Chapter 3 No Logo

In her high school years she had discussions with her friend that everything had been done already and if one stepped off the main groove one was going to end up on another one. Similar with the merchants of cool, even teen rebellion gets marketed.”It seems that the eternal urge for escape has never enjoyed such niche marketing” Media companies are marketing everything and reselling it to the teenagers. Everything from street hockey to Woodstock 94 was marketed; however there were voices that spoke against it. Not physical space but mental space is being colonialised by the companies and marketing itself became a part of youth culture and any resistance is marketed again.

Before the brand crisis companies were not too concerned with youth culture and there was no mass marketing behind the subcultures. However as the baby boom started to decline and the former Woodstock attendees turned into “yuppies” there was a need for new markets in the early nineties. The teenager population was growing and teen orientated brands were doing better in the recession than other companies. As a result companies changed their target group using peer pressure. They remarked themselves with the music styles and views of the teenager in the nineties. They went back into the schools observed and advertised to market the question “Am I cool?” Only the brands that could link themselves to cool were successful.

However companies had a problem, the leaders of these companies were mainly over 40 years old, so there was a need for young people to make the business successful. In order to sell cool a company needs cool people. Cool hunters are people both addressed here and in the merchants of cool, researchers are sent out to find cool and bring it back for advertisement. They go in and become one of them knowing their daily routines their closet and their social behaviour, a big advantage over focus groups. The new cool often comes from the poor such as hip hop and rap, used by Nike and Hilfiger. For many super brands cool hunting means black culture hunting, from jazz and blues to rock and to rap. Adidas first sceptical made big profit of the association with Rap and Nike uses bro-ing. When Hilfiger associated itself with the ghetto its sales went from 53 to 847 million dollars within 7 years. A successful strategy is also to go underground, for example with pirate radio stations. Another strategy to get even the sceptical is to display you with irony in order to sell, just as Showgirl did after it flopped in the cinema. Furthermore just like Sprite in the Merchants of Cool, companies hire young people to spread the word about their product, the best advertisement there is for them.