Brand Hijack

Marketing Without Marketing

by Alex Wipperfürth
Copyright © Alex Wipperfürth, 2005
Summarized by arrangement with Portfolio, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
288 pages

Focus Take-Aways
Leadership & Mgt. • Marketing departments can no longer control a brand's development.
Strategy
Sales & Marketing
• Consumers have taken over some brands, "hijacking" them from professional marketers.
Corporate Finance • When such hijacking happens, brands can become phenomenally successful.
Human Resources
Technology & Production
• Consumers who hijack a brand are trendsetting pioneers driven by their response to
the brand and a sense of exclusivity. They can generate a "tipping point."
Small Business
Economics & Politics • Brands that have been hijacked include Dr. Marten's, Napster, The Blair Witch Pro-
Industries & Regions ject, Crest Whitestrips, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines and candidate Howard Dean.
Career Development
• When a brand is hijacked, marketers should stand aside.
Personal Finance
Concepts & Trends • With careful planning, corporate marketers can facilitate a brand's hijacking.
• Once a brand is hijacked, marketers should watch its development and be prepared
to move the marketing into the mainstream.
• Use media placement and other special tactics in addition to advertising to facilitate
a brand hijacking.
• Brand hijacking represents a fundamental societal shift as consumer society matures.

Rating (10 is best)

Overall Applicability Innovation Style

9 8 9 8

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 Relevance
What You Will Learn
In this Abstract, you will learn: 1) What “brand hijacking” is; 2) How professional
marketers can capitalize on a hijacking; and 3) Who hijacks brands and why.

Recommendation
This thoughtful book fills a gap in marketing literature by explaining why some
unknown products and people suddenly become huge financial and popular successes.
While many people assume marketers create such stars with careful planning and huge
advertising campaigns, in fact many of these brands were ignored before they emerged
into the mainstream. Fringe groups popularized them, created their images and made
them generally successful, often with no professional involvement at all. Author Alex
Wipperfürth has done a masterful job of identifying, researching and revealing this
phenomenon. In a world of repetitive marketing books, this one stands out as refreshing
and insightful, complete with numerous case studies and extensive endnotes. getAbstract.
com believes it would be a welcome addition to any marketing department’s library. It
can reinvigorate your creative marketing as it explains the unexpected.

Abstract
Brands Out of Nowhere
The consumer revolt has begun. While major marketing gurus once thought they could
build interest and drive sales with expensive advertising campaigns and other promotions,
“There are the power has now shifted to consumers, who are often doing more to build brands than
two types of
the marketers themselves. It’s strange but true. How else can you account for the wild
breakthrough
brands: the popularity of Starbucks, which has never run an extensive national media campaign? Or
functional ‘must- of The Blair Witch Project, a film that created a sensation and earned huge revenues with
have gadget’ and almost no marketing budget?
the social badge.”
In “brand hijacking,” buyers take over marketing from professionals. This represents
a fundamental shift from the marketing department to the consumer. With hijacked
brands, the consumers are the ones who define the brand’s image, taking it out of the
hands of the professionals. As consumers gain control, their brand loyalty grows. They
feel a direct ownership interest in the brand. Traditional marketing professionals may
think this model is upside-down, but it is happening with increasing frequency, and it
often translates into more money for the brand.

How Did that Hijack Happen?

Brand hijackings happen when consumers react in three different ways:
“Hijacked brands
do not necessarily • “The discovery” – Early adopters of the Palm Pilot felt “in on a secret.” They were
have to be great pioneers who made a special discovery.
products.”
• “The commentary” – Buyers of Dr. Martens were not simply purchasing comfortable
boots, they were making a subversive political statement.
• “The mission” – Apple computer users were declaring themselves in favor of the
little guy as opposed to corporate “big brother” Microsoft.
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 Why don’t marketers encourage hijacking more often? After all, consumers are plentiful.
And they’ll do the heavy lifting it takes to build a brand for free. The problem is that
“Big companies
tend to be hindered consumers are selective and must be offered a particular set of circumstances before they
in their attempts will hijack a brand.
at brand hijacks
by the ghosts Napster for the People
of conventional
marketing.” Take Napster’s Internet music-sharing software. College freshman Shawn Fanning
circulated his experimental program to a small group of friends. In turn, they shared
the dynamic online indexing system with other music fans. In three years, Napster went
from a beta test to one of the fastest growing global brands in history; within 18 months
it had 80 million users. Napster made a marketing investment of only $200,000, and its
enthusiastic young users fueled its record growth almost entirely on their own. Napster
effectively became a form of virtual “public property.”
The conditions that allowed Napster to be hijacked so successfully included:
• It was a totally open system, available to anyone.
“Let go of the
• What was good for one was good for all.
fallacy that your
brand belongs to • Everyone shared the music equally.
you. It belongs to
• Its usefulness was obvious to all its users.
the market.”
• It offered an alternative to the unpopular record industry.
• It had an appealing anti-establishment image.
• It was well-managed.

Dr. Maertens Hurts His Foot and Starts a Trend

The story of Dr. Maertens boots is another instance of the public taking ownership of a
brand’s future. These shoes, originally designed by a German physician who injured his
foot in a skiing accident, were known for their cushioned support. A British company
licensed the shoe building process in 1960, anglicized the name and began selling Dr.
“Marketing
managers aren’t in Martens as an all-purpose boot.
charge anymore.
Consumers are.” The brand would have remained there forever had it not been for the serendipitous
convergence of the movie A Clockwork Orange, the rise of the punk movement and
some rock band endorsements. All these elements eventually made the brand name Dr.
Martens a symbol of the punk movement in Europe and the U.S.
Like Napster’s fans, the boots’ users defined their image. They saw Dr. Martens boots as
comfortable and easily customized to make social or political statements. The manufac-
turer, who ran ads that were informational, but not image-building, kept the marketing
entirely neutral.

“Remember,
Stay Neutral
a marketing Napster, Dr. Martens and other brands such as Starbucks, The Blair Witch Project and
department may Pabst Blue Ribbon beer demonstrate that a consumer subgroup can adopt a product and
be able to control remold it into a powerful new force. When this brand hijacking happens, marketers are
its agencies, but it
challenged to go with the flow and follow these guidelines:
cannot control
the market.”
• Embrace your customers – Often, the first reaction of possessive marketing depart-
ments is to resist new enhancements to a product’s use in the field. Big mistake! If

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 your customers think enough of your product to modify and promote it, find out
what’s happening and then follow the momentum.
• Don’t kill the grassroots efforts with legal challenges – Mattel actually sued Barbie
doll aficionados who started fan clubs and produced customized dolls. It sought
“At its best, market damages and cease-and-desist orders against its own customers. When Palm found a
involvement creates
parody of one of its ads posted on a user Web site, its lawyers initially tried to close
a cultural benefit,
offering meaning the site down, charging trademark violations. But Palm realized it would not be able
in an otherwise to prevent other Web sites from posting similar parodies, and it eventually relaxed.
chaotic modern Southwest Airlines took a completely different approach when it allowed a reality TV
world.” show to tape its renowned customer service employees in real interactions. A Southwest
executive said the airline trusted its employees and its viewers’ judgments.
• Find out why your brand has been hijacked – Create a timeline to discover what
impetus – such as ads or current events – may have caused the change and when
it happened. Then, do nothing. Maintain your brand’s basic image. Sometimes,
hijacked brands are attractive exactly because they are out of style or not accepted
by top-tier consumers. Resist the temptation to do new marketing.
• Establish a “code of conduct” – Bolster the reasons that the brand was hijacked in
the first place. If the product is anti-establishment, such as Napster, do not start doing
banner advertising or selling T-shirts online. Marketers must maintain momentum
yet resist selling out to mainstream marketing forces.
• Recognize that even the best things don’t last forever – Sometimes, hijacked
brands come out of nowhere, grow rapidly and then fade into oblivion. Marketers
“In our search for should monitor the hijacking, gauge its strength and be prepared to reassert control.
place and purpose
in life, consumer
culture is replacing Planning a Brand Hijacking
tradition.” The Blair Witch Project cost $35,000 to produce and earned more than $241 million at the
box office. People took it to be a horror movie, but it did not have many terrifying scenes.
It was more like a film school project. Before its release, a marketing team working on
a shoestring created a “buzz” by spending two years building a myth among college
students about the Blair Witch, complete with rumors of killings and missing persons
flyers posted around campuses. A director even made a fictional “documentary” about
the Blair Witch that was aired on TV shortly before the film debuted in 40 theaters in
college towns.

In a similar corporate-directed hijacking campaign, French Connection clothing stores

in the United Kingdom stumbled onto something big in the late-1990s, when a marketing
executive saw possibilities in the company’s acronym, FCUK. By linking these initials
with the word “fashion,” the company created a media splash as well as a social statement.
Sales soared as buyers bought both the clothes and the slogan, “FCUK fashion.” In about
“In this day and four years, sales doubled while operating profits tripled.
age, anything that
gets in the way of In the cases of The Blair Witch Project and French Connection, company-directed
capitalism, from
Napster to Linux
“hijackings” worked to make the brand seem cool. However, deliberately creating a
to Adbusters, is product that is both appealing and out of the mainstream is difficult.
dynamite.”
Apple computers have a dedicated following because they are second to Microsoft, and
their users like their look and the way they work. Viagra and Mini-Cooper also have
brand identities that challenge established expectations and categories. These kinds of

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 outsider challenges can be powerful marketing forces, but they can also backfire. By
definition, being cool includes a tight group of insiders and excludes a mass audience.
And coolness is often just temporary.
“The next type of
brand will declare Thus, planned hijacking requires careful strategizing, including the use of different
a worldview, not media and rotation through different audiences. Mountain Dew Code Red soft drink
just an individual gained traction without an advertising campaign when the manufacturer distributed it in
benefit, and play a
meaningful role in urban areas.
people’s lives.”
Similarly, Crest Whitestrips became P&G’s most effective new product introduction
in two decades because of careful media selection and audience choice. At first, P&G
sold Whitestrips only on the Internet, not in retail stores. It discovered that four groups
were among the Web site’s most frequent visitors: brides, young Hispanics, gay men
and teenage girls. So P&G targeted each of these groups for additional marketing: it
promoted Whitestrips at bridal shows, and in health clubs and bars in gay neighborhoods.
It presented gift boxes containing Whitestrips to Academy Award nominees, set up an
online referral program and assembled a Smile Team comprised of good-looking young
men with bright smiles to make public appearances. The $50 million P&G spent to
launch the brand paid off handsomely. Whitestrips was the first in a new tooth-whitening
“For hijacked product category, which is now a $600 million business.
brands, growth
happens in a
curve: slow at The Hijackers
first, exploding Brand hijackers are not fringe elements but rather dedicated, even fanatical consumers.
exponentially only They can sometimes seem like cult members, who feel most comfortable with others who
once the mass
market has bought share their preferences and believe they are superior to those who don’t use the brand.
into the trend.”
IKEA reinforces its customers’ sense of exclusivity with e-mails and advertisements
that remind them of their wise choice, despite their complaints about long lines and
chronically out-of-stock items. Users of eBay, who spend an average of 3.5 hours per
visit on the Web site, receive rewards for their purchases based on a rating system. They
can join eBay clubs where they share their experiences virtually and even face to face
with other devotees.

The early adopters who first hijack a brand consider themselves to be discoverers and
independent thinkers – trendsetters who can interpret meaning, use influence and create
paths for others to follow. They may generate their own vocabulary and rituals. They
do not believe they are subject to manipulation by corporate forces, but rather that their
dedication to their brand gives them insight into society and the economic marketplace.
“Bottom line:
This was the attraction of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer to bicycle messengers and Dr. Martens
Consumer devotion
must be earned. It boots to political extremists. When hijackers communicate their insights, they create a
cannot be faked.” powerful “buzz,” or “tipping point,” which attracts more newcomers.

Once the initial audience of hijackers wanes, marketing professionals can step in with
more traditional, mainstream techniques to attract and keep a mass audience.

About the Author

Alex Wipperfürth is a partner at San Francisco Plan B, a firm that helps major brands
find markets.
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