Cool Hunters

1
Cool Hunters

• Marketing Cool to Teenagers Though Technology and
  Media

2
Why Try To Sell Cool?

• Companies target teenagers because they are the
  early adopters in our society and has the ability
  to sell to the mainstream.
• The other reason is they spend 140 billion
  dollars a year and get their parents to spend
  another 50 billion.

3
What Is Cool Hunting?

• Cool hunting, or what marketers now call
  "diffusion marketing", is when you find the
  coolest kid in a social group, basically pay him
  off to wear your sneakers or your t-shirt or your
  perfume or buy your cell phone, whatever it is.
  And then hopefully this sort of the pyramid
  social group under him will then aspire to have
  those products as well. ... The sick thing about
  it is that it works. It works if you actually
  find the right people.

4
Where Does Cool Originate?
Innovator 2-3

• And they (mainstream) take what the trendsetter
  is doing, and they make it palatable for mass
  consumption. They take it, they tweak it, they
  make it more acceptable, and that's when the mass
  consumer picks up on it and runs with it and then
  it actually kills it.

Trendsetter 17
Early Adopter 35
Mainstream 80
5
Who Controls the Media?

• The entertainment companies are a handful of
  massive conglomerates that own four of the five
  music companies that sell 90 percent of the music
  in the United States. Those same companies also
  own all the film studios, all the major TV
  networks, and pretty much all the TV stations in
  the ten largest markets. They own all or part of
  every single commercial cable channel. They look
  at the teen market as part of this massive empire
  that they're colonizing.

6
How Does MTV work?

• The MTV machine doesn't listen to the young so
  that it can make the young happier. It doesn't
  listen to the young so it can come up with
  startling new kinds of music, for example. The
  MTV machine tunes in so it can figure out how to
  pitch what Viacom has to sell to those kids. And
  this speaks to the inexorable narrowing of the
  range of content, despite the fact that so many
  champions of the status quo keep talking about
  all the choices that we all now enjoy.

7
More Information

• Visit The Merchants of Cool. You can watch the
  whole show online!
• Check out the web sites linked to the pictures in
  this presentation.

8
Citations

• Crispin, Miller. http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fro
  ntline/shows/cool/interviews/crispinmiller.html
• Gross, Holly. Kids Give the Scoop on Cool. 2001
  Phillips Publishing International, Inc. 4/3/2003
  http//www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0FVE/1_6/69482
  550/p1/article.jhtml?term
• Gordon, Dee Dee. Interview. 2001 pbs online.
  4/3/2003 http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/s
  hows/cool/interviews/gordonandlee.html
• McChesney, Robert. http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/f
  rontline/shows/cool/interviews/mcchesney.html
• Rushkoff, Douglas. Interview. 2001 pbs online.
  4/3/2003 http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/s
  hows/cool/interviews/rushkoff.html