What’s the difference between making a purchase from need, from habit, or from ritual? If you’re looking to build customers for life, you need to understand how to create a brand ritual and Zain Raj tells us how in Brand Rituals: How Successful Brands Bond with Customers for Life. He’s a sought-after speaker on the changing marketing landscape, espousing the view that marketing needs to change people’s behavior to forge strong relationships with core customers.

Bob Caporale wears many hats: he’s spent his career developing strategies for products and businesses. He’s also an accomplished keyboardist, composer, and songwriter. In his new book Creative Strategy Generation: Using Passion and Creativity to Compose Business Strategies That Inspire Action and Growth, he explores the connections between composing music and composing successful business strategies.

Carrol Vallone Mitchell’s new book, Breaking Through “Bitch”, takes an innovative, sometimes controversial approach, using stories from executives at the highest corporate levels to show how women can hone their innate skills, rise to the top, and be effective, outstanding leaders. It addresses head-on why women cannot and should not “act like men.”

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Brand Rituals: How Successful Brands Bond with Customers for Life provides a new approach to building brands in today’s digitally-led environment. Author Zain Raj emphasizes innovation and a strong belief in empowering others. Zain is the Chairman and CEO of Shapiro + Raj, a top-ten independent research and insights company. Zain is also the founder and CEO of zednext, an ideas incubator that takes an objective and disruptive look at issues and trends to help marketers and business leaders realize their full potential in a data-driven, digitally led and insights-driven world. Most recently he was CEO of Epsilon Agency Services (EAS), the largest global CRM.

Creative Strategy Generation: Using Passion and Creativity to Compose Business Strategies That Inspire Action and Growth by Bob Caporale explores the connections between the strategic and creative processes, and demystifies the complexities of developing a strategic plan. He combines his two areas of expertise, parelleling the process of composing music with the process of developing business strategies. Bob is the president of Sequent Learning Networks, a New York City–based training and advisory firm specializing in product management, product marketing, and strategic planning. Throughout his career, Bob has held leadership and executive roles in engineering, marketing, product management, and general management for multi-billion-dollar companies. He is also an accomplished keyboardist, composer, and songwriter. He has written and produced over 100 independently released songs, albums, and soundtracks.

Breaking Through “Bitch” takes an innovative, sometimes controversial approach, using stories from executives at the highest corporate levels to show how women can hone their innate skills, rise to the top, and be effective, outstanding leaders. It addresses head-on why women cannot and should not “act like men.” Author Carrol Vallone Mitchell describes the unique profile of behaviors that top women leaders have in common, reveals why such stereotypically feminine characteristics as nurturing, empathy, and inclusiveness are the keys to power, not signs of weakness, and shows how these characteristics can be equally effective for men in our fast-changing world. Carol is co-founder of Talent Strategy Partners, a talent management consulting firm and has worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies to identify and develop leaders who can build and nurture the right workplace culture and drive results. She uses her expertise as a doctorate in organizational behavior and 20 years of leadership development experience as a go-to speaker for companies and professional associations.

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