Customer Reviews

Brand Hijack : Marketing Without Marketing

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Brand Hijack is in turns amongst the most boring and the most interesting of marketing paperbacks out there. Wipperfurth is clearly fed up with conventional marketing and its desire to "control" the identity of a brand and in turn, the experience of the consumer. One can not blame him for it - the strength of this book lies in making a strong case for brands to think of consumer interactions as dialogues. Focus groups exchanged for true interaction with actual consumers. Indeed what would have been impossible 20 years ago, is very possible today. Today, one can have communities that support and work with certain brands, and those communities can inspire brand loyalty of the kind that money and ads can not buy. Point taken.

The problem lies with Wipperfurth undying love for bullet pointing the world. I have rarely seen some one bullet point quite as much. A class in journalism or comparitive literature is called for. Simple arguments tediously wind into multiple segments and points and tables.

Not only are these tables boring and difficult to even glance through, but they are entirely pointless and inaccurate. There are no ten ways to catch a butterfly. No ten ways to read a newspaper. And certainly no ten ways to manage a brand hijack.

Rather than making some interesting points and arguments, demonstrating the importance of two way communication, exploiting the richness of modern media, and then talking through what makes the process so rich, the author gets lost in this mindless description of every phase and every twist and every turn. Very very boring and pointless.

But, the point is well taken. Brand managers can now learn a lot more about their brands, and positioning their brands, than 2 decades ago. And truly, brands must be positioned not just as for 23 year old young men, but in cultural terms - for 23 year old metrosexuals living in urban neighborhoods. Marketing needs to be more targetted - consumers have many identities and reaching one takes effort. Conventional STP analysis and demographic profiling is just no longer accurate - peer groups rather than age and sex, influence tastes.

Be prepared to flip pages. But do read the book.

At last a book about brands that cuts through the fashionable jargon and gets right down to practical action.
Giving up control, and encouraging consumers to take your brand hostage might seem uncomfortable, but as Wipperfurth points out, the results can be exciting.
Wipperfurth has been there and done it, so he knows what he's talking about. Not for him the ivory towers of academia.
Also some nice case studies. Not too weighty either!
A hand luggage essential

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.

Ever read a book and, as you're reading it, you go 'oh.. YEA.. that's RIGHT isn't it". This book if full of those moments. It's rare that I'll pick up a marketing focused book like this and read it in one sitting, but this one did it to me. I literally couldn't put it down. Wipperfurth's insights and observations are dead on.

And the warnings inside the front cover are right: This book is not for everyone. If you're a good solid marketing citizen, particularly one in the corporate world, don't waste your time. You won't get it. But, if you've got at least a tiny streak of the truly creative "f**k em, let's do it this way, it just seems right' in you, read this book. It'll help you validate those innate insights you've had and give you examples of people and companies that have acted on them, and succeeded wildly. It will also lay out how you can really screw up this very real and underutilized approach to marketing, this, well, for lack of a better term "anti-marketing marketing".

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.

One of the most famous quotes of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu is, "When I let go of what I am - I begin, what I may become." This statement speaks of the individual's potential to become more than they currently are, if they simply release their grip on their past thoughts, behaviors and habits. It is this very concept that is at the core of Alex Wipperfürth's book titled - "Brand Hijack" - where he takes a contrarian view to the traditional marketer model of brand control. Conventional wisdom holds that marketers shape the identity and inherent value of a given brand through tight control and discipline surrounding all aspects of the brand; however, the author turns that idea upside down stating that a team of marketers can only take a brand so far and that the greatest brands are released to consumers and defined by the marketplace. Soundview recommends this book and its novel approach given the success of brands such as iPod, Facebook, Google and eBay, which have all sought to release their brand identities and extend them into the lives of the end user. As a result these organizations seem immune from traditional marketing problems such as shifting consumer preference; media saturation; declines in image marketing and brand fatigue. You don't have to be a master of Taoism or Buddhism to achieve business Nirvana for your brand - just read Wipperfürth's book!

I am an account planner for a new media agency (...), so I live and breathe this subject every day at work. I found this book to be incredibly compelling for a few reasons:

1. Wipperfurth provides a great deal of rich detail around what works, what does not, and why. His thesis is well-researched and well thought out; many books on marketing are superficial and lack the depth and rigor that is shown here.

2. Despite a great amount of detail and richness around the case studies, this book is still driven by the ideas and not the examples. In other words, the content is well organized and easy to read.

3. He's right! I have a background in psychology and I've worked both as a strategic marketing consultant and an account planner, so I've spent my whole career thinking about how customers think. This book really added something important to my body of knowledge. I would go so far as to say the book was inspirational (and no, he does not know me and is not paying me to say this, before you ask!)

4. This book is not for all brands, at all times, but Wipperfurth never claims that it is.

Overall, a book worth reading. He has peered into the future of marketing with this book. 10 years from now, this book will appear seminal, as many of the trends he talks about go more mainstream.