About a year or so ago I met the V.P. of Marketing and Branding for H.E.B. Grocery through Blakers and FBA Conroe. Totally a great guy, great family but I have to say meeting him and just discussing design, branding, marketing with him for the oh say 10 minutes or so really stirred me into stepping it up in our organization. It really was not anything Earth shattering that he said or did – he was just a wealth of knowledge and it was kind of like, “man am I in the beginning stages of this whole branding and marketing realm”, even though I have been cranking out design, marketing and communication collateral since 1994, I was blown away.

Even more inspiring, he was most interested in the Church and how it was getting smarter about branding, marketing, planning and measuring effectiveness. I told him I would love to pick his brain sometime and he said “sure thing” and quickly pointed me to his top ten list of books that he gave all new employees as a mandatory reading assignment. At the top of that list was the book Ogilvy on Advertising.

You can get your copy here at Amazon.com. I also added a few other books I found to be awesome. Ogilvy kicks serious butt, they will also be at the SXSW conference again this year or at least their work and employees will be there for sure. Plan on attending.

Anyway, just jumped on Ogilvy’s site and was re-inspired all over again, thought I would share. Love it, keep up the good stuff.

Ogilvy Innovation Lab

Also, check out their Flickr Photos and their PR Blog site. Very very cool stuff.