| Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 21 reviews)
Sales Rank: 655026
Category: Book
Author: Rob Walker
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America
Studio: BBC Audiobooks America
Manufacturer: BBC Audiobooks America
Label: BBC Audiobooks America
Format: Unabridged
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 8
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 5.9 x 4.9 x 0.8
ISBN: 160283430X
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.8270973
EAN: 9781602834309
ASIN: 160283430X
Publication Date: June 3, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
An Intrepid Business Journalist's Counterintuitive Look at the Convergence of Marketing and Culture in Contemporary Life. Using fascinating profiles of companies and products old and new, including Red Bull, the iPod, Timberland, and American Apparel, New York Times "Consumed" columnist Rob Walker demonstrates that modern consumers are likely to embrace marketing and use brands to craft and express their political, cultural, and even artistic identities. Combine this with marketers' new ability to blur the line between advertising, entertainment, and public space, and you have dramatically altered the relationship between consumer and consumed. Presented unabridged on 8 CDs, narrated by Robert Fass.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 Walker November 30, 2008
This book details various unorthodox marketing campaigns and how/why they have succeeded in creating a consumer following. He deconstructs the wild success of brands like Red Bull, Hello Kitty, iPod and Pabst Blue Ribbon. I think most people would enjoy this book regardless of whether they're in the marketing field. It reads like a series of intriguing marketing case studies, some amusing and some fascinating.
Does what we buy define who we are? October 7, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Does what we buy define who we are? I won't tell you the punch line, you'll have to read to the last line of Walker's book to find the answer.
This is a popular study of marketing and consumers--why we buy, and how marketing affects what and how we choose to buy. Walker considers and rejects the two extremes often supposed to be true today:
--consumers (especially younger ones) are cynical and way too smart to buy the marketing hype.
--marketing is so smart and pervasive that nothing we buy is "authentic" (whatever that means; Walker spends some interesting time thinking about this) or meets an authentic need.
Consumers are smart today, no question, says Walker, and they understand marketing and hype--and buy anyway, sometimes even turning branding into an act of individualism or rebellion. In fact, Walker gives the example of Timberland boots, originally designed by manual laborers who needed tough waterproof boots, but were adopted by hip-hop artists and fans who drove sales to record levels and essentially co-opted the brand.
And marketing has gotten smarter too in the age of "clicks" (the mouse, the remote control, the DVR fast forward that bypasses marketing that doesn't hit home immediately). Walker references icons such as Apple and the iPod, stressing that the iPod was not first, cheapest, or necessarily technically superior to other MP3 players when introduced, although he misses a key point in the technical and marketing success of the iPod--iTunes, which both explains the iPods success, and adds another layer of mystery to Apple's business model for the iPod. An iPod, and any MP3 player, is really just a portable storage drive (either a rotating hard drive or a flash memory drive); people buy iPods (we own four of them in our family of five!) because of the utility value of the iTunes software, which is available for free download and is in fact of such utility that I (like many other iTunes users) had downloaded it and started using it to rip and listen to my music before I got my first iPod. I've always been fascinated by a business model that bases sales of an expensive product on a component of even higher utility--that is given away! It would be interesting to hear Walker's take on this.
Walker coined the term "Murketing" (murky + marketing) for the successful use of stealth marketing concepts that promote brands and brand loyalty without rising to the level of hard-core selling. In fact, murketing is successful only up to a level that is still under the consumer's radar--a level Walker calls the "murkiest common denominator."
But this book is not as dry or textbook as my review may be making it sound. Walker's interviews, writing style and examples are fascinating (we all are consumers and most of us enjoy doing it, after all) and his conclusion (you'll have to read to the end of the book) is interesting. I will say that along the way he considers consumer responses such as ethical consumerism (whatever THAT means, and again he has some ideas) and handcrafted production, and even references Rick Warren's immensely popular book The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? and his Saddleback Church as positive examples of why and how we relate to each other and our beliefs (or the products we buy). And its not about materialistic Christianity, quite the opposite.
 I decide what I buy.....or do I? Be in on the secret. September 27, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Where did Red Bull come from? December 2001, Rob Walker joined a growing group of onlookers on a Miami beach to watch as a group of kite boarders set off to cross the eighty eight miles of water between Key West and Varadero, Cuba. Not only did the event highlight the emerging sport of kite boarding, its participants were sponsored by Red Bull energy drink. At the time Red Bull was not widely marketed and didn't have much of a niche in the US, though well known in its home country of Austria. The event also was a perfect example of the new type of marketing, or murketing (a combination of the words marketing and murkey that best describes the new advertising techniques) employed in the highly competitive advertising business. Relatively unknown at the time of the kite board launch, Red Bull has employed innovative and personal approaches, such as sponsoring small groups of extreme athletes, to gain a market and a brand loyalty. Now Red Bull is everywhere and has a firm hold of the top spot in the energy drink market.
In the search for the new or repeat consumer brands have begun to use anti advertising. Relying on guerrilla marketing tactics, trend spotters, and actively seeking the anti brand or new consumer niche market for its products. From finding new groups to co-op a product (Timberland boots and hip hop) while retaining its original core, tracking an unexpected growth in sales of a product and trying to catch that lightning in a bottle or marketing a new product and coolhunters or buzz marketers tout the aspects of their products. . Consultants evaluate the variables of brand identification, price, target market, market saturation and how it will present their product. A whole branch of advertising has evolved around the idea of not looking as if you are trying to market your product. "Coolness" has become a much valued trait.
Rob Walker has written the weekly "Consumed" column for The New York Times Magazine as well as contributing to Slate and various print publications. Buying In is an incredibly readable account of the ever evolving dialog between what we buy, what we own, and who we are or what we may want our purchases to say we are. I was completely enthralled and often was nodding my head with recognition or reading something to my coworkers that was too cool to keep to myself. A very readable look into how our consumer habits have changed and the forces that compete constantly to sway our choices.
No Sale September 14, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
I thought this book would give me insights into why people like me buy the stuff we do. After all, the title says "the secret dialog between what WE buy and who WE are." Instead, it was a murky examination of mostly oddball marketing campaigns that successfully launched some products into commercial success. If I got the point - not sure I did; and I couldn't finish the book - it is that the methods discussed are going to be the successful marketing methods of the FUTURE. I think you can get an idea about the focus of the book from some of the chapter subtitles: "pink boots," "rickety bridges," "cool guys," "sexy t-shirts for young people." There may be some great stuff here, but it went over my head.
I approached this as a cynical brand-critic, and saw myself in its pages August 30, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
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