Brand Hijack: Marketing Without Marketing

From Publishers Weekly
This is not your ordinary marketing manual. With casual humor and a laid-back tone, Wipperfürth, a marketer who helps brands like Dr. Martens and Napster "appear like serendipitous accidents," advocates the "brand hijack," a process of allowing customers to shape brand meaning and drive a brand's evolution. Using case studies of products that were embraced by young consumers precisely because they lacked traditional, excessive ad campaigns, like Pabst Blue Ribbon and In-N-Out Burger, Wipperfürth shows that seemingly effortless branding is actually sustained by "no-marketing" techniques. Some of these tactics include marketing first to alternative subcultures and building a brand "folklore" with "customs, rituals, vocabulary...and experiences," much in the way that he claims "Starbucks created coffee culture." The book designates three types of brand hijack: the Discovery, which allows people to feel "in on a secret" (à la Palm); the Commentary, by which a brand like Dr. Martens is associated with a subversive social statement; and the Mission, which "declares a worldview oppositional to a 'Big Brother' enemy" (à la Apple). While the book speaks specifically to marketers, it offers a glimpse into America's consumer- and ad-driven culture, and even lay readers will be fascinated to learn about the sly techniques being utilized on them. That pair of expensive pre-ripped jeans will never look the same. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In an age of marketing saturation, consumers are pleading with advertisers to "tone down the relentless yammering; you're talking too loud for us to listen." As backlash to constant media hype, products sometimes become "hot" when consumers ignore corporate America's overt advances and embrace independent products such as Doc Martens, Red Bull, Napster, and Starbucks, creating a cult following and effectively hijacking the brand as their own. Even Pabst Blue Ribbon beer has made a comeback recently precisely because it is the antithesis of a microbrew. So how do you market to an audience that rejects marketing? Wipperfurth explains how to walk this thin line by "seeding" the right audience to create a buzz and patient development of brand recognition. Of course, there is no guarantee that any of this will work, but Wipperfurth has the expertise to give you an advantage over the big guys. He has been called "a marketing subversive . . . The guy who will make your brands cool" by Adweek and is a partner at marketing boutique Plan B in San Francisco. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
Out of nowhere, a brand like Red Bull, The Blair Witch Project, or even the Howard Dean campaign takes off with little or no conventional marketing. How do these "accidents" really happen, and why do they ultimately succeed or fail? Welcome to marketing without marketing: the emergence of the hijacked brand. Don't let the all-too-clever subtitle fool you. Far from representing the absence of marketing, this book describes the most complex sort of marketing possible, as well as the least understood. Brand Hijack offers a practical how-to guide to marketing that finally engages the marketplace. It presents an alternative to conventional marketing wisdom, one that addresses such industry crises as media saturation, consumer evolution, and the erosion of image marketing. Fair warning: this book is not for everyone. It proposes untraditional, even counterintuitive practices: Let the marketplace take over. Stop clamoring for control and learn to be spontaneous. Be bold enough to accept a certain degree of uncertainty in the definition of your brands. Brand hijacking relies on a radical concept: letting go. What a frightening, yet oddly liberating thought. Marketing without Marketing: A Brand Hijack Manifesto - Let go of the fallacy that your brand belongs to you. It belongs to the market. - Co-create your brand by collaborating with your consumers. - Scrap the focus groups, fire the cool chasers, and hire your audience. - Facilitate your most influential and passionate consumers in translating your brand's message to a broader audience. - Be patient. Your brand initiative could take years to take off -or weeks. - Be flexible. Carefully plan every step, but be totally open to having the story rewritten along the way. - Lose control. Free yourself to seize sudden opportunities that only last for moments. - Resist the paranoid urge for consistency. Embrace the value of being surprising and imperfect. - Respect your community. Draw the line between promotion and the adbusting trinity of manipulation, intrusion and co-option. Let the market hijack your brand.

About the Author
Alex Wipperfürth is a partner at Plan B in San Francisco, helping brands like Pabst Blue Ribbon, Napster, and Dr. Martens appear like serendipitous accidents.


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Wipperfurth is a partner with Plan B, a small marketing firm in California that attempts to do for its clients what the book advocates: make brands appear to be serendipitous accidents. His first book is full of case studies and suggestions reinforcing the theme that marketing requires more than just money and a target audience. It also requires a willingness to be patient and build credibility. Authenticity is an important theme throughout; Wipperfurth argues that users will be more devoted to a brand if they are allowed influence over its direction. As a cautionary tale, Wipperfurth cites Mattel's actions to shut down the most inventive efforts of the Barbie fan club-an example, he warns, of how to destroy one's market. Large companies who don't "get it" are at risk of alienating their most loyal consumers in an age when conglomerates are viewed with suspicion. Many books, including Naomi Klein's No Logo, Thomas Frank's Conquest of Cool, and Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, have approached this subject from various perspectives. This practical handbook would be useful for comprehensive marketing collections in business or college libraries but should be considered only by larger public libraries.-Stephen E. Turner, Turner & Assocs., San Francisco Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.


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