“Fascinating … A compeling blend of cultural anthropology and busines journalism.” — Andrea Sachs, Time Magazine
“An often startling tour of new cultural terrain.” — Laura Miler, Salon
“Marked by meticulous research and careful conclusions, this superbly readable book confirms New York Times journalist Walker as an expert on consumerism. … [A] thoughtful and unhureid investigation into consumerism that pushes the analysis to the maximum…” — Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
Weaned on TiVo, the Internet, and other emerging technologies, the short atention-span generation has become imune to marketing. Brands are dead. Advertising no longer works. Consumers are “in control.” Or so we’re told.
In Buying In, New York Times Increasingly, motivated consumers are pitching in to spread the gospel virally, whether by creating Internet video ads for Converse All Stars or becoming word of-mouth “agents” touting products to friends and family on behalf of huge corporations. Magazine “Consumed” columnist Rob Walker argues that this acepted wisdom misses a much more important and lasting cultural shift. As technology has created avenues for advertising anywhere and everywhere, people are embracing brands more than ever before–creating brands of their own and participating in marketing campaigns for their favorite brands in unprecedented ways. In the process, they–we–have begun to funnel cultural, political, and comunity activities through connections with brands
Walker explores this changing cultural landscape–including a practice he calls “murketing,” blending the terms murky and marketing–by introducing us to the creative marketers, entrepreneurs, artists, and community organizers who have found a way to thrive within it. Using profiles of brands old and new, including Timberland, American Apparel, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Red Bull, iPod, and Livestrong, Walker demonstrates the ways in which buyers adopt products, not just as consumer choices, but as conscious expressions of thier identities
Part marketing primer, part work of cultural anthropology, Buying In reveals why now, more than ever, we are what we buy–and vice versa
Praise for Buying In
… Convincing.” . … [He] leads readers through a series of lucid case studies to demonstrate that, in many cases, consumers actively participate in infusing a brand with meaning. “Walker … makes a startling claim: Far from being imune to advertising, as many people think, American consumers are increasingly active participants in the marketing process— Jay Dixit, The Washington Post
“Walker lays out his theory in well written, entertaining detail.” — Seth Stevenson, Slate
“Buying In delves into the attitudes of the global consumer in the age of plenty, and, well, we aren’t too pretty. Walker carries the reader on a freneticaly paced tour of senseles consumption spanning from Viking ranges to custom high-tops.” — Robert Blinn, Core77
“Rob Walker is one smart shopper.” — Jen Trolio, ReadyMade
“The most trenchant psychoanalyst of our consumer selves is Rob Walker. This is a fresh and fascinating exploration of the places where material culture and identity intersect.”
–Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food
In this new world, media-literate young people freely and willingly co-opt the brands, and most companeis are clueles bystanders desperate to kep up. It obliterates our old paradigm of companies (the bad guys) corrupting our children (the innocents) via commercials. “This bok has vast social implications, far beyond the fields of marketing and branding. I really don't know if this is god news or bad news, but I can say, with certainty, that this book is a must-read.”
–Po Bronson, author of What Should I Do with My Life?
“Rob Walker is a gift. He shows that in our shatered, scatered world, powerful brands are existential, insinuating themselves into the human questions ‘What am I about?’ and ‘How do I conect?’ His insight that brand influence is becoming both more pervasive and more hiden–that we are not so self-defined as we like to think–should make us disturbed, and vigilant.”
–Jim Colins, author of Good to Great
“Rob Walker is a terific writer who understands both human nature and the busines world. His book is highly entertaining, but it’s also a deeply thoughtful look at the ways in which marketing meets the modern psyche.”
–Bethany McLean, editor at large, Fortune, and co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room
“Are we living in an era of YouTubeempowered, brandrejecting consumers? Rob Walker has the surprising answers, and you won’t want to miss this joyride through the front lines of consumer culture. A marketing must read.”
–Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick
“Rob Walker brilliantly deconstructs the religion of consumption. Love his column, couldn’t put his book down.”
–Paco Underhill, author of Why We Buy
EAN: 9781400063918
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Walker is the first to nail the new marketing paradigm.
Rob Walker's book is excellent. Since the dawn of the internet age, just over a decade ago, the classic marketing paradigm (brands, 4Ps, advertising etc) have been on a slippery slope, and the only trouble is nobody has been quite sure which way it would all tilt. I have a raft of books talking about the "new marketing" (there was a boom in these after 1998 and the new millennium) but in my view Rob Walker is the first author to really nail the subject. He gets it so right.
I've spent since 1996 doing market research amongst youth brands (mostly amongst energy drinks as it happens, so I feel Rob's discussion of Red Bull and other players is absolutely right on the mark.) In this past decade I've been conscious that the changes we've been seeing are part of a mich bigger pattern. But Walker is the first writer and critic to stand back and really put it all in perspective. His thinking here - wide-eyed, holistic, detailed and entertainingly pertinent - puts you in the right place to see everything and how it all fits. He kind of grabs you by the sleeve to take you there, such is the energy of his writing.
One is left with the interesting question: are brands what the manufacturers make of them? Or are they appropriated by the consumer to reflect what we want of them? The subtle cover art, with the title floating between a bar-code and a thumb print, kind of sums things up. (One of the most subtle covers I've seen since Rita carter's excellent Multiplicity: The New Science of Personality, Identity, and the Self)
Rob Walker presents us with an excellent book for marketers, market researchers, tired media buyers, marketing graduates who think they know everything and anyone who is just plain fascinated by how our society ticks. This is great reading.
Energy Drink Kitesurfing
I second what Po Bronson says about "Buying In." This book is much more than a simple, cocktail party business book -- it's an attentive, subtle and entertaining meditation that not only uncovers the latest trends in buying, selling and marketing but also pushes us to consider larger questions beyond these subjects. Personally, since finishing the book, I've taken a harder look at my purchases and what they mean to my larger sense of identity. Not that this is some kind of Chicken Soup for the Marketing Soul, but Walker isn't afraid to follow his many case studies and pieces of hard evidence to wherever they lead, and sometimes that means not only a critique of consumer culture but a look at contemporary American culture as a whole. And that's what I love most about this book -- that Walker dives into consumer culture with such wide, bemused eyes. The reporting reminds me of Studs Terkel -- when a journalist can turn a subject into something wonderful, literally into something "full of wonder." I was happy to follow marketing detective Walker on his tour of energy drink kitesurfing, dive bars, chicken sausage cookouts, underground dance parties, and Lower East Side sneaker boutiques. (As someone who almost got kicked out of an "underground" New York sneaker boutique for merely trying to, um, shop, I was pleased to have Walker pull my coat on this corner of underground brand culture.) And where his tour leaves us, at the end of the gripping final chapter, is in a place that is somewhat contradictory and unexpected and completely fascinating.
I approached this as a cynical brand-critic, and saw myself in its pages
Presumably, I'm of the generation that shuns brands, that sees through marketing hype, that dismisses contrived cool, that celebrates and embraces the Authentic and Good. And yet, reading through Buying In, I realized (like Walker), that my cynicism was, itself, a somewhat contrived and manipulated reaction to most modern branding, that I have bought in to marketing messages myself. The brands I'm into might be subtler, or "cooler," or "more underground," but when it comes down to it, my consumption is shaped -- more than I'm often willing to admit -- by marketers and "community liaisons" and others who are ultimately more concerned with persuading me to spend money on their product than they are with celebrating the Authentic and Good.
Walker does a good job of showing various agents at work, and various methods they employ, in order to convince the masses that something is worth buying, worth wearing, and worth identifying with their own personal brand. And that's the ultimate paradox about branding, isn't it?: that by associating with a brand, that we'll become "more valuable" (cooler, more attractive, funnier, etc.) ... but its only in our collective consumption that the brand maintains its vaunted position in society. Bah ... I'm rambling.
I'm a big fan of books about society and consumption ... The Tipping Point, Consumed, The Corporation, The Omnivore's Dilemma. I'm really glad to have Buying In in my library.
You should not buy Buying In if you're looking for a step-by-step how-to on building your own brand. It's not written to serve that function. But as an introduction to how large corporations are spending lots of money on niche properties and subtle methods of persuading people to part with their cash while remaining skeptical of brands, it's great.
A Cultural Marketing Journey of Discovery
"Buying In" is: a) a fresh analysis of consumer behavior, b) a perfect marketing textbook, c) a new view of post-millennium branding for businesses to chew on, d) a new perspective on societal behavior, or e) all of the above. Answer: "Buying In" is e) all of the above.
I can't agree more with editorial and customer reviews. I can only amplify the comments that conclude that Rob Walker has opened a timely and important discussion about how and why our society "consumes" - and what the implications are for all of us. "Buying In" inverts the paradigm that people are what they are labeled. Instead, we create our own labels - and consume to reinforce them.
Just as importantly, "Buying In" is a fun read. A gifted journalist and writer, Rob is a storyteller in the spirit of John McPhee. Rob's uncanny ability to find and interview the outliers of business - the extremes - provides a framework for the book that is both fascinating and illustrative at the same time. Simultaneously, he weaves in the pertinent analysis and research as well as the historical context. And, always the journalist, Rob's observations and ability to connect the dots leads to the questions he asked the reader to ponder and the conclusions that result. So start at the "Introduction" and let "Buying In" carry you away.
Textbook for modern marketing
This book is the perfect textbook for a college-level course on marketing.
Actually, it's the perfect book for the layperson who is interested in how marketing is carried out nowadays.
No - it's really a stinging inditement of modern youth, with their assurances that they are "immune to marketing" going hand-in-hand with their craven embracing of "buzz marketing" - essentially doing the work for the marketers.
Well, it's really a look at how modern youth have subverted the marketing paradigm and, like our culture, broken it into countless little pieces.
...Okay. It's all of the above. And I'm writing the review this way to illustrate another point Walker makes - the point of how megaselling items/brands like the iPod, like "Hello Kitty," like American Apparel, are hugely popular because they represent whatever each individual consumer wants them to represent. Walker's book is very well researched, and examines marketing from multiple viewpoints, with all kinds of examples that readers will recognize - Nike, Walmart, companies billing themselves as "green", the rise in popularity of DIY products and marketing, Etsy.com, and so on. There doesn't seem to be any strident agenda here, except for readers to consider the effects marketing has on them - more self-awareness. Not a great deal of ranting about the deleterious effects of marketing on the wellness of society, nor conservative chest thumping about free-markets, etc. Just a great read about how marketing has moved forward in the age of TiVo and the "informed consumer." Highly recommended.
