Do Marketers Have it Wrong With Teens?

In The Merchants of Cool it describes the methods used by companies to market their product to teenagers. They go through the typical research of talking to the average teenager, asking them what we like. They use focus groups to try and understand teenagers, how we work, how we get attracted to news. The bottom line is that we are interested in this thing called cool, which in their definition was a thing that was a little bit out of average, it was something new that drew attention to teens. Their plan was to try and find those things that were cool, and market them to us by appealing to those twenty percent of kids that set the trends which causes it to spread to their groups. The problem with that was once it was big and everyone was part of it, it died out. These marketers believe that they are only giving teens what they want. Their belief of the cycle is that they see teens doing what they typically do, and then all they do is just market what the teens want.

Here is what I have to say. First, they should probably double check their research. They showed images of people with gas masks and spiked up hair as people who were considered cool, and something that was a big thing for kids. I do not see that as a trend. No one I know is like that, and I do not see anyone, nor have I seen a lot of people dressing like that. They believe that male teenagers like loud, obnoxious things focused on inappropriate things. They got this from who? A majority of my friends are not talking about these things. We are loud, but the conversations we have are on the more intellectual side. They interview an average teen male who wears khakis and has suits for church. How do they get loud and obnoxious from that? Their biggest misconception is that teens are consumed with sex. They say that teens only talk about sex. Where did they get? I can say that about all of my friends do not talk about that. We are usually talking about the most interesting Mr. Wong said, or how Wong completely digressed from the lesson and still somehow managing to  connect it back to the lesson. We are usually talking about the most outrageous thing Trump has done. They are pulling these ideas out of nowhere, or at least something that makes very little sense.

Second, they need to reconsider this cycle. They think that teens only talk about sex, therefore that is what they want, so that is what they market. As I said before most teens are not consumed by sex. For the most part, teens are actually having normal conversations amongst themselves. Have they considered that by marketing sex they are the ones causing teens to think about sex and talk about it? Have they considered that they are the problem, not teens? They should think that is this what teens want, or is this what we want teens to want? I do not believe that the logic behind these people is correct. I think they need look back over their notes, double check their algorithms that process this data, or just go back to the drawing board because they have it wrong.

Just for reference.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/

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