Results
Winner
Transforming Customer–Brand Relationships: Use Emotional Connection To Build Loyalty
Christina Garnett
Shelves are full of marketing books and customer experience books, but very few look at marketing from the customer's side. Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships fills that gap. It takes a multidisciplinary approach so communications and marketing teams can learn from CX colleagues and work together to build customer connections that last.
Good communication starts with listening. Readers learn to use social media and support conversations to hear what customers want, and then shape messages and stories that reflect it. The book shows how customer service protects a brand's reputation and how communities turn customers into advocates who speak for the brand. A chapter on metrics helps teams prove the value of this work to leadership.
The result is brands that people trust and talk about. Companies keep the customers they worked hard to win, and word of mouth brings in new ones. For readers, it builds skills that strengthen their careers.
Winner
Flip Your Script: Own your story & unlock the positive power of social media
Kristi Piehl
Since Kristi published this book in October 2025, it has made a tremendous impact. She weaves storytelling with practical guidance for modern leaders to intentionally use social media to grow their influence, build trust and create a lasting legacy. Kristi’s book helps readers leverage social media for positive and purposeful impact. This includes both positive and negative stories. In particular, Kristi highlights her family’s personal story with her son’s cancer diagnosis, and how sharing his story helped not only her family, but others going through a similar situation. With that message, Kristi speaks around the country to executives and leaders about the power of social media and how owning their story will positively impact their businesses and digital legacies.
The entirety of the proceeds from this book has been donated to Children’s Minnesota, furthering the impact this book will have for generations to come.
Winner
Marketing in the (Great, Big, Messy) Real World: Rewire Your Marketing Organization to Navigate Anything
Kathleen Schaub
Marketing in the (Great, Big, Messy) Real World invites leaders to see marketing for what it truly is: a living ecosystem shaped by human behavior, uncertainty, and change. By embracing complexity, rather than following an outdated “factory” model, businesses open doors to increased value, and to organizations more respectful of customers, that make smarter, less reactive decisions, and encourage a workplace where empowered employees can experiment and learn. Aimed at marketing leaders and their executive partners, the book proposes four mindset shifts—think like an investor, navigator, statistician, and ecologist. It draws on the author’s experience as a CMO and industry analyst combined with inspiration from turbulent environments including medicine and the military. The book delivers practical guidance on intelligence, team design, operations, and change. The result is more realistic, responsible marketing, thus helping organizations function better for people, not just profits.
Finalist
The Cyberspace Spacewalk: The Strategic Brain & Tactical Legs of E-Commerce
JON ANE
The Cyberspace Spacewalk helps e-commerce owners, managers and practitioners make better decisions before investing time, money and effort. Rather than adding another endless list of online-selling tips, it provides a structured way to decide where to go before deciding what to do. The book separates strategic choice from tactical execution. Readers can consider different Strategic Selections, explore the Strategic Paths available to them, and then choose from more than 80 practical tactics that fit their chosen direction.
This helps reduce wasted effort, avoid disconnected actions and create greater consistency between commercial objectives and day-to-day activity. It is designed to turn the complexity of e-commerce into a clearer decision-making process that can be applied immediately. Ultimately, the book helps readers move from “What could we do?” to “What should we choose—and how do we make it happen?”