The Authenticity Paradox and The Perils of Youth Marketing
Antonio Lopez
As a veteran of youth counterculture, I'm watching with curiosity the importance of youth voices as a gage for the so-called "real," not in the philosophical sense, but in the "keeping it real" sense. Marketers are not concerned whether or not adults think what they see is "real": it's the skeptical teen audience that is more challenging.
In the critique of the history of advertising it has been said that marketing in its modern form was invented to solve a problem for business: to sell a surplus of products that no one needs. Little did these futurists of behavioral science in the '20s and '30s who established the intellectual foundation of modern advertising imagine that in the future, advertising would develop its own problem: a lack of authenticity.
Few may realize that the US peaked in its industrial production in the mid-1960s, and since then the market has been saturated with such things as toasters and refrigerators. The average household has what it needs. Thus a prime market is the penetration of the youth demographic, people who are yet to furnish houses or buy cars but do have cash and want to spend it on mostly ephemeral things like entertainment. Reaching this coveted group achieves three goals: garner lifetime loyalty to a brand, develop consumer habits, and encourage the purchase of commodities.
In response to this growing need has been the advent of so-called "cool hunters," research agencies that "spy" on youth culture to determine how and what to market to them, and to also regurgitate as quickly as possible any trends that might be out there waiting to explode on the cultural scene. The increasing speed of the cycle of hype and decay in youth culture these days is astonishing. Consequently, within the 24/7-culture rotation of hip, advertisers are struggling about what to do. A recent conference announcement for youth marketers explained the problem succinctly:
"Teens are wired different than any another consumer group. They navigate through media clutter with a heightened 'BS' meter to sniff out hidden advertising agendas. In a post-scarcity media world, there is no shortage of brands or media pipeline channels. Attention is the new scarcity. Loyalty, trust and affinity become the new pipeline. When there is so much choice, what is the new role of earned attention?"
This is not the only instance in which marketers seemed a little starved for the "real." Fresh-Films.com boasts in its on-line advertising "authentic user generated content" and its website features a graphic of a post-it note with "your company logo here" above the photos of fresh-faced youth. Look-Look, the cool hunters made famous in Douglas Rushkoff's Frontline documentary, The Merchants of Cool," states on its Web site,
"Look-Look believes that youth culture has always been a subculture. An uncensored raw voice that demands to be heard. Look-Look wants to share these subcultures with the rest of the world. We want people to be inspired by the creative and brilliant young minds from around the globe that shoot photos, write poems, make art and think. We also want young people to know that there is a home for their collective voice that turns it into a two-way dialogue between our clients and these subcultures."
Cool hunters offer "field correspondents," "journalists," and "ethnographic research," all a strange new taxonomy that combines anthropology, journalism and marketing. The knee-jerk reaction would be to assume that these are nefarious companies that are out to undermine youth culture by couching their practices in New Agey terms of empowerment. The other backlash (coming from both the Right and Left) is to assume that today's youth are "narcissistic."
But I like to think of this situation as a leverage point. If it's true that teens are skeptical of what is being offered to them, it's also not surprising that they are creating their own media on a scale never experienced, due largely to the advent of social network spaces like MySpace and Facebook, and the prevalence of free media production tools. When a kid can make a video with her cell phone and edit it into a clip and instantaneously upload it to an audience of millions, this is an amazing feat.
It's no wonder that marketers are starting to use Internet aesthetics as part of their marketing, as Pepsi did when it partnered with Yahoo to make a site of video clips that mimic vlogging ala Rocketboom and YouTube. Not surprisingly, the big trend of the 2007 Super Bowl was "user generated" commercials. The results were not interesting, but the novelty of user created ads was the marketing meme of choice. It was meant to represent a kind of consumer democracy, or triumph of the viewer, but there was little remarkable. A better example was when Chevy invited people to remix their Tahoe commercial on the Web. What resulted was a hilarious rebellion that attacked the concept entirely and turned Tahoe ads into anti-SUV diatribes.
This is walking the razor's edge of "authenticity." Marketers want to claim the aesthetic of the "real," but their intentions don't fulfill the promise. To me this means there is a leverage point: the potential for youth media to hack this desire for authenticity. There will always be an eternal thirst for the "real" – real friends, real relationships, real love. That marketers could pretend otherwise is grandiose self deception. But search they will, on and on, for that magic elixir that advertising will never provide: a truly authentic relationship with the world.
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Volvo -- Boxy, but nice!
Truth in advertising is an oxymoron! And good thing too! Otherwise, universal enlightenment would create mass satisfaction... and who needs that, right?
What?
Look, it's New Years day, and I have nothing better to do with my time, okay?
Happy New Year, Everyone!
Cool hunting
Propaganda Anonymous
I met a cool hunter back in the day. She asked me to come in and speak with a focus group. I showed up late, and didn't get into the room. This cat gave me $100 just for showing up! That was cool.
My intention was to try and subvert the focus group somehow. Talk about all this absurdist shit. This was before Rushkoff dropped his 'Merchants of Cool' doc. So I didn't know what I might've been walking into. The focus group stuff seems to be on-lock. It's pretty crazy.
But that grasping for what is 'cool' so it can be mirrored back towards young consumers for a price seems like it will accelerate waaaay more Before the shit breaks down. It's happening with Myspace(and I think Antonio you touch on that)
Cool-in-a-box is by definition un-cool
As someone who has advised and assisted Best Buy, Pizza Hut, Gamestop and Microsoft in their online marketing strategies, I probably qualify as one of the cool hunters you're talking about here. I can honestly say that most attempts at manufacturing cool falls flat while honesty and a great product always sell. This is true for all ages and all times. Most "youth marketing" is simply crunching the data and generating one-to-one offers as much as possible. Discussions of cool are usually limited to the most popular product at the moment and how to feature that with some neo-stylized artwork. As a practical matter, the promotions incorporating user-generated content or something silly like Subservient Chicken are a very small percentage of corporate marketing dollars spent. Personalization technology is the biggest driver in marketing today.
But this brings up another issue. Greater and greater personalization will continue to fragment society, making it harder to agree on a common social project. As the youth culture embraces the freedom of personal music choices, personal web pages, personal videos, personal styles and personal philosophies, what mission fills the loss of continuity and community? What unites the latest generations in a common project for the betterment of mankind? Or can they unite at all in the face of increasing personalization and technical vulnerability to corporations, media and the government?
personalization
Postfuture consumerism
My last company (founded in 1999) was named "Postfuture" as a cool tip-of-the-hat to whatever would happen after 2000. Rich-media ads and personalized product recommendations seemed more useful and less demeaning than shotgun ads. Everyone wanted to find a way to create a business on the web and we thought we could help. Even though Y2K was a joke, 9/11 delivered on the hype forcing savvy dot-com marketers to seek jobs with large corporations. As a direct result, we now live in a totally different postfuture than the one any of us could envision in 1999. Now, the ideals of a free Internet and one-to-one marketing have the real potential to be used to extend consumer consumption beyond available consumer credit, enslaving our youth culture. Here's how...
Imagine. You get free wireless Internet service and email if you accept embedded ads. Then you get a free car if you accept interstitials on your A/V system whenever you start it up. Then you get free appliances with embedded Internet displays by accepting consumer product ads. Then you get a free house by accepting ads in the walls and replacement commercials on your TV. Before long, your American dream is supported and engineered by the corporations, continually optimized by constant surveillance. The marketers no longer need to worry about commercial filtering or TIVO - they own you. Your life becomes an asset on their balance sheet to be bought and sold. All of your income can now go towards purchasing the products they recommend for you.
Plugging your eyes and ears with entertainment is the only escape, so personal lifestyle becomes increasingly virtual to replace the vacuous advertising supported home. Cool becomes how you dress your imaginary avatars and hang out at your imaginary clubs. The "scene" becomes everyone sitting at home, ads blazing all around, wearing a helmut and gloves that take you anywhere you want to go. Only problem is there are virtual billboards and virtual sales agents in the virtual world to sell you something else. Things that enhance your virtual lifestyle, such as personalized music, movies and games. But if you don't have the money, no problem because they too are ad supported.
Does this sound too extreme to ever become real? Well, this dark postfuture is more real today than ever, driven by better ad filtering technology and increasingly fragmented media channels. Marketers are faced with the impossible challenge of constantly rising revenue goals and are seeking a more sustainable growth path. All the while, their customers are becoming increasingly isolated and disinterested. One possible direction is to plug into the youth culture and enable a virtualized, personalized and fully analyzed American bling dream beyond anyone's ability to pay for it. This could very well be Web 3.0.
like cool and all that jazz
as an aside, take the word cool, and how did this word come to be used like a Warhol reproduction? I recall that surrealism was blamed for modern advertisement techniques, is nothing sacred? So that brings me to what is authentic, "cool" although i believe the word cool has other further meanings, connotations, and other "authentic" use that sort of moves in and out of the culture, and the overlords of "commodity festishism".
So the beatniks, did not so much make cool, they were looking to cool it, to look for the essence of cool, and keep it alive. When Marlon Brando said to the uncool question, "what are you rebeling against?" ...and he answers..."What have you got?" We are art here, cool is born.As a teenager i had little idea of what was cool, but i already was being swept up in some of the trends, the kind of shoes, the type of shirt the surfer kids were into, or not just surfer.But in those days you could be totally cool just wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans.When the whole hippie moment happened along, you could find the coolest rags at the salvation army as-is-lot or store.The punks were handy with rags and torn things.Now you can buy it at any Mall.Not cool. maybe hot. I will tell you what is really not cool.But new iMac is.
The thing about Poetry is...Rumi "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.I will meet you there".... you could say beyond Gap and Pepsi, there is Cool! The writing on the wall cannot be made into a consumer product.I said that.So cool.
I envision a world that(out) grows out of kids in a remote African village learning some phrase from MTV.If there were a total revolution in consciousness.
because something really needs to be cool now.
On cool
The thing about Poetry is...Rumi "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.I will meet you there".... you could say beyond Gap and Pepsi, there is Cool! The writing on the wall cannot be made into a consumer product.I said that.So cool.
Beautifully stated!
Cool actually does have a specific history: it is the temperament of capitalism. Sociologists call it the "post-Fordist" face. Fordism was the practice of the factory. Ford was strongly against any show of emotion in the workplace, this is why he argued that workers should have leisure time; he wanted them to get their ya-yas out at the movie theater on the weekend, not on the factory floor where it could turn into organizing.
The mirrorshade image of cool comes after WWII. In a sense it could probably be argued that it was an unconscious coping mechanism for the post-traumatic stress of the war, a way to keep emotional distance from the reality of what happened. The Beats, in dialog with Capitalist culture probably regurgitated that in a process of reverse osmosis.
As we have transitioned into the knowledge work economy, the post-Fordist face is now expressed as irony, a technque for dealing with heavy things without being heavy. All this is by way of saying that cool is a kind of distraction, emotional horizon line where the contradictions of capitalism are sorted out into some kind of harmony, or disharmony as was the case with punk.
cool co-opted
I agree, from a kind of Herbert Marcuse perspective.
I was also thinking about the meaning of cool, in other cultural contexts. But, so much in this society is so totally not cool.No matter how much they try to put on a perfumed magazine page mask.
Post Fordist, indeed... harmony, disharmony, harmonics. the assmembly line amusement factory.
and now can we hear the cool echo ricochet ding inside the empty factory?
authenticity
brand vs. quality
Brand and Product
What I would say is that the brand and the qualities of a product are one and the same. The way a smart company like Apple approaches product development is intimately tied into their strong brand. The Ipod is a physical manifestation of Apple's brand-cool, simple design, quality, and innovative technology. If Apple made a toothbrush or a bicycle, i would expect it to be much the same. I agree with you, giving marketing all the credit for Ipod's success among the young and hip is wrongheaded. But Apple, and Ipod's, success is totally based on a strong brand. In my opinion, most companies handle product development and branding completely seperately, and that is entirely the wrong approach. (Good examples of this are Detroit automakers.) In the case of marketing to subcultures, this creates the phenomena we see of a "hip costume" being wrapped around a product that has not necessarily been designed with the subculture in mind, and then falling flat when it tries to get credibility.
Brand reflects corporate philosophy
cool etc
great article and comments.
the question that comes up for me is how to utilize this type of understanding to push the logic of the marketing system toward sustainability and social change (reducing gross inequity, environmental and social justice, etc). Analysis is always useful but then what tools do the outside cultural creators have that can drive the system in a new direction? The sad aspect of punk - and why it fit in to contemporary culture without a problem - was its nihilistic rejection of working to change the system - this a result to the failure of the 60s to deliver on its tangerine dreams.
What some perceive as the breakdown of old categories is an opportunity to change the cultural dialogue and social direction, but this opportunity must be strategically recognized and tactically seized. That would really be "cool."
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Rebirth of cool
Punk
Daniel, I'm not sure the nihilism of the punk scene came out of the 1960's inability to deliver on its tangerine dreams (even though this is a great sound bite). Reason I say this is I recall it starting in the UK with racist skinheads around 1980. Children of the 60's were in their late 20's at that time and had yet to gain power to effect any change on the system (though they had at least been a force in massive anti-war and civil rights protests).
I have always viewed the punk movement as a rebellion against the establishment, which during the 1980's was the aging hippy movement. Love became uncool, replaced by hate, coke and greed. The nihilistic theme was then embraced by the inner urban set with gangsta rap and extreme materialism. Smiles were replaced by guns. Bright colors were replaced by dull grunge and bagginess. All this was in full swing by the end of the 80's when most boomers were still in their 30's and not yet able to wrest political control from the paranoid WWII generation.
I think nihilism has been alive and well for a very long time, kept alive in western religion and mainstream science. Fortunately, there appears a rising current fueled by the medium we are using right now to overcome an increasing loss of political control due to [fill in the blank]. This medium is also the undoing of mass marketing's control over the consumer, as proven by recent dramatic drops in the revenues and stock values of leading direct marketing companies. Actually, I see an unprecedented teaming up of boomers, Xers, Yers and soon Millennials in a common project to make things better. The question is how entrenched are the forces against change?
Punk - Grunge - Diapheneity
As someone who negotiated adolescence through the lens of Nevermind, by Nirvana, and Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins I felt the whole grunge scene was a generation admitting to itself that it felt sick. Despite all of the luxuries, at its core western civilization was a howl of nihilism, and grunge was the way young people expressed that feeling. Grunge wasn't nihilistic, it was the birth cry of something that sought new life elsewhere. It was anti-nihilism ultimately, in that it struk against the shiny happy people conformity ethic and expressed what was hurting... At least, thats how it felt to me age 14. Perhaps being from the UK I was infected by the "second summer of love" vibe, Stone Roses, Acid House...
It could be argued that it was all part of an inevitable progression. Traditionally, you heal what hurts by singing to it. Punk located the wound, became grunge and allowed itself to weep (see maybe Disarm by Smashing Pumpkins). This was a move toward a transparency, or diapheneity and a union of thought and action that is anathema to the mainstream. I may be biased, but it seems to me that grunge and the new age were wedded, and hit the mainstream together. Am I mistaken in seeing them come to maturity in the entheogenic shamanism scene? Ayahausca's pretty grungy ;-)
Anyway, this is a very interesting article and comments which I am following with interest. Corporate mediated authenticity certainly seems to be an insurmountable paradox to me, so far.
Generation-free
Staying on topic, I just haven't seen companies do much more than segment their audience and try to target their products to the people who seem to want them most. While there are always highbrow discussions about marketing tactics at the tradeshows and seminars, the reality back at the office is pretty mundane. The people who make the decisions are just not very sophisticated and usually go with the meat and potatoes approach while minimizing their risk.
As for healing what is hurt, I agree that catharsis is good. But, the only thing that really counts is leading by example. Which should we follow - the example of an idealist upbeat person ready to work their butt off to change the world or a defeated self-absorbed person wanting to tell you how unhappy they are? I'm not talking generations here, only individuals and groups of people that want to work together to effect positive change.
Authentic Optimism
"Which should we follow - the example of an idealist upbeat person ready to work their butt off to change the world or a defeated self-absorbed person wanting to tell you how unhappy they are?"
To my mind, the self absorbed, defeated person has begun the alchemical process of turning inward, and transmuting the base matter of egocentric being into the gold of an ego-free being. Recognising the pain, the inner fragmentation that our nihilistic and narcissistic culture encourages is essential. If your idealist has gone through this process and emerged hale, whole and hearty, then yes, I'd hold him up as an example. But if he is simply concerned to toe the party line of optimism, then as an exemplar he becomes a risky proposition. Authentic optimism is something that must be earned, like gnosis - I don't think it can really be put on like a cool hat. Authentic optimism is infectious, but put on optimism is a real turn off, and belongs to the kind of idealist whose imagination presents an incomplete map of the terrain.
Agreed
From an old punk
In my article on Dharma Punx I wrote a bit about what happened to punk on a spiritual level (you can read it here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/823), but in short, I think we were a mirror and a consequence of the 1960s. In 1981 when I got into punk in Los Angeles, the attitude was that the hippies had failed, Reagan was in power, and that nuclear annihilation hung over our heads. Additionally, we were reacting to the over-the-top stadium rock ethos of the '70s. I suppose that what we wanted was something organic instead of industrialized. Punk ate itself mostly due to drugs and alcohol. We had become an alternative tribe from dysfunctional lives: therapy cults, substance and sexual abuse, a perception of no future prospects for a good life, etc. There were many punks that were also political activists. The anti-nuke and Central American solidarity movement was full of punks.
But I think punk in LA was much different than punk in England. Whereas British punks could really protest their socioeconomic plight, LA punks were more middle class and suburban. But in the case of the LA scene, there was a sense that suburban life was a sham. If you want to see the origins of punk in LA, I suggest watching the documentary Dogtown and Z Boys. I think punk arose from skate culture, and that skate culture was a way of surfing the bullshit reality that was LA at the time. Finally, I believe ultimately punk was the last gasp of Dada, finishing and killing what was started back in the day.
Yes...
Hippipunkoramagrungegangsta!
Propaganda Anonymous
Interesting comments concerning cultural musical movements over the past 30 years.
When Daniel speaks about "Punk's" nihilistic tendencies that left very little to action, I concede to some of that.
However, Let's not forget the most seminal Punk stars Jonny Rotten and Joe Strummer. Strummer especially, that man was ALL about postive action.
And about 'Punk' as more a philosophical approach towards their world at the time. It was the birth ot the Neo-liberal agenda (1973) being implemented in England and abroad.
Strummer and Rotten both said "Punk" was NOT about a Fashion or even a Music, per se. It was an ATTITUDE about getting to the heart of every matter. And fucking doing something about it. Strummer nearly always did something about it.
Now in addressing Richard's comment about 'Gangsta Rap' Guns and Butta. The birth of Gangsta Rap being Ice-T, Scholly-D, Kool G Rap, and NWA.
Sure there was a lot of crazy shit being said. But there's been a lot of fucked shit happened to the African American culture for years on end.
I'm not completely condoning everything these cats said, Personally, Rakim I think is more 'positive' but still I steer clear of placing 'blame' on some musical movements 'failed'. Music comes from a cultural contexts I believe, and play their parts. And some NWA fucking rocks anyway.
As far as I see the Grunge movement. there was a whole hell of a lot of integrity behind the birth of that music. The scene in Seattle seems super authentic to me.
What became known as 'Grunge' on lots of MTV stuff, seems to have been some co-opted mess. The cultural vultures swooped in and sought to turn a quick buck. They picked up some starving artists and kids whose socio-political acumen wasn't too developed and went to work.
This seems to be THE Struggle in most 20th century music movements in the US and England.
'Corporate 'Co-opting' has increased along side Neo-liberal greed for more markets, and has infected youth culture and beyond.
Today, we are faced with Global Climate Change possibly acting way quicker than projections can project. So yeah, maybe a new approach besides 'Up Against The Wall MotherFucker' need to be born.
But this new approach, as I see, should still have the capability to draw clear distinct boundaries of 'That's you over there complicitly following the status quo' and 'this is me and my friends doin some cool shit. Do you want in or what'
That's the EDGE of all this music. But I am somewhat flexible on the topic of boundaries within a world of dissolving boundaries. Maybe it's an energetic vibration thing. As KRS-ONE sez, "You must learn" And maybe that teaching can be done in the coolest way possible.
makin like leaps
but i wonder how you see the punk scene(i'm not just talking about the music and the famous examples, but also the kid on the street with the Doc martins and the mohawk, ect.)as a Dada final?
As i know it, Dada put an end to itself, even as it was doing some of its guerrilla theater flash happenings. Surrealism was born out of its ashes, the phoenix of complete occultation.
I don't remember any punks sayin they were the logical extention of the Dadaists! but i can see the stretch of your thought, and it needs perhaps some more thought.
I do see the stretch to some kid that had a dad that was into meditation, seeing a way out of the punked punk scene, i see a lot of punky kids making a spiritual leap because the whole hippie movement in the beginning had that impulse, the connection with going back to natural flows, you can only bang your head to two chords so long, but you can add the spirit chord.
the dada chord
the situation and yippies become yuppies
when i was say 19, i wanted to be a revolutionary, i got kinda spun out, so i came to the realization that the revolution was on the inner planes.Because Jim Morrision said: "they got the guns, and we got the numbers"
maybe the numbers are reaching some kind of 2012 we need to keep pushing the situation, the anarchy, and the more surreal then surreal.And the Dada Buddha is in our hearts. I liked GOD BLESS THE QUEEN! or whatever that was.
"culture jamming"
I think your point that the rebellion of punk (and all currents leading in and out) no longer has the ability to jam culture is correct. Before anyone can begin to start a new trend, the marketers pick it up and make it part of the thing you're trying to jam. Technology and media has made this all possible. The Internet is the input and mass media is the output. There is nothing left to short circuit - nothing too bizarre and shocking, except perhaps cutting onesself and opening fire in a mall, left to do.
Yeah!!! We've reached perfect nihilism. FINALLY. And, we managed to export it to the middle east where there are plenty of young people willing to show us how it's done. Does horrible outrageousness wrap around to sweet beauty after this? That's what Terry Gilliam told me once. Get enough blood, gore and guts coming out and it becomes funny. Maybe this is what 2012 is really about. The media would never broadcast love and happiness because they don't think it sells. The next rebellion has to be love - just as it was in the 60's.
what attention span?
It seems we are talking about moments when our perceptions expanded, not the loss of attention spans, and all the in between happening, that sorta just does, like John Lennon said about reality being what happens when you make plans, But as far as the nihilism and the reaction or reflection there of.As Daniel asks about the tools we have.It seems that some people for some time now have been attempting to focus our attention enough to have some notions as to how to begin to materalize the collective intelligence on moving consciousness in a more one pointed multidirectional omnipotent directions, For instance my understanding of Nietzsche is that he was not a nihilist, but as he focused on the nihilism around him and held a mirror up to it he called "art" people that were perplexed by him called him a nihilist.I agree that punk was a reaction or a bastardization of the 60's movement that sort of exploded on the scene.There are a lot off mud flinging about just what happened, why? was the whole "hippie" moment merely a pipe dream, and was put to rest in Haight Ashbury when the hard drugs came on the scene?
I recall meeting a lady that said that she knew Janis Joplin, she said that Janis had some property that she bought in the Rocky mountians that she was going to give to a bunch of hippies, but after she died the property was confiscated.The lady thought Janis was murdered.I have no way to know if this was true, but it does peek the attention a bit.I think we need to see the differences between the alternate movements, the counter culture, the underground, the sparks lit at Gratefull dead concerts, the symbols used by chaos magic, Terence in a dialogue with the plant. The writing on the organic light wall.Exactly "nihilism" is the "dead God" of everything that Marx spoke to when his miss quoted comment about the opiate of religion, and or the logo of Capital.As far as cool goes i still think Gilligan is cool, i mean Maynard G. Crebs, but darn it all, "you can't be too cool when the man is around" i quote myself.I donno are CHE t-shirts cool? are Charles Manson T-shirts? another thing about Punk is the Anarchy, and we know anarchy with a big A has gotten a bum rap.Rapper? the bubble gum has been chewed, kids. forget crackin yer bubble.Its been cosmic cracked.
YES! said Nietzsche, and yes to be cool we need to cool things, keepin it cool.And an occasional mad bearded guy on a corner with a sign " ban the Bomb"
or Bomb the Ban? roll on deoderant.You know that stuff that stinks like aluminum.