Brand Hijack: Marketing Without Marketing

This is not your ordinary marketing manual. With casual humor and a laid-back tone, Wipperfurth, 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, Wipperfurth 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"" (a 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"" (a 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.