“Merchants of Cool” Video
In this video that Omar sent us a
link to, they explore dominant culture, and specifically through the lens of
what is cool and perceived to be in versus what is not. It explores teen
culture, as this generation is one of the largest and at the same time unique
in its tastes. As marketers, many of the interviewees are trying to discover
what this teenage generation finds to be “cool” to tap into this culture that
had promises of massive profit, in part due to the sheer number of millennials consuming
these products. In the video there are even focus groups in which they ask
these teenagers “Is this cool?” “What’s in?” and much more along that scope. While
watching the video I thought it was interesting to really see the generational
gap, something that we’ve obviously discussed in class, and how the other
generations really are distanced from knowing what these teens like. They have
to go through many interviews with teens to even get a grip of what the new
trends, slang, essentially the entire teen culture is.
In one of the interviews they
discuss how even marketing towards teenagers becomes kind of a cat and mouse
game in which the marketers try to portray something as cool until the
teenagers catch on and they must move on. For example sprite went on to promote
their brand by downplaying what the celebrities endorsing the product, but even
that was caught on as the teens talked about Grant Hill, a NBA player, telling
them not to worry about what celebrities say to do.
In
relation to that even today there is marketing like this with Lebron James and
Sprite or Russell Westbrook and Mountain Dew. However, in today’s world this
job of teasing out what is cool and what is not is simplified by social media
and its much easier to access through the ‘likes’ in our social media accounts.
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