How \'murketing\' to hipsters succeeds

Tag : timberland t-shirt

As early as 1939, business magazines were warning executives about"better organized" consumers who were sick of "deceptive and stupidadvertising."
So today, successful brands know better than to order some quickcopy about the New Best Thing, splash a half-naked girl next to itand count on millions to happily open their wallets.
Instead, they skip overt marketing altogether and engage in"murketing," says Rob Walker in his revealing new book, "Buying In:The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are."
Companies like American Apparel, Apple, Pabst, Timberland and RedBull have done remarkably well over the past decade by trading onour desire for authenticity and our reluctance to seem like easymarks.
A "do little, sell more" approach worked like a charm for PabstBrewing Co. Sales of its flagship product, Pabst Blue Ribbon, rosein 2002, reversing a decades-long trend of declining consumption.The company had no idea why. It turns out the beer was suddenlybeing embraced by young urban hipsters who appreciated thedollar-a-can promotion in certain bars and who, more to the point,liked the beer's underground, undersold image.
So to keep these new buyers, Pabst did almost nothing. It refusedto take out ads or court the media and instead funded low-key "bikepolo" matches between rowdy bike messengers in Portland, Ore. Salescontinued to grow. The unbranded beer is Pabst's brand. We're Not Gullible
"Buying In" is more complex than it at first appears. Essentially acollection of case studies based on Walker's New York TimesMagazine column, it seems to be saying that marketers have figuredout how to take advantage of our annoyance at the product song anddance and our eagerness to TiVo the jingles away. But the point isnot that we're gullible.
"What's striking about contemporary youth is not that they aresomehow brandproof," Walker says, "but that they take for grantedthe idea that a brand is as good a piece of raw identity materialas anything else."
Even rebellious skateboarders long to start their own T-shirtcompanies  and often become successful because, coming fromskateboarders, T-shirts possess the aura of rebellion. Conscious Consumers
Walker wants us to recognize the personal narratives that areembedded in well-murketed products  such as the outlaw, thepragmatist, the aesthete or, for the 40-year-old iPod owner, thehardworking family man with an electric guitar stashed in his past.Then, in theory, we can consume more consciously.
This is borderline manifesto territory, and Walker treads itcarefully.
Taking his analysis to heart would mean undergoing psychoanalysisof the credit-card statement, something that sounds a lot less funthan throwing on an American Apparel hoodie, cranking up the iPodand opening a can of Pabst.