Summary: Brand Hijack

Review and Analysis of Wipperfurth's Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Publisher: Must Read Summaries
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9782806239884
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing Research
• Index: Business

The must-read summary of Alex Wipperfurth's book: `Brand Hijack: Marketing Without Marketing`

This complete summary of the ideas from Alex Wipperfurth's book `Brand Hijack` shows that companies like Starbucks, eBay, Palm and Red Bull have built multi-billion-dollar valuations without using any conventional advertising campaigns. The success of these companies demonstrate the smart approach to building a business and a brand in the twenty-first century is to do what can be termed “marketing without marketing”. More specifically, these brands create the illusion that success is happening serendipitously as driven by the users rather than as dictated by the corporation. This is the essence of marketing without marketing. The key to building a brand nowadays is to let the market hijack your brand. The more marketplace involvement you have, the better – even if that takes your brand off in unanticipated directions. What you’ll ultimately end up with is a brand experience which is richer, better, more genuine and therefore more sustainable than anything you would have consciously developed yourself. 

Added-value of this summary: 
• Save time 
• Understand key concepts
• Increase your business knowledge 

To learn more, read `Brand Hijack` and discover a different approach to successful marketing in the twenty-first century.

Summary of Brand Hijack (Alex Wipperfurth)

1. The 10 key principles of marketing without marketing

1. Let go

Let your brand be market-driven rather than marketing-driven. The only way you can do this is if you visualize your brand as belonging to the marketplace rather than to you.

The best brands find their own place in the market. They grow and develop in response to the needs of users rather than as part of a preordained program dictated by a marketing company. In fact, the very big brands often have an instigator who is willing to get out of the way and let the user community add their own meaning and do their own thing. This is the way “killer apps” emerge in the marketplace.

A great example of this principle was Napster. Shawn Fanning was a college freshman when he wrote a computer software program that would help him search for music on the Internet. He named it “Napster” because that was his nickname. He then e-mailed it out to a few friends, asking them not to share it with anyone else. Fanning then let the marketplace do its own thing. He didn’t engage a brand consultant or an ad agency to manage the brand. Nor did he try and influence how Napster evolved. Instead, everything was left to the user base to add meaning. Within 18-months, Napster had eighty million users, all for a marketing expenditure of $200,000.

Why did Napster go from a start-up to a global mass brand and then to a nostalgia brand within the space of just two years?

• It provided users with a blank canvas – something people could take and use any way they wanted to.
• Napster had a non-financial incentive – users felt like they were helping others by making their music libraries available rather than being paid a finders fee or anything like that.
• It made people feel wanted – the more people that used Napster, the better it became.
• Napster created a sense of community – because it applied to music, a very personal and emotional topic for many people. People who used Napster also believed they were helping to liberate music from the clutches of the recording industry, a very noble cause.
• Napster was well managed – in that Shawn Fanning wasn’t worried about making money or in trying to influence the direction Napster went.

Of course Napster isn’t the only brand which has succeeded by allowing itself to be hijacked by the marketplace. Dr. Marten’s boots, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, SMS text messaging and In-N-Out Burger (a Californian burger chain) have all prospered as brands even in the face of white-hot competition. The key to the success of these brands have been their willingness to let the market dictate what the brand should mean.

“It is extremely unusual for a brand to get hijacked to the point of total control by the market, as Napster was. When this happens, the brand essentially becomes public property; it’s defined and led by its user community. Ironically, this sort offull-throttle hijack is often an accident. Rarely is it the result of initiatives or campaigns coming out of a marketing department.”

– Alex Wipperfurth

2. Co-create

Invite the people who make up various subcultures to have a say in the brand’s ideology, use and persona. If you can do this well, instead of ending up with a niche product, you lay the foundation for a product which the mainstream will accept because it feels authentic rather than manipulative.

Great brands ooze authenticity. They don’t feel like they’ve been developed by the suits in the marketing department. Instead, a good brand will ring true, and the only way you can achieve this in practice is if you let customers actively participate in shaping the brand’s meaning.

Consider, for example, the success of the movie: The Blair Witch Project. This film was made for $35,000 and ended up grossing $241 million at the box office. As a product, the film was mediocre – a horror movie with no big name stars, no real scary parts and no distributor. Despite the fact the film itself was ordinary, however, the way the film was released was exceptional:

• For two years before the film was released, the film makers created a new urban myth about three students who go missing in the forest while making a documentary about a witch. A Web site was launched which discussed this myth and which featured excerpts from footage apparently shot by the students before they disappeared.
• Interest was generated in the fringe crowd – internet junkies, horror freaks and film buffs. Once the Web site caught on, discussions about the project spread to cabl...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Book Presentation
• Summary of Brand Hijack (Alex Wipperfurth)
• About the Summary Publisher
• Copyright