The Pirate Inside: Building a Challenger Brand Culture Within Yourself and Your Organization (Hardcover)

by Adam Morgan (Author) "Enough. I have had enough..." (more)
Key Phrases: brand neighbourhood, brand subculture, single brand company, Tommy Bahama, Insights of Opportunity, Pot Noodle (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Brand maven Adam Morgan, author of Eating the Big Fish, wants you to free your inner pirate and sail under the flag of the brand rather than the company. Morgan frames his brand-building advice by comparing time in the Navy (becoming a "corporate drone") with the life of a marketing pirate ("who does what is important, regardless of wisdom offered around us.")

Pirates, who challenge dominant brands, have a code. But it does not include the virtues of respecting the parent company, people's space, or the ways things have always been. Morgan draws upon 50 interviews with pirates from brand challenging companies including Diesel, Tommy Bahama, and Southwest airlines. His pirates dazzle with daring do: Apple's Steve Jobs, who shows what Morgan calls "emotional insertion" when he says, "Today we put the romance into computers" or Ingvar Kamprad, Founder of IKEA, who, in a Chinese chicken market, models "insights of opportunity" as he wonders how he can use the extra feathers.

For those of us without sea legs, Morgan offers four crisp sets of behavior to become a brand pirate and five personality traits to foster a challenger culture. Morgan is a wonderfully engaging writer, but sometimes his nautical analogies can get diluted by other metaphors. His ideas for helping challenger brands take on the big fish bristle with energy, originality--and above all--practicality. --Barbara Mackoff

Review
“… will appeal to anyone who bought Morgan’s last book, Eating the Big Fish, and is a natural follow-up…” (Publishing News, 19^th March 2004)

“An excellent read” (Marketer, September 2004)

“…divides neatly into two sections…many examples and insights…” (Brand Strategy, November 2004)

“…uses the analogy of being a pirate to demonstrate how challenger brands can be shaped by the people behind them…” (Campaign, 10^th December 2004) 

"...fascinating book..." (Marketer, June 2006) 

"... individuals who know a little about marketing would do well to learn how to use Morgan’s branding insights...." (Chicago Tribune, June 2006)  

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 348 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (September 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470860820
• ISBN-13: 978-0470860823
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #226,552 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lacking, lacking and more lacking, February 19, 2007

By	Fishluvver - See all my reviews

It pains me to say that I was disappointed with Adam Morgan's second offering. His first book on challenger branding, 'Eating the Big Fish', was such a brilliant read. 'The Pirate Inside' got off to a promising start, but then parts of it began to seem like a rehash of 'Eating the Big Fish' (minus the brilliant insights). Other parts of the book seemed unnecessarily drawn-out, possibly because they lacked substance. Some of the advice in this book is old news. I found the section on challenger teams especially tedious. Adam tries to make old news sound new again by changing the labels (for example, Ideas People are now known as Ideas Hamsters).

'Eating the Big Fish' closes with a guide to running a two-day challenger branding workshop in your company. Like the rest of the book, it was brilliant. 'Pirate Inside' tries to close on a similar note, but I thought the guide was mostly fluff...the kind of thing you'd pay a consultant big bucks for, only to feel cheated when you get presented with six hours of buzzwords, some cool charts and nothing really helpful.

Adam uses the words 'soft centre, soft shell' to describe a weak brand strategy. I think 'Pirate Inside' has a big gooey one.

5.0 out of 5 stars ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY: The "Eating the Big Fish" for the rest of us., May 18, 2009

By	Austin Howe (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Like many others, I consider Adam Morgan's previous book, Eating The Big Fish, to be one of the most truly original, seminal and important books on marketing/branding/advertising ever written. It is, in fact, my personal favorite--one that I have purchased in quantities and given as a gift to anyone who touches a brand in any way. So, The Pirate Inside had a hell of a lot to live up to going in. And, in my view, it over-delivered. Rather than a re-hash of Eating The Big Fish, it was for me the perfect compliment to the challenger bible; the new testament, in fact. Because it deals primarily with the real-world verities of trying to have a challenger mindset within a larger, more navy-like organization. While ETBF was fresh and inspiring, it was perhaps more relevant for entrepreneurs and CEOs, people in control of their own destiny and job security. The Pirate Inside is "the ETBF for the rest of us," those who want to be or feel the need to be (what Morgan refers to as) "Denters" within establishment brands. I felt that it was a primer on how to get away with being a pirate within the navy. Letitia Baldridge may have provided the world with the essential book on executive manners, but Morgan shows us how to be effective and successful within multi-layered and political environments--and he and his colleagues have gone to great pains to give us credible examples and case studies of people who have managed to effectively navigate that terrain. That makes this volume nothing short of a gift. I read it in a week and just passed it along to a friend of mine who wants/needs to be a difference-maker within a big tech firm. If one of the marks of a Challenger Brand is that it engenders intense enthusiasm, The Pirate Inside, as a book, is a true Challenger. Because I am intensely enthusiastic about it.