The reading list.
Ask a speaker for one book and you’ll get five. These are the ones they settled on, each with a line on why, plus picks from the State of Social team. An asterisk marks a book by a past State of Social speaker.
Reading list41 items
Behaviour6
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
Picked by: Meg Coffey
A must-read for anyone in communications.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Picked by: Christina Garnett and Our team
The Anxious Generation
Picked by: Paul Leonard
A great lens through which to understand and therefore connect with Gen Z (and Gen Alpha).
Alchemy
Picked by: Sophie Winter and Our team
Alchemy by Rory Sutherland because it reminds us that humans are not rational beings - we make very emotional decisions, then tell ourselves a rational story after the fact. If marketers can learn how to play into this illogicality and solve people's problems for them, they'll succeed
The Elephant in the Brain
Picked by: Our team
How to Change Your Mind
Picked by: Our team
Strategy and brand8
Find Your Red Thread
Picked by: Our team
Building a StoryBrand
Picked by: Our team
How Brands Grow
Picked by: Jes Scholz
Because it gives a good framework for marketing strategy.
Digital Darwinism
Picked by: Our team
A staple on the State of Social bookshelf.
Cult Status
Explores what modern cult brands look like and why community and purpose now matter as much as profit.
The Advertising Effect
If you want to understand how advertising actually changes behaviour, not how it claims to, Adam Ferrier is required reading.
Stop Listening to the Customer
Refreshingly blunt about customer obsession: chasing what people say they want often strips brands of value and creates sameness.
Disrupted
Picked by: Rob Campbell
To realise few people actually know what the hell they're doing, regardless how much they claim otherwise.
Writing and data5
Everybody Writes
Picked by: Meg Coffey
A fundamental read for writers.
Storytelling with Data
Picked by: Will Bal
A game-changer. Seriously. Read it. The audiobook won’t cut it either; you need to see the example graphs that Cole uses. Bonus: it’s a very fast and easy read, because it’s mostly pictures of graphs!
Junior
Picked by: Our team
Instagram for Dummies
Picked by: Our team
Useless Etymology: Offbeat Word Origins for Curious Minds
Picked by: Our team
Every marketer works in words, so it pays to know where they came from. Jess Zafarris digs into the odd, surprising histories behind everyday English, from false acronyms to the wars, art and whims that shaped it.
Customer2
Unreasonable Hospitality
Picked by: Meg Coffey
How customer service can define an experience.
Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships
Picked by: Meg Coffey
A practical read for building community and lasting brands.
Attention and tech4
The Disconnect
Picked by: Saira Manns
“The numbers haunt us; there’s no prize, and no end, because no one ever wins”.. a must-read for all digital marketers to help keep a grip on reality!
The Attention Merchants
Picked by: Pamela Obeid
Stolen Focus
Picked by: Lindsay Bennett
Zucked
Picked by: Our team
Work and focus8
Essentialism
Picked by: Justin Beavis
It's so easy to feel rushed, and overworked when you get bogged down on side quests that don't align to your SINGULAR priority (the word was designed to be singular and remained that way for the first 500 years of its existence). Do less, better and more purposefully.
Atomic Habits
Picked by: Our team
Can’t see this one leaving the bookshelf for a while.
Get Your Sh*t Together
Picked by: Geena Lamb
The Algebra of Happiness
Picked by: Our team
Work Backwards
Tackles the way we work and why it feels broken, with practical tools to reset balance and design a working life that is sustainable and meaningful.
Killer Thinking
Breaks down how great ideas are actually formed and shows that creativity is a skill anyone can develop.
Messy
Picked by: Rob Campbell
To realise many of the greatest successes in business and art are because someone allowed 'happy accidents' to happen, rather than try to kill them because 'they weren't part of the plan'.
A Manual for Living Curated for Nike
Picked by: James Horne
An exercise in creative thinking, I explain this book to my friends as an adult workbook. A deep dive into process, emotion and design that isn't just useful for creatives, but for everyone in ways to explore as many ways as possible towards a desired outcome.
Stories8
Parable of the Sower
Picked by: Tess Palmyre
Because it's basically a study of extreme friction. It shows what happens when systems break down, trust erodes, and people stop believing in the stories they’re being sold. It’s not a marketing book — but it explains marketing’s new reality better than most marketing books do. And Octavia E Butler is arguably one of the most important Black voices in science fiction.
The Alchemist
Picked by: Tim Duggan and Julian Pace
Klara and the Sun
Picked by: Jamie Kho
Which might sound like an odd pick. It’s really about what it means to be human, and how people look for connection, care, and reassurance, even from something that isn’t human at all. That stuck with me from a marketing lens. Because what people respond to isn’t perfection or polish, it’s feeling understood. It’s empathy. It’s whether something feels like it gets them. And I think that’s the part we sometimes miss. We can focus so much on performance, channels, or optimisation, but the brands that actually cut through are the ones that feel human, consistent, and emotionally real over time.
The Wee Free Men
Picked by: Jess Zafarris
Empire of Pain
Picked by: Rob Campbell
To realise success isn't about what you have, but how you got it and what you did with it once you achieved it.
Rogue Heroes
Picked by: Clare Pickens
I don't read marketing books. There's too much theory already out there. Read something which educates or inspires you about the human condition when we are tested to our limits.
Animal Farm
Picked by: Clare Pickens
Yesteryear
Picked by: Clare Pickens
| Total | 41 books |