May 25
Merchants of Cool
The Documentary Merchants
of Cool from 2001 may have been detailing the focus groups and cool hunting
of marketing teams 16 years ago, but I still see a lot of the same exploitation
of youth as then. The themes and use of pop culture icons in the video like
rappers and athletes for Sprite is still a common marketing tool. I think there
is still this sense of trying to figure out people teens like and respect and
then get them to be seen with the product marketers are trying to sell. One
current example I can think of now are the use of products in music videos;
since music videos are almost entirely funded through product placement, and I always
look for the half-hidden products major artists are promoting.
One difference from the documentary and today that we talked
about in class was that the focus groups used in the video are now replaced
with social media and well tracked opinions and consumption of pretty much
everyone. Marketing teams, or cool hunters, don’t have to hire teens to come in
and say what they like and what they think is cool, the marketers can just
track the social media consumption and followings of people online. I was
really surprised in class when Omar mentioned snapchat storing all the “temporary”
photos somewhere, because I didn’t really think of that at all, but yes those
photos and recorded data are so valuable to marketers and snapchat can
capitalize on the devotion people have to using their product.
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