I thought today's video was extremely eye opening. I hardly even stop to think about advertising, but it really is such a big part of our lives. I was thinking about how marketing today relates to marketing when the video was made in 2001. I think for the most part, it hasn't really changed. Granted, the products, the trends, and the celebrities have changed, but for the most part, I think the focus is still on what the video called the "mook" and the "midriff". These things are still considered to be "cool" in our society.
But what I'm really wondering about is the effect advertisements had on creating the type of society where mooks and midriffs are cool. I think that these "ideals" began when teenagers started leaning toward that end of the spectrum and advertisers noticed. They took that small trend in thought and basically built it up into an entire teenage culture. Maybe "cool" would have headed in that direction anyway, but I think that marketers led us along the path that worked best for them and we just followed. What does everyone else think?
~Elizabeth Campbell
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I too had the idea that instead of the advertisers studying teenage culture, they created it, to an extent. Teens need some model of "cool" to follow, and the advertisers provided this in the "mook" and the "midriff". The advertisers possibly realized that there could be several interpretations of "cool", so they set the standard to make advertising "cool" easier for them. Teenagers then followed this standard, because, if they see it advertised as "cool" everywhere, then it must be! When the advertisers studied teen culture, they were probably studying to make sure "cool" hadn't changed.
ReplyDeleteThis may be a bit extreme, but it was the general idea that I got while watching the movie today.
-Audrey Kindsfather
I agree with both of you to a certain extent. Today when I was watching the movie, I jotted down a note about how the relationship between advertisers and teenagers was mutually beneficial. Likewise, it seems that corporations and the teens they market to constantly feed each other new definitions of "cool." I don't think that the credit for the creation of teen culture can go to either group entirely, because they are too closely entwined to clearly see who really started the trend.
ReplyDelete-Tara Burns
I agree with Tara that coolness is defined by a combination of media and teens. I also think the media helps to spread and make cool more mainstream, like Audrey said. Teens began to form it, and then advertisers latched on and cemented a definitive definition of cool. Cool for teenagers would be fairly local, dependant on what the kids in their school came up with. When advertisers latched on, they began to spread it and make cool mainstream. Things that started out cool in LA have become cool in NJ because kids there can see it blasted on TV, when before they wouldn't have known.
ReplyDelete~Becca