Merchants of Cool

October 7, 2005

While watching, I wondered how Frontline rounded up so many corporate and marketing executives to discuss how they create unattainable and increasingly unhealthy images of “cool” and try to hook youth into high consumption of media and products to make themselves money. And, how those executives so openly shared their strategies of persuasion without acknowledging their manipulation of youth as perhaps, wrong. Strange and scary.

Though unnerved by the purpose of the marketing and cool-hunting, I was highly intrigued by the process and strategies. They know how to find out what youth are thinking about clothes and music, celebrities and school, friendships and dating, political and personal issues. What if churches and ministries were doing ethnography studies of youth or really, anyone we wanted to reach out to? Or, what if we had teams of creative people tracking and responding to youth and other cultures? Could be a quite exciting venture requiring only curiosity, time, and energy.

People with things to sell have great interest in learning as much as possible about youth and communicating with them in the most engaging and innovative ways possible. We have good news – how can we generate great interest in those with whom we’d like to share it?