Marketers and Cool

Marketers determine “Cool”

Marketing plays a major role within our society. It is a creative and competitive activity that continuously contributes to the shaping of teens life in our society. By satisfying teens’ needs and wants, marketers have managed to improve the quality of life for them, by making it so easy to follow the trend as much as possible and sometime even to be ahead of the trend in society just so they can be cool. But even though teenagers are the consumers its still not them that own cool. Marketers have their way of carrying advertisements through different teen magazines and TV commercials, through research and surveys, through peer pressure, and they do all this just so they can get teen’s attention. In short, marketers own cool.

Almost everything teenagers own today is primarily introduced to them through advertisements created especially to get their attention. It has been proven that teenagers do not bother to read the Consumer Report (Twitchell, 1996) in order to verify what is a better investment for their money. They would rather check the commercials or magazine advertisements and the marketers know the attractive places where to put these advertisements where teenagers cannot miss them. Marketers place them in their schools, in the most popular magazine that teens read and in TV programs that teens tend to watch. And how do teens react to these advertisements it is already well known, they do not mind paying extra just so they are the first ones to own the product. Majority of them are not even aware that they are paying more for the product because that is how marketers cover the charges for advertisements. The very first five pages of every magazine are loaded with advertisements. As Twitchell explains “We have to shake magazines like rag dolls to free up their pages from the “blow-in” inserts”. And then every popular TV show will have commercials throughout the whole time, just because marketers know how to get teens attention. Today, recognizing the importance of the teen market even “The New York Times” included a part of the newspaper for teens called “Upfront” (Holmstrom, 2000). And this just explain how marketers are using any way possible to get teens attention, what really makes marketers leaders in determining cool.

Another way marketers have proven that they own cool is through the research and peer pressure marketers do these days. Marketers are aware that most of consumers make their decision about which brand they will stick with, around their teenage years. If marketers can “brand” the consumers when they are in their teen years, these teenagers may remain that specific brand royal for the rest of their life (Holmstrom, 2000). So in order to meet these consumer needs, marketers do different research, just so they can become more familiar with what teens are looking for, because marketers are ready to fulfill these needs. Marketers will invest just enough into advertisements to send the message out, because if they try too hard then teens don’t like that, and if the don’t try enough then they may fail to get teens attention (Kowalski, 2000). And in order to be just right marketers are continuously investing more time and more money into advertisements because through research and peer pressure marketers are being able to achieve leading position in determining cool. Then the companies will manufacture the necessary products that “capture teens’ hearts and minds” (Surowiecki, 1999) just so marketers can succeed. Marketers today are aware of different choice teenagers have in buying different brands, so they are continuing to do research, again just to win these teen customers and this plays a dominant role in becoming a cool owner.

Those who do not agree that marketers own cool are claiming that teens are getting tired of the advertisements because there is so much of it all over (Holmstrom, 2000). Also they are trying to prove that a lot of advertisements will lead to failure. Obviously these people do not realize that “the bottom line in business is that the more you advertise, the higher your sales” (interview, n.d.). And that is what marketers are being able to do. It is true that advertisements are all over but from the other point of view marketers are putting every effort to get teens attention and if that means too much advertisement then that is exactly what marketers will do. Marketers