Move over brand manager, the brand facilitator has arrived.

Or at least that's what should be happening in your marketing departments, according to Alex Wipperfürth, author of Brand Hijack: marketing without marketing, and co-founder of San Francisco-based agency Plan B. He believes today's most successful marketers are able to foster an ongoing dialogue between engaged consumers and the brand.

From Wipperfürth's perspective, companies are starting to wrap their heads around this notion. He's seen much more interest in "co-created brand hijack," a term he defines as "the act of inviting subcultures to co-create a brand's ideology, use and persona, and pave the road for adoption by the mainstream."

The reason of course, is that thanks to media proliferation, not to mention commoditization, the consumer is in control. And "technology has made everything more democratic, people have more of a voice, and they've also brought transparency to the whole thing," says Wipperfürth. In other words, marketers almost have no choice but to embrace co-created hijack.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, though, because it has many benefits versus conventional approaches. As Wipperfürth outlines, instead of trying to convince consumers that a certain brand will make them cool or successful (or whatever aspirational message one might send), hijacked brands offer "meaning within a broad cultural context...[and therefore] a more inspirational role in people's lives."

Jeff Roach, managing director, youth marketing, at Toronto-based consultancy Youthography, views

co-creation of brand messaging as a necessity when dealing with a young consumer. "Blogs and pods - they are having an impact. Corporations, despite their best efforts, aren't able to control them," he says, noting "from our point of view, it's almost like the brand has to [achieve] consumer-based development - or else it doesn't develop."

In his book, Wipperfürth cites several examples of brands that nailed this strategy - from Red Bull to Blair Witch to Absolut. Red Bull, for one, got it right from the moment it was introduced in 1987. First it became a source of non-alcoholic fuel for the rave crowd (the company encouraged consumption by tossing empty Red Bull cans onto clubs' bathroom floors); second, it didn't respond to rumours about it being a drug-in-a-can (see sidebar); and third, it engaged in an effective seeding campaign. When it launched in New York, for instance, the company made the product available to staff of hip bars - and had it delivered by taxi to them. Therefore they made pals out of two important subcultures that influence the bar crowd.

The Jamaican lager Red Stripe is somewhat mimicking this success in various international markets and is now taking a stab at doing the same in Canada. According to Bob Huitema, category/brand director for Toronto-based Diageo Canada, which distributes the brew, Red Stripe has achieved impressive results for its "social diffusion" strategy, which entails focusing on specific groups, like the surfer crowd in Australia and the music industry in the States, where the brand is now the fourth-fastest-growing import lager.