The Merchants of Cool

The Merchants of cool by Frontline informed me of many things that I didn’t know. I had no idea that I was part of the largest generation of teenagers ever. I always new companies did research to find out what is cool and what kids want. However, I never realized how the commercial market worked. The amount of money and time spent on marketing is unbelievable. I was amazed to find out that the average teen witnesses about three thousand discrete messages a day.  I never really thought about how companies decide what’s cool, and also how to market what’s cool.

Companies higher market researchers to go out and find what teens considered cool, but cool is always changing so how can market researchers do this? Companies must always change with the trends and what is considered cool. However, this is a vicious cycle because when a company discovers what is cool and markets the product, the cool marketed product then becomes un-cool.

Cool Product Marketing Cycle:

1.  Cool product

2. Cool product is marketed

3. Product becomes mainstream and un-cool

4. Marketers must find new cool and start over

According to the Merchants of cool there are five conglomerates that decide what’s cool News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Universal, and Time Warner. Out of these five conglomerates Viacom is considered the most cool. Viacom is considered the most cool because they own the television channel MTV. Viacom’s marketing technique with MTV is absolutely genius. They created a popular channel where everything is in some way a commercial. MTV uses the same marketing technique to appeal to teenage guys and girls. MTV created what is called a Mook (a sort of loud obnoxious character) that appeals to the interests of teenage boys. For Example, Tom Green or the jackass guys would be considered some of MTV most popular Mooks. MTV created a Midriff, which is a sort of Mook for teenage girls. One of the most popular Midriffs would be singer Brittany spears. By using Mooks and Midriffs MTV is able to appeal to both the interests of teenage guys and girls.

Marketing is a very affective way to get teenagers to want to buy things, however, teens can also be turned off from marketing. When teens don’t realize that a product is being marketed they are much more likely to buy the product, but when marketing is shown teens are less likely to buy a product. This happens because teens think marketers are the enemy. Companies market products by studying teens as customers, this is part of the feedback loop.

The feedback loop:

 1.  A Company watches teens and what they do     

 2. The company then markets what the teens are doing

 3. Then the teens do what the company marketed

Marketing is used in many ways to influence what teens do. I enjoyed watching the Frontline story The Merchants of Cool, because I now know what to look out for when viewing marketed things from companies. Also I learned that I am not considered the main stream cool, and I am very happy that Marketers haven’t been able to get to me though mainstream media.