Have you ever wondered how super-successful business owners with millions of customers get started?  Surprisingly, many don’t spend years toiling in Fortune 500 brand powerhouses, some had no money or no connections going in, and some weren’t even trained in marketing. NYU marketing professor David Vinjamuri, in his new book Accidental Branding, set out to explore what makes these founders of "accidental brands" tick and came out with a wonderfully engaging portrait of well-known entrepreneurs like Gary Erickson, creator of the Clif Bar, Craig Newmark of the online classifieds powerhouse Craig’s List, Roxanne Quimby, creator of the Burt’s Bees product line, and Myriam Zaoui and Eric Malka, founders of The Art of Shaving line. 

Vinjamuri illustrates how his accidental branders personally experienced a problem that the new brand in turn solved.  For example, long-distance cyclist Erickson was disgusted with foul-tasting energy bars, Newmark needed a way to quickly and easily communicate the latest San Francisco happenings to his friends, and Malka was plagued by terrible razor burn.  Vinjamuri, who had the unique opportunity to go into these individuals’ homes and places of business and get to know them one-on-one, brings the success stories to life and renders his characters so appealing and believable that you’d want to go out and have a beer with each and every one of them.

While the book readers more like an extended human interest story rather than a nuts and bolts business tutorial, Vinjamuri does offer insights on common characteristics of accidental branders – like obsessive attention to detail, being your own customer, and building a memorable brand myth, and tutors the reader on how his subjects’ decisions led to their eventual outcomes.  What inspired me the most was the fact that these now-icons were once ordinary people who all experienced setbacks and hardships along the path to their dreams.  Because that’s what the American dream is all about.