The Pirate Inside: Building a Challenger Brand Culture Within Yourself and Your Organization

Brand maven Adam Morgan, author of Eating the Big Fish, wants you to free your inner pirate and sail under the flag of the brand rather than the company. Morgan frames his brand-building advice by comparing time in the Navy (becoming a "corporate drone") with the life of a marketing pirate ("who does what is important, regardless of wisdom offered around us.")

Pirates, who challenge dominant brands, have a code. But it does not include the virtues of respecting the parent company, people's space, or the ways things have always been. Morgan draws upon 50 interviews with pirates from brand challenging companies including Diesel, Tommy Bahama, and Southwest airlines. His pirates dazzle with daring do: Apple's Steve Jobs, who shows what Morgan calls "emotional insertion" when he says, "Today we put the romance into computers" or Ingvar Kamprad, Founder of IKEA, who, in a Chinese chicken market, models "insights of opportunity" as he wonders how he can use the extra feathers.

For those of us without sea legs, Morgan offers four crisp sets of behavior to become a brand pirate and five personality traits to foster a challenger culture. Morgan is a wonderfully engaging writer, but sometimes his nautical analogies can get diluted by other metaphors. His ideas for helping challenger brands take on the big fish bristle with energy, originality--and above all--practicality. --Barbara Mackoff