By Elizabeth Kollross, VP

A few years ago I took a class through Kellogg’s Executive Communications program on Communications Strategy. There were several books assigned ahead of time and I found that when I started reading them they were all large type font and not very thick. At the time, I thought this was probably just because they were for marketing types like me — short attention spans and easily portable for travel. However, when I look at the books that I’ve found most useful or referred to often as a communications professional, easy-to-consume trumps heavy-duty every time.
  

For executive communications and media coaching, especially in the tech realm, one of the best resources for developing presentations and messaging is a book called “Even a Geek can Speak,” by Joey Asher. So often, when dealing with technical subjects, even the best spokespeople can get mired in details and what makes a technology special or useful gets buried under feature sets. This book does a great job of helping to identify the key points of a technology story and distill them down for any audience.
 

In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters, by Rick Chapman, is another great source of info, especially if you need to prepare for a discussion around a product launch. It’s a very funny read and all true, but also a good reminder that marketing a product without substance or attempting to pull one over on your consumers (or the media) is a sure recipe for failure.

 
Finally, I have to give a shout-out to Linda VandeVrede and her great book, “Press Releases Are Not a PR Strategy.” Linda and I have worked together on highly-technical clients and she is definitely a convincing voice of reason when it comes to explaining PR to executive audiences who may not see the PR function outside of writing releases or keeping bad news under wraps.