Gone are the days when marketers could rely on big-budget, in-your-face ad campaigns to capture the market and secure customer loyalty. Consumers just aren’t buying the hype. What’s more, a newly empowered consumer has big names floundering amid the phenomenal success of low-profile brands, and it’s shaking up the industry.

In his book Brand Hijack: Marketing Without Marketing, business development strategy expert Alex Wipperfürth advises corporate America to simply let go of the fallacy that companies alone own their brands. Brand identity is shaped primarily by the consumer — and that’s good news.

Underlying the success of breakthrough brands, he says, is the marketing of an idea to a select group. The key is to tap into the subconscious of that fringe market. The Blair Witch Project filmmakers capitalized on people’s inclination to gossip by marketing a myth — and doing it well in advance of the movie’s release. That movie grossed $248 million on a paltry $35,000 production budget. Pabst Blue Ribbon beer was practically dead in the water when it was snatched up by antiestablishment subcultures who rebuilt its image into a winning brand.

Among marketers’ greatest challenges, says Wipperfürth, is “fueling the momentum of a brand driven by its community.” His roadmap, beginning with a pre-seeding phase, is essentially a three-step process:

1. Tribal marketing: Choose your seed idea not from a societal norm but from a subcultural trend — the spare time of the self-employed, the rise of affordable luxuries.

2. Co-creation: Sit back and let your early market take over. That small group will transmit the idea behind the brand to a wider audience, who will then add its own meaning, creating a ripple effect. Buzz works — verbal, visual and viral.

3. Mass marketing: Take back control of the brand. Above-the-radar marketing builds momentum and sustains the brand as a mainstream product. Remember not to force it on the market (lest you go the way of Krispy Kreme. That hot stock tanked soon after saturating the market with stores).

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