Brand Hijack: Marketing Without Marketing

By Alex Wipperfürth

Book Overview

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 industry crises such as media saturation, consumer evolution and the erosion of image marketing. However, following the book's advice will require some untraditional - even counterintuitive - steps. This type of marketing is not for everyone, you must be confident enough to stop clamouring for control and learn to be spontaneous. brand hijacking relies on a radical concept - letting go.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591840783
• ISBN13: 9781591840787
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.4" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

sets the bar mighty high....

I too read a lot of business books...especially those on marketing. As a pretty small book and magazine publisher (ie old media), I have to be 3 steps ahead when it comes to things. I found myself nodding in agreement with every page I turned. I recommend reading this book along with Seth Godin's Purple Cow and Free Prize Inside. The great thing about having a very small budget for marketing is that it forces you to think and be highly creative. Sure, big companies will always have more money....but they may not be able to have more creativity or freedom. And that's why this book is so useful. It is a blueprint for change that small companies can really embrace...if they choose to.

Should be mandatory reading in business school.

This is one of the best business books I have read in some time - and I read a lot of business books. I picked this book up at a retail store and, being intrigued by the jacket verbiage, actually paid full retail price - something I don't often do. Wipperfurth has created a terrific read that anyone from an upstart-entrepreneur to a seasoned brand manager or marketing executive will undoubtedly find fascinating and eye-opening. The best brands are those that develop the highest quality affiliation between the product or service and the mind of the consumer (see the critical research and analysis done by the Gallup Organization's William J. McEwen and John Fleming "Customer Satisfaction Doesn't Count" in which the authors conclude that satisfying customers without creating an emotional connection with them has no real value. Indeed the only thing that matters in the end is the strength or quality of that relationship - something they refer to as customer "engagement"). Great brand managers attempt to create, promote and maintain this relationship. But what if the market runs off with your brand? Or, perhaps more importantly, how can you get the market to run off with your brand? In Brand Hijack, Wipperfurth examines certain brands that have gone a step past the usual brand management tactics - brands that have actually been "hijacked" by consumers - some serendipitously while others have been carefully orchestrated and costly marketing campaigns. Some have failed and some have succeeded and Wipperfurth does a brilliant job of accounting for the difference. As great as it would be to have a marketing windfall in the form of a serendipitous brand hijack, most of us will have to actually make it happen or, at least, attempt to make it happen. But the path is fraught with pitfalls and strewn with the corpses of brand managers who have tried and failed. You will need a guide to climb this mountain and Wipperfurth has here created the equivalent of the Lonely Planet guide to brand hijacking. The case studies are engrossingly interesting. You may want to read this book with highlighter in hand. Profound insights reside on nearly every page. I am currently launching a new business and will certainly use what I have learned in this book to better my business plan, my marketing campaigns and my overall approach to customer engagement. Thanks Alex Wipperfurth for a wonderful read.

Sell all of your other marketing books.

Tucked away, towards the back of Brand Hijack is an inspiring nugget of surprise rarely found in most chartbuster marketing books. "Too often we try to borrow authenticity rather than earn it," Wipperfurth says. "Companies [are] eager to be associated with black culture... [and] in their rush to capitalize on it, they reduce black culture to fashion, buzzwords and trends-raiding it for `everything but the burden.'" Is this a book about marketing and ethics? You bet it is-but Wipperfurth is as invested in new ways to rethink and save the discipline of marketing from its pitfalls as he is interested in cultural theft and racial profiling by those in his line of work. His main point? Marketers are too busy scheming to tell consumers who they are instead of working with consumers to create brand identities. The result is a must-read for an entire spectrum of 21st-century style-chasers to corporate protesters-from every Sergio Zyman worshipper to Naomi Klein "no-logo" policefolk. But, most of all, this book is for the traditional marketing agency-and anyone who wants to emulate them. A letter to the editor of the New York Times sets the context for Brand Hijack: "We have a message for the movers and shakers of Madison Avenue-`Tone down the relentless yammering; you're talking too loud for us to listen.'" The subtitle's premise of Marketing Without Marketing is somewhat simple, but like a Paula Z exercise video, it requires remembering to do it everyday to bring around real change: marketers must understand the consumer as a "cultural producer"-an innovative, creative person that is not an empty receptacle for advertisements. Wipperfurth asks marketers to: stop chasing the new cool ("it belongs to the market"), think of marketing as facilitation (treat consumers as peers), "act like an anthropologist when uncovering market opportunity," and give consumers the opportunity to encode their meanings on products instead of having them jammed down their throat. Not easy, but he gives a plethora of examples-from Doc Martens to Napster, and from Pabst Blue Ribbon to Ipods. And, he's full of surprises-anthropological models, cultural studies-type analyses, and the occasional pop-psychological remedy/self-help pick-me-up (e.g., "letting go of an idea"). The advice is ethical: don't tell people who they are, and think about the cultural context of your products. Make moral decisions based on your marketing plan's contents, and figure out ways that your consumers can be "art directors." The real academic and practical theory of Wipperfurth's splendid and well-written work is his ability to draw on academic models and anthropological studies of the consumer, and he explains how to shift from individual-psychological advertising models towards the future of engaging in marketing conversations with consumers in cultural ways, letting brand-hijacks to take over. An absolute must-read.

Great Practical Guide to Launching a Brand

As the head of marketing for Saturn (the car company) in the 90's, I experienced the power and magic of having customers become owners of the brand and evangelists that drove its growth. I just read BRAND HIJACK and it is the best practical guide to creating this kind of evangelism--and it is particularly useful in today's marketing climate in which the effectiveness of traditional media has declined. In a world in which many marketers are trying to launch their products on very low budgets, trying to make their products "cool", trying to generate "buzz", trying to connect with early adopters and then go mass market, etc., this book stands out with clear, rigorous thinking about these issues delivered by someone who has been a thoughtful, creative, daring and successful practitioner. This book is must reading for anyone launching a brand today.

Fascinating case studies, interesting philosophy.

I was fortunate enough to get an advanced copy of this book, just by pure chance. Wipperfurth saw my review of Malcolm Gladwell's THE TIPPING POINT and emailed me to see if I'd be interested. Guess some good things do come of writing all these reviews. More focused on brands than Gladwell's book, which was about broader social epidemics, BRAND HIJACK is a fascinating book. The term "brand hijack" refers to a group of consumers taking your brand and giving it an identity you as a marketer were not counting on. Like when punk culture re-appropriated Dr. Marten's, originally a worker's boot, into footwear that makes a political statement. While traditional marketing wisdom would say that this is a bad thing, that the last thing a marketer wants to do is lose control of their brand's meaning, Wipperfurth proposes that in some cases it can be a good thing, even something to encourage. Brand Hijack is choc full of case studies, both successful and unsuccessful. Dr. Marten's, Red Bull, Napster, Ipod, Southwest Airlines. Great brands. It presents examples of how a brand should and should not treat its customers if it's looking for true, long-term loyalty. And it argues that one powerful method to create the powerful bonds that lead to such loyalty is through allowing and encouraging your brand to be hijacked. Hijacking of brands is a risky, unpredictable, and potentially long process that's a far cry from the traditional marketing formula, but if anyone doubts its potential, consider this: According to Landor's 2001 survey of global image power, Napster had a global rank near that of Sony's. In one year of its existence, with a marketing budget of under $1 million (compared to Sony's $1 billion+ lifetime budget). Something to make one take notice. Brand Hijack also has an interesting section that compares the psychology of what Wippperfurth calls a "brand tribe" (a group of people who use a brand, such as Ipod, to foster social connections) to that of a cult. And he includes a much-needed and heart-felt call for responsibility as marketers. Although it's a topic that could fill a book itself, it certainly deserves a place in any discussion of non-traditional marketing. Where do we draw our lines? As a writer at an ad agency and teacher of an advertising class on branding, I would recommend this book to any marketer, advertiser, student of advertising, or fan of Gladwell's THE TIPPING POINT. It gives one a lot to think about, and inspiration to think of consumers in wholly different ways.