Received the book- Brand Hijack- Marketing without Marketing in record time and great mint condition. Am very satisfied with vendor.

Useful ideas for building communities around products and services. Definitely worth a read. Like most business books, it is a bit too "breathless" in its excitement over the ideas. Also mixes together traditional ideas on introducing new products (see "Crossing the Chasm") with ideas about building community-driven brands. Would be helpful to the reader if the book distinguished well-established concepts about introducing new products from new concepts about building community-driven brands.

Brand Hijack is in turns amongst the most boring and the most interesting of marketing paperbacks out there. Wipperfurth is clearly fed up with conventional marketing and its desire to "control" the identity of a brand and in turn, the experience of the consumer. One can not blame him for it - the strength of this book lies in making a strong case for brands to think of consumer interactions as dialogues. Focus groups exchanged for true interaction with actual consumers. Indeed what would have been impossible 20 years ago, is very possible today. Today, one can have communities that support and work with certain brands, and those communities can inspire brand loyalty of the kind that money and ads can not buy. Point taken.

The problem lies with Wipperfurth undying love for bullet pointing the world. I have rarely seen some one bullet point quite as much. A class in journalism or comparitive literature is called for. Simple arguments tediously wind into multiple segments and points and tables.

Not only are these tables boring and difficult to even glance through, but they are entirely pointless and inaccurate. There are no ten ways to catch a butterfly. No ten ways to read a newspaper. And certainly no ten ways to manage a brand hijack.

Rather than making some interesting points and arguments, demonstrating the importance of two way communication, exploiting the richness of modern media, and then talking through what makes the process so rich, the author gets lost in this mindless description of every phase and every twist and every turn. Very very boring and pointless.

But, the point is well taken. Brand managers can now learn a lot more about their brands, and positioning their brands, than 2 decades ago. And truly, brands must be positioned not just as for 23 year old young men, but in cultural terms - for 23 year old metrosexuals living in urban neighborhoods. Marketing needs to be more targetted - consumers have many identities and reaching one takes effort. Conventional STP analysis and demographic profiling is just no longer accurate - peer groups rather than age and sex, influence tastes.

Be prepared to flip pages. But do read the book.

Clever jacket. Pretty words that sound like a stoned ad consultant on auto play. Cute stories -- one or two keepers. A lot of "so what?"

But not exactly strategic. Worse still, the book attempts to add legitimacy to "Branding", which in the hands of most ad agencies, is dangerous and utterly ridiculous.

The first thing I teach my clients who want to build a brand like a Fortune 500 is that we brand COWS not people. There is a right way to build relationship, and conventional branding is not it. A quick lesson on marketing: People talk about (and ultimately buy) things that resonate with them and help them to either fit in or stand out. If people find truth and purpose through what you sell, well done. Everything is bulls**t.

If you're in advertising this book will give you more ways to confuse your clients into not asking for measurable results (sales). Otherwise, it makes excellent bathroom reading material.

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. We believe it would be a welcome addition to any marketing department's library. It can reinvigorate your creative marketing as it explains the unexpected.