Frontline: The Merchants of Cool

I really enjoyed the Frontline, Merchants of Cool mini documentary. I thought it was extremely interesting piece on” Selling Cool”. As a teen myself watching it, I felt like everything they were saying was true. Teenagers are most defiantly an important factor when trying to sell certain products. If a teenager doesn’t think that something is “cool”, then a product will potentially fail. In today’s generation there needs to be an “It Factor”, if it’s acceptable to the teenagers than it will be acceptable to all people. The first segment talks about how teenagers are the largest generation since the baby boomers. They have more to say and it’s much harder to please them. The concept of “cool” keeps changing so it becomes difficult to target a certain product for a long period of time. One day teenagers may thinking something is great, but the next everyone will have it and it won’t be cool anymore. Today, teens hangout at malls because it’s the “cool” thing to do. Advertisers now have to make a marketing message geared toward teens that would be appealing in places that they hang out such as malls. Teens are surrounded by a “Blizzard of Brands”, and it’s important for companies to catch the attention of teens. If not, then that product will fail and will not have the approval of the young, growing generation. It is also important to get the message in “their” terms, meaning that its crucial to get the message that they approve of and understand. The mini video also had a segment about companies, which have spies, who go undercover and find out what teens like, this is called “Cool Hunting”. They look for teens that seem like “trend setters”, or give off an impression that what they wear is cool.The segment relating to Youth Culture, stuck out to me because it was true. The example they used in the video was the company, Sprite. Sprite used a method of selling a certain image, which was that hip-hop, was cool. Sprite began to transform and became one of the leading products at that time. Then it went to talk about, five companies that also wanted to sell cool. These companies geared toward the teen market. An example that was most frequently used was MTV. This company wanted to target teens because they (teens) were an outlet that would lead MTV to become an unstoppable force. Teens loved the aspect of MTV. From a personal point of view, I remember watching MTV most of my teenage years and loving it. I thought it was “cool” and I always wanted to watch it. MTV had corrupted the teen population. It has a way of making people obsessed and also they relate it to their audience which is teenagers.The rest of the video talked about image and how both boys and girls are trying to capture of the “hot factor”. Girls will use their body as an outlet to get noticed. All in all, the media has geared their aims toward teenagers because they will react. If a teenager approves a certain product than that product will succeed. Advertisers are trying to understand the mind of the generation. It’s a hard task, but it is one of the most important. Without the teenager generation, companies wouldn’t be growing and making profit. It’s crucial to sell cool. This idea of selling cool will always be around. As new generations form, there will be a need and a demand for new and more inventive products. Teenagers are hard to impress and it’s just going to get harderto come up with something that they will like.