Brand Hijack

Marketing Without Marketing
(14200)

Companies like Starbucks, eBay, Palm and Red Bull have built multi-billion-dollar valuations without using any conventional advertising campaigns. Far from being lucky breaks, the success of these and other 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 good, because it means the user base feels like they’re in control of the brand. Consumers who instantly and automatically reject traditional marketing as being too intrusive respond well to the invitation to help shape what their favorite brand will mean in the future. 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 that is richer, better, more genuine and therefore more sustainable than anything you would have consciously developed yourself. Have the confidence to let the market decide how your brand evolves.

Welcome to marketing without marketing: the emergence of the hijacked brand. Don’t let the all-too-clever subtitle fool you. Far from representing the absence of marketing, this approach is the most complex sort of marketing possible, as well as the least understood. Brand Hijack addresses such advertising industry crises as media saturation, consumer evolution, and the erosion of image marketing. This type of marketing is not for everyone. You must be willing to let the market take over. You must be confident enough to stop clamoring for control and learn to be spontaneous. You must be bold enough to accept a certain degree of uncertainty in the handling of your brands.

–Alex Wipperfurth