Notes of Key Point of the Merchants of Cool
1. Notes of key points
From watching the Frontline video of the merchants of cool, I found that there are a few key points which raise my awareness to teenagers. Firstly, the teenager population were becoming larger and larger. There were 32 million teenagers in North America in 2001. The team population even beat their baby boomer parents’ population. 150 billion dollars could be spent by those teenagers. They have gotten more money from their parents. They become rich and could spend more on many products, which was a good opportunity for many businesses who want to produce teenagers’ favourite products. MTV, Madison Avenue, dream makers of Hollywood also targeted their products to those teenagers. Communications Professor of University of Illinois Robert McChesney described the teenager team just like Africa. It was the most studied generation in history. Teen Marketing Executive Robert Stone also described if people do not go deeply into teenagers’ culture, they would not understand teenagers’ behaviors and their topics. Secondly, target marketing researchers tried to figure out what teenagers’ habits are in order to understand and recognize what teenagers feel themselves and what they think. An example of who these cool-hunters are was found at the company Look-Look. Dee Dee Gordon, one of the founders, worked with a team of correspondents who are former "cool kids" themselves and acted as "culture spies that penetrated the regions of the teen landscape." These correspondents were trained to find cool people who "lead the pack". These trendsetters were hard to find, but once they were identified, they were interviewed, photographed, and added to the Look-Look website to analyze these head-of-time characters. The website identified common themes and gives viewers an idea of what is "in". Access to this "Rosetta Stone of Teen Culture" was sold to companies for $20,000 of subscription fees. The ironic change: once cool was found, Look-Look posted it,
From watching the Frontline video of the merchants of cool, I found that there are a few key points which raise my awareness to teenagers. Firstly, the teenager population were becoming larger and larger. There were 32 million teenagers in North America in 2001. The team population even beat their baby boomer parents’ population. 150 billion dollars could be spent by those teenagers. They have gotten more money from their parents. They become rich and could spend more on many products, which was a good opportunity for many businesses who want to produce teenagers’ favourite products. MTV, Madison Avenue, dream makers of Hollywood also targeted their products to those teenagers. Communications Professor of University of Illinois Robert McChesney described the teenager team just like Africa. It was the most studied generation in history. Teen Marketing Executive Robert Stone also described if people do not go deeply into teenagers’ culture, they would not understand teenagers’ behaviors and their topics. Secondly, target marketing researchers tried to figure out what teenagers’ habits are in order to understand and recognize what teenagers feel themselves and what they think. An example of who these cool-hunters are was found at the company Look-Look. Dee Dee Gordon, one of the founders, worked with a team of correspondents who are former "cool kids" themselves and acted as "culture spies that penetrated the regions of the teen landscape." These correspondents were trained to find cool people who "lead the pack". These trendsetters were hard to find, but once they were identified, they were interviewed, photographed, and added to the Look-Look website to analyze these head-of-time characters. The website identified common themes and gives viewers an idea of what is "in". Access to this "Rosetta Stone of Teen Culture" was sold to companies for $20,000 of subscription fees. The ironic change: once cool was found, Look-Look posted it,