Last week, someone on LinkedIn recommended I read a book called something like “Crushing It in the Digital Space: 47 Hacks for Exponential Growth.” I didn’t.
Most business bestsellers contain many productivity “hacks,” examples of unreproducible strategies, and touches of luck and survivorship bias. They promise systems, frameworks, and step-by-step guides to guaranteed success—as if running a business were like assembling IKEA furniture. “Süccëssdop”. Bring an allen key.
The best business thinking – specifically marketing – comes from understanding people.
The thing about humans
We’re predictably irrational, beautifully contradictory, and far more interesting than any customer persona suggests. The books that matter most for marketers aren’t promising revolutionary frameworks. They’re the ones that explain why we do such wonderfully stupid things in the first place.
So here’s the first “The Menu” (there will be many definite articles)—five books that will make you a better marketer by making you a better student of human nature.
Recommended accompaniments for all menu items are teas, scones, cream, (and then) jam,
1. Alchemy by Rory Sutherland
Rory Sutherland is the antidote to everything wrong with modern marketing. Where others worship data and logic, he champions the gloriously irrational.
Small, seemingly illogical changes often work better than big, logical ones. Red Bull didn’t succeed because it tastes good (it doesn’t). It succeeded because the awful taste made it feel medicinal and potent. The logic was backwards, but the psychology was perfect.
Stop trying to make everything make sense. Sometimes the best strategy is admitting that people aren’t spreadsheets.
(Though spreadsheets are considerably easier to predict—they don’t suddenly decide they want artisanal coffee at 8 pm on a Tuesday. But BTW someone should open late night cappuccino bars like in the old days.)
2. The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton
If Sutherland is the philosopher, Richard Shotton is the practitioner. Every principle is supported by actual experiments and real-world applications.
We think we make rational choices, but we’re actually running on mental shortcuts that worked brilliantly for cave dwellers and work terribly for choosing broadband packages. Understanding these shortcuts is marketing gold.
Shotton shows you exactly how behavioural science works in practice. Want to increase donations? Make the ask amount specific (£3, not £2-5). Want people to act faster? Give them a reason to procrastinate less, not more reasons to act now.
3. Risk Savvy by Gerd Gigerenzer
Most business decisions involve uncertainty, yet we’re taught to pretend everything can be calculated. Gigerenzer explains why this is nonsense and what to do instead.
More information doesn’t always lead to better decisions—sometimes, it leads to paralysis. The trick isn’t gathering more data—it’s knowing which data matters.
Stop drowning in metrics that don’t matter. One simple heuristic often beats a complex algorithm.
(Yes, this means your 47-point attribution model might be less useful than asking “Did sales go up when we did this thing?”)
4. The Genius Myth by Helen Lewis
Our culture is obsessed with individual genius—the visionary founder, the creative genius, the marketing mastermind. Lewis explains why this is both wrong and harmful.
Great work comes from systems, collaboration, and persistent iteration, not lightning strikes of inspiration. The “lone genius” narrative makes us overlook the unsexy work that actually drives success.
Stop looking for the one brilliant campaign idea. Start building systems that consistently produce good work.
(And maybe stop calling yourself a “rockstar” while you’re at it. Unless you are one in a musical or geological sense.)
5. Curious by Ian Leslie
Curiosity is the most underrated business skill. It’s what separates marketers who adapt from those who keep running the same playbook until it stops working.
There are two types of curiosity: diversive (butterfly mind, jumping between interests) and epistemic (deep diving, wanting to understand). Both matter, but epistemic curiosity creates lasting expertise.
Stay curious about your customers, your industry, and everything else. The moment you think you’ve figured it all out is the moment you become irrelevant.
(Also, read things that have nothing to do with marketing. The best insights often come from unexpected places. Like Grimsby.)
Read smort
None of these books will give you a five-step framework for guaranteed success. They won’t promise to 10x your conversion rates or help you hack the LinkedIn algorithm.
They will make you think more clearly about people, decisions, and the beautiful messiness of human behaviour. This, coincidentally, is what good marketing has always been about.
The next time someone recommends a book with “exponential” or “crushing it” in the title, politely decline and pick up one of these instead. Your brain will thank you, and your customers will definitely will.
And if you’re really feeling adventurous, try explaining Rory Sutherland’s Red Bull insight to someone who insists that rational features and benefits matter. The look on their face will be worth the book’s price alone.
Have a book recommendation that actually changed how you think? I’m always curious to hear what’s on other people’s reading lists. Drop me a line.
This article was written with the assistance of AI. The book choices were entirely chosen and read by a human.
