Recommendations
I don’t read everything. I don’t follow trends (unless it’s Marvel) just because they’re trending.
But there are a few newsletters, books, tools, and voices that have genuinely shaped how I think about marketing, strategy, and decision-making under pressure.
These are the ones I trust. The ones I’d hand to another operator without hesitation.
Newsletters
Benedict Evans
Focuses on tech trends, consumer behaviour, and platform shifts.
Evans takes a step back from the noise and questions assumptions that most marketing leaders take for granted, especially around AI, mobile, ecosystems, and how tech actually scales. If you want to think about where things are going, not just where they are, start here.
Stratechery (Ben Thompson)
Strategy over tactics. Platforms, business models, competition.
Sharp analysis of why companies succeed or fail at scale. Great for heads of marketing who need to justify budget or rethink positioning. Thompson doesn’t pander to trends. He interrogates them.
Lenny’s Newsletter
Product, growth, community, leadership.
Tactical without being shallow. Interviews with operators and real lessons from building and scaling teams and products. This is where you see what other operators are actually struggling with.
No Mercy / No Malice (Scott Galloway)
Consumer trends, macro forces, brand thinking.
Galloway doesn’t sugarcoat. If you want perspectives that challenge conventional thinking and make you reconsider your assumptions, this is it.
The Diff (Byrne Hobart)
Deep takes on tech, media, platforms, culture.
Curated with commentary that pushes you to connect dots across channels, platforms, and behaviours. Encourages you to think about strategy before tactics.
Books
Good Strategy Bad Strategy – Richard Rumelt
If I could force one book onto marketing leaders, it’s this.
Rumelt dismantles the lie that strategy is vision statements, OKRs, or long roadmaps. Strategy is diagnosis, a guiding policy, and hard choices. Most “marketing strategies” fail because they never define the actual problem.
Why it sticks: You stop accepting activity as progress. Campaigns without a clear enemy start to look embarrassing.
Where it might frustrate you: It doesn’t give templates. That’s the point.
Playing to Win – A.G. Lafley & Roger Martin
This book is quiet. That’s why it’s dangerous.
It forces you to answer five questions most teams dodge, especially “where will we not play?” Great for marketing leaders stuck in stakeholder chaos.
Why it sticks: It gives you language to push back without sounding defensive. Strategy becomes a sequence of choices, not a compromise.
Where it might fail you: If your org refuses to make trade-offs, this will expose that fast.
The Innovator’s Dilemma – Clayton Christensen
Everyone quotes it. Fewer people actually absorb it.
This isn’t about disruption hype. It’s about how rational decisions kill long-term advantage. Applies directly to marketing teams obsessed with short-term performance metrics.
Why it sticks: You start seeing how optimisation can quietly box a brand into irrelevance.
Where it can mislead: Not every market is being disrupted. Don’t force the analogy.
Thinking in Bets – Annie Duke
This one changed how I evaluate campaigns and decisions.
Marketing lives in uncertainty, yet teams talk as if outcomes were predictable. Duke reframes decisions as probability bets, not moral judgments.
Why it sticks: You stop asking “was this a good idea?” and start asking “did we make the best call with what we knew?”
Where it can annoy you: If your culture needs certainty and confidence theatre, this will feel uncomfortable.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni
I didn’t want to like this book. It’s simple. Almost too simple.
Then I realised how many marketing failures are team problems wearing a strategy costume.
Why it sticks: You stop blaming tools, channels, or briefs when the real issue is trust, conflict avoidance, or fake alignment.
Where it’s limited: It won’t fix bad strategy. It explains why good ones don’t survive.
Tools
The ones I use regularly and would recommend without hesitation:
GA4 + Looker Studio – For analytics and reporting that actually answers questions
HubSpot – Marketing automation that doesn’t require a PhD to use
Google Drive – Still the most reliable way to collaborate on documents
Notion – For organising everything from content calendars to project workflows
Google Cloud – When you need infrastructure that scales
n8n – Open-source automation that gives you control
Zapier – When you need automation fast
Agency Analytics – Client reporting that doesn’t require rebuilding dashboards every month
Claude (Anthropic) – For working through strategic thinking, drafting frameworks, and interrogating ideas
Other resources worth your time
Podcasts (few, deliberate)
Exchanges at Goldman Sachs
Macro, leadership, incentives, power.
Marketing leaders underestimate how much macro shapes demand, budgets, and risk appetite. This helps you think beyond channels and frame marketing decisions in economic reality, not campaign logic.
The Knowledge Project (Shane Parrish)
Decision-making, second-order thinking, incentives.
This is less about marketing, more about how smart operators think under pressure. You stop confusing activity with wisdom. You get better at saying no.
Lenny’s Podcast
Product, growth, operators talking honestly.
Worth it for operator war stories alone. Watch for patterns across companies. Ignore the hype. Steal the mental models.
Communities (small beats loud)
Reforge (selectively)
Not for juniors. Not for tourists. Good for structured thinking about growth systems, retention, and leverage.
Caveat: It’s easy to mistake frameworks for answers. Use it to think, not copy.
Frameworks I actually use
Diagnosis → Choice → Consequence
From Rumelt, whether people credit him or not.
Every strategy review should answer:
What’s the real problem?
What are we choosing to do and not do?
What will this break?
If you can’t answer those, you’re not doing strategy.
Input vs Output vs Outcome
Most marketing teams track outputs and argue about outcomes.
Force separation:
Inputs: spend, time, effort
Outputs: impressions, clicks, leads
Outcomes: revenue, retention, behaviour change
Most debates die once this is clear.
Assumption Mapping
Before launch, write:
What must be true for this to work?
What’s the riskiest assumption?
How will we know early if it’s wrong?
This saves more budget than optimisation ever will.
Reports (not many)
Mary Meeker–style trend reports (when available)
Ignore predictions. Look for behavioural shifts and adoption curves.
Use them to ask better questions, not plan tactics.
Annual reports of companies you admire
Seriously. Read how businesses explain themselves to shareholders.
You’ll learn more about positioning, priorities, and trade-offs than from most marketing blogs.
People worth following (for thinking, not tips)
Benedict Evans – Systems thinking, tech adoption, consumer shifts
Roger Martin – Strategy as choice, not consensus
Scott Galloway – Sharp takes on brand, power, incentives (filter the theatre)
Emily Heyward (Red Antler) – Brand as behaviour, not slogans
Dave Kellogg – B2B metrics, SaaS reality checks