Buying InThe Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are

Walker, the New York Times' "Consumed" columnist, specializes in examining what he calls "murketing": the elusive and sometimes imperceptible art of selling products to people who are convinced they're too savvy for advertising to work on them. In Walker's view, the most effective campaigns are not those that allow consumers to purchase their identity bit by bit so much as those that allow the consumer to project his or her own identity onto a particular product. He markets best who markets least.

Walker's signal example is Hello Kitty, multibillion-dollar, infinitely licensable symbol of nothing in particular. To one person, Hello Kitty might reflect childish innocence, to another pop-culture kitsch, but the Sanrio corporation gets their money either way. The Nike swoosh or the Apple logo are imbued with a cachet as potent as it is nonspecific, allowing consumers to forge their own relationships and take ownership of a brand — for the usual price.

Some of old-school marketing's bad habits have rubbed off on Walker over the years, particularly the penchant for superfluous neologisms — murketing, the Pretty Good Problem, the purple cow — which for some may cross the line from approachability to cutesiness. But Walker's ability to boil inscrutable trade-speak down to plain English makes for consistently pleasurable reading, with plenty of insights along the way.