Interactive marketing guru Don E. Schultz lists the five books that all marketers should be reading.

I'm pleased to present the first installment of the iMedia Book Club, a new feature here at iMediaConnection. From time to time, I'll ask leading marketers, researchers and thought leaders what books, journals or magazines they have on their nightstands and why.

Our first contributor is Don E. Schultz, professor emeritus-in-service in the Integrated Marketing Communications Department at Northwestern University.

Schultz's keynote address was a stimulating and memorable hit at this month's iMedia Brand Summit in Deer Valley, Utah, so I thought his reading recommendations might be equally thought-provoking.

So without further ado…

Don E. Schultz's Suggested Reading List 
(if you’re really serious about marketing, advertising and communication now and into the immediate future):

Marketing and the Bottom Line Tim Ambler The truth about what and how financial systems drive organizations. This is what CEOs and CFOs discuss, about which marketing and communication people generally know too little.

How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market Gerald Zaltman Shoots holes in most of the current marketing, communication, advertising and promotion theory. Changes the entire way we should think about how communication works, but most of all, about how out-of-date our research techniques are.

Creating A Company for Customers: How to Build and Lead A Market-Driven Organization Malcolm McDonald et al. A practical guide to how to re-organize the firm without blowing it up and starting over. This is where integration starts, with business models and organizational systems, not with cross-media planning.

IMC, The Next Generation: Five Steps for Delivering Value and Measuring Financial Returns Don E. Schultz and Heidi Schultz I had to put this on the list simply because it is so different from the traditional ways we have thought about integration, integrated communication and the like.  It is a demand-based view of how to go to market that almost any organization can implement today. This is what we are teaching in our work in China.

The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why Richard Nisbett If you believe, as I do, that Asia will become the controlling factor in business in the 21st century, you need to read this book. You’ll start to understand why many of our western marketing and communication approaches can’t and won’t work in Asia, no matter how much money we throw at them.

Additional resources:

Read Don E. Schultz's bio.

Read an interview with Schultz from our iMedia Brand Summit in Deer Valley about how the industry needs to rethink media planning.