Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture

Modern brands are hitmakers. Knowing how to influence consumers through collaborations, merch, entertainment, brand codes, icons and other cultural products (and not through advertising) is a matter of strategy. In this book, world-renowned brand expert, Ana Andjelic, shows how modern brand strategy needs to be redefined as the strategy of cultural influence, how brands today influence culture, how brands should address audiences, and how the new approach to cultural hitmaking works organizationally and operationally.

A cultural hit is an idea, content, or entertainment that a large number of consumers pay attention to, share, and talk about. Once cultural hits become market hits, by lifting brand popularity or driving product sales, they have a strong financial return for a company. Brands are motivated to start producing as many cultural hits as possible, and these new formats replace traditional brand marketing strategies.

In the book, Ana Andjelic clearly articulates the complexity of this modern brand building, and provides a set of practical examples and tools that can be used by brand strategists to produce a cultural hit.

Ana Andjelic is a global brand executive, author of The Business of Aspiration and has been recognized three times by Forbes for her CMO work. Ana specializes in building brand-driven modern businesses. Most recently, she was the Global Chief Brand Officer of ESPRIT, responsible for ESPRIT’s new brand vision and repositioning strategy in Europe and market re-entry in the NA and APAC. Prior to ESPRIT, Ana led the successful rebrand of Banana Republic, resulting in 27% YoY comparable sales increase. Ana also held positions as the CMO of Mansur Gavriel and the Chief Brand Officer of Rebecca Minkoff, where she introduced the Female Founders Collective platform. She is also a sought-after expert source for leading business and mainstream press, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, Fast Company, the Guardian, Forbes, and Vogue.