Brand Hijack
June 25, 2008
Very interesting analysis of grassroots marketing. Wipperfurth makes a convincing case that new products and brands, whether from start-up companies or established corporations, can achieve success through non-traditional niche marketing efforts.
The keys to success, beyond the killer product, are staying true and authentic to the early adopters and letting those consumers define the brand for themselves. In this way, the consumers hijack the marketing and promote the product through that ownership.
The book also describes how this type of marketing has failed when it is approached in a cynical fashion, most often by large corporations seeking to replicate the viral marketing of cool/trendy products. The failure is due to not understanding that the medium, the consumers, are the message.
The book focuses on brands like internet services and energy drinks and cheeseburgers. However, the theories could be applied to books as well. The writer is the brand. Given the challenges in the publishing industry, one might find success by building from the ground up.
Title: Brand Hijack: marketing without marketing.
Author: Alex Wipperfurth
Published: 2005
Very interesting analysis of grassroots marketing. Wipperfurth makes a convincing case that new products and brands, whether from start-up companies or established corporations, can achieve success through non-traditional niche marketing efforts.
The keys to success, beyond the killer product, are staying true and authentic to the early adopters and letting those consumers define the brand for themselves. In this way, the consumers hijack the marketing and promote the product through that ownership.
The book also describes how this type of marketing has failed when it is approached in a cynical fashion, most often by large corporations seeking to replicate the viral marketing of cool/trendy products. The failure is due to not understanding that the medium, the consumers, are the message.
The book focuses on brands like internet services and energy drinks and cheeseburgers. However, the theories could be applied to books as well. The writer is the brand. Given the challenges in the publishing industry, one might find success by building from the ground up.
Comments
Viral Marketing
It's an interesting way to look at it. I almost think you have to have that little something extra associated with your book to trigger this kind of viral marketing. Maybe a website devoted to the world the author has created. I'm also thinking about a book I read awhile back that was a young adult mystery. It contained a pocket inside the hardback cover with physical clues from the book...a napkin with a clue written on it, business card from one of the characters. I can't remember the name of it. Look at what this outside-the-product approach has done for Lost. Genius, if you can find the right angle.
Case Studies
Red Bull was an example throughout the book. At one point, their marketing team left empty cans in the restrooms of nightclubs.
Finding that right target audience seems tricky. For example, if one had, let's say, a collection of romance stories set in Texas, taking out an ad in a major magazine wouldn't work.
However, if one focused on booksignings in Texas and donated proceeds to the NTRWA, it seems to me that would be some pretty savvy marketing.
The best marketing is the
The best marketing is the marketing you don't pay for. Unfortunately most CEOs are control freaks. They don't understand that if someone makes critique of their product, it's not a bad thing. And once you try this kind of marketing, there is no going back (without a major corporate change over, like Steve Jobs returning to Apple).
Another Steve
Apple is another example in the book. Their philosophy is to not even care what will appeal to everyone. They design products to satisfy their core consumers, the ones they count on to return decade after decade. If the product then catches on with the masses, so much the better.
Apple is also an anomaly since Steve Jobs is a control freak. They sued a pro-Apple blogger for leaking information. And the company positively abuses their early adopters with the product's initial pricing. And still they succeed.
The book does make a distinction between the early hijack efforts versus later mainstream efforts. Once traction is gained and the product is popular, then marketing needs to be directed to the masses. The key is to keep the early adopters close and not do anything to position the brand as something other than those core customers have defined it for themselves.
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