term.

Emotion by Design reveals how leaders can harness the creative potential of any team, and so resonate with their audience like never before. Reflecting on his time working on Nike campaigns for Ronaldo and LeBron, the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, Greg Hoffman reveals how any business can unlock its creativity: whether by seeking out the daydreamers (and taking them seriously), or recognising that visionary ideas come not only from ingenious individuals but from whole cultures of innovation or understanding how to turn a mere campaign into a global movement.

Penguin presents the audio edition of The Contagious Commandments, written and read by Paul Kemp-Robertson and Chris Barth. Contagion may alarm doctors, but marketers thrive on it. Some concepts are so compelling you have to share them. But what makes an idea so infectious you can't keep it to yourself? In The Contagious Commandments, Paul Kemp-Robertson and Chris Barth condense this valuable research into 10 strategic takeaways for your own marketing revolution.

This book is about disruption. About doing things differently. About having ideas that will change the world. That will at least change your world. It's also about delivering those ideas. Do Disrupt is a workbook that will help you create or refine your business idea and take it from concept to market. It will encourage you to define your customer, identify the competition...and then outsmart them. You'll also find out why you need a chat with your Nan and a tape measure. If you're starting a new business or you're the rebel inside, it's not enough to shake things gently.

The Internet was meant to set us free. But have we unwittingly handed too much away to shadowy powers behind a wall of code, all manipulated by a handful of Silicon Valley utopians, ad men, and venture capitalists? And, in light of recent data breach scandals around companies like Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, what does that mean for democracy, our delicately balanced system of government that was created long before big data, total information, and artificial intelligence? In this urgent polemic, Jamie Bartlett argues that through our unquestioning embrace of big tech, the building blocks of democracy are slowly being removed.

The Challenger Sale team are back, and this time they reveal something even more game changing: the highest-performing sales teams don't focus on friendly, attentive customers. They target challenger customers. Challenger customers are sceptical, less interested in meeting and indifferent. But they also have the persuasive skill and will to challenge their own organisations on your behalf and get the deal to the finish line.

Brands profit by telling women who they are and how to be. Now they've discovered feminism and are hell bent on selling 'fempowerment' back to us. But behind the go-girl slogans and the go-viral hashtags, has anything really changed? In Brandsplaining, Jane Cunningham and Philippa Roberts present a data-led analysis of marketing to women and expose the good, the bad and the ugly assumptions that lie behind it.

Is your workplace riven by tribal conflict? Are your meetings governed by dozens of unspoken rituals? Is there something faintly religious about the way your colleagues worship the CEO? If so, then you might need a lesson in business anthropology. For a century, anthropologists have had an unusual method: immersing themselves deep inside 'alien' tribes and uncovering, from the inside, how they tick. Today, a new generation of anthropologists are using this approach to explain modern businesses - revealing the hidden rituals that define what we buy, who we sell to and how we work.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Truth by Hector Macdonald, read by Simon Ludders. For fans of Nudge, Black Box Thinking and The Art of Thinking Clearly, a fascinating dive into the many ways in which ‘competing truths’ shape our opinions, behaviours and beliefs. True or false? It’s rarely that simple. There is more than one truth about most things. Eating meat is nutritious, but it’s also damaging to the environment. The Internet disseminates knowledge, but it also spreads hatred. As communicators, we select the truths that are most useful to our agenda.

Sales genius is a team sport. As a B2B sales leader, you know that by Murphy’s Law, despite your team's best efforts, some deals will inevitably get stuck or key relationships will go sour. And too often, it's the most important ones - the last thing you need when millions of dollars are on the line. Dealstorming is Tim Sanders’s term for a structured, scalable, repeatable process that can break through any sales deadlock. He calls it “a Swiss Army knife for today’s toughest sales challenges”.

Today's consumers prefer the advantages of access over the hassles of ownership. It's not just Internet services like Netflix and Spotify; even industrial firms like GE and Caterpillar are reinventing themselves as solutions providers. Whether you sell software, clothes, insurance, or industrial machines, you need to master the transition to the subscription model. Adapting to the subscription economy takes more than just deciding to sell subscriptions instead of products. You'll have to reinvent your company from the inside out - from your accounting to your entire IT architecture. 

Herman Narula argues that it is all of these things. His vision of the metaverse, deeply rooted in history and psychology, looks to the Egyptians, whose conception of death inspired them to build the pyramids, to modern-day sports fans whose fantasy leagues are as competitive as the real thing, and finds that humanity has always sought to supplement our day-to-day lives with a rich diversity of alternative immersive experiences.

In Think Simple, Apple insider and New York Times best-selling author Ken Segall gives you the tools to Apple's success - and shows you how to use them. It's all about simplicity. Whether you're in a multinational corporation or a lean start-up, this guide will teach you how to crush complexity and focus on what matters: how to perform better, faster and more efficiently.

LEGO is one of the world's best-loved and most familiar brands, adored by generations of children. What is less well known, though, is how close this iconic company came to total collapse in 2003. Brick by Brick is the compelling story of a Danish family-owned company that enjoyed decades of success before its inability to keep in step with a rapidly changing market brought it crashing to earth. It's also the story of an extraordinary recovery.

The rules of entertainment have changed. Last year the vlogger PewDiePie made more money from his YouTube videos than high-profile movie stars such as Meryl Streep, Cameron Diaz and Anne Hathaway. And no one knows more about how it works than Robert Kyncl, chief business officer at YouTube. YouTube is the first truly global media platform, reaching 87 percent of all online adults in the UK.

Tough Mudder is not a race. It's a challenge. Unlike other endurance events, Tough Mudder encourages team spirit. The course's design forces you to seek help from others - and with 20 obstacles, 40 tons of ice and 500,000 litres of grade-A mud set over 10 to 12 miles, you're going to need it. This revival of community is the key to the company's success. In It Takes a Tribe, founder Will Dean explores the mental, physical and social principles behind the experience and reveals how he built a global tribe.