FRONTLINE: Cool Hunting

Dealing with burden of being cool is tough. Everyone thrives towards a feeling of importance. e all want to be acceptance by people, so we tend to gravitate to the people we are most alike. In the end it is each and every one of us trying to create image of cool for ourselves. Corporations discretely manipulate teens in all different type of advertisements, allowing them to make money. Teenagers look up to the media as a guide to being cool. Each dependent on the other for different things.

Frontline examines the bond between teens and everything in the media. Todays teens are cool, and valued by todays corporations. Teens make the upcoming culture changes, and so they are are targeted by merchants. It is a teen driving economy. Teenagers are huge in their size all together as well as their value. todays teens make up one of the largest generations. Matt Fried points out that on might fill a gap in their life with objects and begin with purchases. I mean buying something new feels good, it has a similar thrill to riding a roller-coaster. It provides a feeling of importance and coolness to people. The fact is, in a single year, these teens spent $100 billion dollars, and depend on their parents to spend another $50 billion dollars!

It is the merchants job to find the cool trends. They have to understand the attitude and lifestyle of a teenager, know what they want and do not want. The goal for these corporations is to get inside the teens head. Their tactic is simply talking to teens in a group to narrow down what type os things attract these teens. Cool hunting researchers say on their mission to finding cool, "Once cool is discovered, it soon moves on" so they have to find a way to keep up. Once they find it they sell back an image of themselves. Matt fried says a common need is simply "Existing in someone's else's mind" So, people tend to rely on love. by loving and being loved people obtain a sense of value. Marketers take what they know and what they have figure out and then sell it back to the teens. Once they understand it becomes easier to sell products, because the teens then feel like someone understands them and they important.

Advertising is tricky, no matter what it is there is always a purpose. While we are mostly oblivious to what corporations do we feed into it. Commercials are made to send out a message and influence the minds of teens. Teens are effected by the media. Facing 3000 advertisements a day and 10 million by the time they reach the age of 18. The media provides teens with a image of cool that they look up too.