Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are

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Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are
by Rob Walker
from Random House

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

• Does what we buy define who we are?
  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... more info

• I decide what I buy.....or do I? Be in on the secret.
  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... more info

• No Sale
  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... more info

• 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... more info

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