Rob Walker: Buying In, A Book About Murketing

Rob Walker - Buying In

I just finished reading Rob Walker's Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are and I have to say it's an excellent book. It's focused on what Walker terms "murketing", his code word for marketing approaches that may seem a bit murky to folks used to being yelled at by advertising such as Red Bull's early sponsorship of events that didn't shout "RED BULL" at every turn or word of mouth marketing campaigns from companies such as BzzAgent.

Walker does an excellent job of tying together research on human responses to marketing and related topics with his own interviews and insights in a very readable manner.  He also skillfully reconciles seemingly contradictory and counterintuitive findings and observations regarding marketing and human behavior.

If you've ever wanted some ammo for those self-delusional types who claim to not be affected by marketing, you'll find it here, though that's not the most important accomplishment of this book.

I was impressed by the fact that, though I was familiar with a majority of the companies and many of the specific campaigns Walker mentions in Buying In, I never once felt a desire to skip over his description or discussion of any of that history, as I do with so many other writers who relate recent events through an overreliance on secondary sources.

My only disappointment came at the end as Walker seeks closure for a book-length discussion of a complex topic. Citing a claim by Chuck D that, in the early days, "it wasn't like a brand defined you, you defined the brand," Walker attempts to flip the linear supposition that "you are only what you surround yourself with" by suggesting that "you surround yourself only with who you are."

While it's often useful and interesting to consider what happens when one reverses a linear cause and effect supposition, Walker's book suggests that the "secret dialogue between what we buy and who we are" is a complex, nonlinear process that appears murky to most folks, in part, because we are socialized to be linear thinkers. His work helps reveal the interchange of feedback loops and related processes inherent in such a dialogue, one that is deeply nonlinear as are most such processes involving human thought and behavior.

Nevertheless, despite the difficulty that comes with finding temporary closure for a complex topic, Walker's book is a valuable contribution to understanding who we are and who we are becoming.

Rob Walker blogs at MURKETING - (The Journal Of).