Merchants of Cool

In the Front line Documentary The Merchants of Cool, many topics came up to write about in my head in the first twenty minutes. One of the quick facts that completely mind boggled me was how much we spent as teenagers every year and how much are parents actually give to us. Over 75 Billion dollars total in one year? The film showed lack of time to spend with their kids as motivation for the extra spending money. After hearing that everything was sort of centered around how needy and greedy our society is today. I don't believe its the lack of time to spend with children, I believe it's the day and age where we get everything instantly and electronically. Kids are spoiled and nagging plays a huge part in what the teenagers get. The experts on this documentary called it guilt money and I think that is the perfect term.

Another thing that caught my attention was the cool hunting and the fact that we really have people that go out to teenage events and spectate and survey young people on what they like, what they are wearing and what is trendy at the moment. These people get paid a lot of money to just get inside the minds of the teenager. Teenagers these days have a lot more money to spend but, they are also more stubborn on products they are not into. The reason they have these cool hunters is because regular ad programs do not do the trick anymore. Teenagers are much more reclusive and introverted when it comes to the things they like. Culture spies and cool hunters have to be trendy and cool themselves or else they will be disregarded. Many huge corporations pay a lot of money to these cool hunters and spies just to get inside the minds of teenagers.

A huge corporation such as Sprite. Sprite launched trendier, cooler ad campaigns after having a group of teenagers come in and talk about what would make them interested. Months later, Sprite unveiled a hip hop party with huge rap stars such as Jay-Z, it was immensely successful. Hip-Hop and Sprite went hand in hand and they were able to sell an image instead of a product. When people thought Hip-Hop they thought of Sprite. Using these assets of culture spies and cool hunters has become almost mandatory for a lot of corporations because they know that traditional advertisement is gone and you have to reach them through what they like. For example, music, sports, internet, and even video games. Traditional TV ad's are not the key anymore for teenagers because teenagers see this as a played out and tired way of reaching them.

Many companies have turned to agencies that will "smuggle" their message to teenagers in a deceiving fashion. Radio DJ's are paid by companies to use their name whenever they are on the air. Companies have paid video game developers to put little ad's in the developers games. Sports programs and arenas are filled with advertisements from various companies. Companies have done a much better job with the teenage generation of getting their message in without overwhelming them and turning them off on it. Overall, this film was very interesting and showed me just how needy the current generation is and why we are like that.