Here's one reason: Marketers! Let me try to explain...
“It slices! It dices! It will mow your lawn or give your toddler his first haircut! And look…the blade never gets dull!”
You’ve probably seen them on TV; sweaty, loud, energetic salesmen trying hard to convince you that for just 5 payments of $19.99 your wildest dreams can come true. But what are they selling? Oh yeah, that’s right, steak knives! Do you think that you can trust this guy? Is he telling the truth, or is he getting paid to make you think that he is telling the truth?
Did you know that there are people who get paid to convince you that the most important thing about you is whether or not you are a cool person? They are called “marketers.” They work for huge corporations and study you like lab rats in order to see how they can attract you to their products and make money off of you. And many of you actually listen to them.
You’ve probably seen them on TV; sweaty, loud, energetic salesmen trying hard to convince you that for just 5 payments of $19.99 your wildest dreams can come true. But what are they selling? Oh yeah, that’s right, steak knives! Do you think that you can trust this guy? Is he telling the truth, or is he getting paid to make you think that he is telling the truth?
Did you know that there are people who get paid to convince you that the most important thing about you is whether or not you are a cool person? They are called “marketers.” They work for huge corporations and study you like lab rats in order to see how they can attract you to their products and make money off of you. And many of you actually listen to them.
Think about it. What do you think is cool? I mean, where do you shop for clothes? What kind of music do you listen to? What do you like to do in your free time? What kind of hair style do you prefer? What kind of movies do you like to watch? For you guys, what kind of girl would you like to date? How about you girls, what kind of guy would you love to be seen with in public?
And what do you think of your parents? Do you think they are cool? Do you like to be seen with them in public? Do you like to spend your Friday nights with them? Why not? What do you like to do on a Friday night anyway? How about your teachers; do you like them? Are they cool? Is your school’s dress code cool? Or maybe you attend a school without a dress code; that’s pretty cool, huh?
Who decides what is cool? And who decided that you should care about what is cool in the first place?
I challenge you to think hard about these questions. What is cool in your world? Who is cool to you? More than that though, why do you think certain things are cool and certain things are not? Where did you learn how to sort through all of that? Who tells you what is cool and what isn’t? How do you decide what is actually cool?
And what do you think of your parents? Do you think they are cool? Do you like to be seen with them in public? Do you like to spend your Friday nights with them? Why not? What do you like to do on a Friday night anyway? How about your teachers; do you like them? Are they cool? Is your school’s dress code cool? Or maybe you attend a school without a dress code; that’s pretty cool, huh?
Who decides what is cool? And who decided that you should care about what is cool in the first place?
I challenge you to think hard about these questions. What is cool in your world? Who is cool to you? More than that though, why do you think certain things are cool and certain things are not? Where did you learn how to sort through all of that? Who tells you what is cool and what isn’t? How do you decide what is actually cool?
I assume that some of you might answer that question by saying that it has to do with who you were made to be. In the same way that I have always preferred pizza over sauerkraut, you prefer buying low rise boot cut jeans at Aeropostale or The Buckle as opposed to wearing your grandmother’s soft cotton denim pants with elastic in the waist and ankles; or as Saturday Night Live forever dubbed them; “Mom Jeans.” Perhaps there is some truth to that, but who told us that Mom Jeans aren’t cool and never were? Where did we get that?
Now, for the record I agree that Mom Jeans are not cool. But why are we in agreement on this? Why are Americans in widespread agreement that soft cotton denim pants with elastic in the waist and ankles are not cool and never were? I want to suggest to you that it has much more to do with MTV than your DNA.
Let me peel back the curtain a little bit for you to see the way that cool is defined and developed here in 21st century America.
They’re called “cool hunters”; grown adults who during their teen years served as the trendsetters of their generation. They know what it’s like to be the cool kids, because at one time they were the cool kids. Big companies hire them to come to your schools and the malls where you hang out and the places you like to go to have fun so that they can study you to find out what you like and don’t like, what you are interested in, what kind of clothes you like, what your dating relationships are like, and a million other things about you.
Actually, that’s not completely true. The only ones they really care about getting to know are those that you consider to be cool.
These cool hunters then go back to their companies to report what they found out about the trendsetters in your groups. But why? Not so that their companies can then develop products that you like and might very well buy, but so that they can know how to influence you through their advertising to buy the products that they have already developed, whether you liked them beforehand or not. And guess what? It works, and they make billions doing it.
They pay large groups of your peers to attend the concerts of bands on their record labels, and then televise the action for you to see. All you see is a big group of people just like you rocking out to a band you’ve only heard of once, but having so much fun that it makes you want to go out and buy the band’s CD. The result: The band and the record company get paid, because they have convinced you that their band is cool.
These same companies take what they’ve learned about the trendsetters in your groups, and then create TV shows with characters that you can relate to, doing things that you would never think about doing and talking about things that you’ve never even heard of. “Why”, you ask? So that you’ll watch the show of course, after all, who wants to watch a TV show about their own life? How boring is that! The result: After watching these people you can relate to do things that at one time you never even thought about doing, you start thinking about doing them, and eventually for many people, those thoughts lead to very similar actions.
Let me peel back the curtain a little bit for you to see the way that cool is defined and developed here in 21st century America.
They’re called “cool hunters”; grown adults who during their teen years served as the trendsetters of their generation. They know what it’s like to be the cool kids, because at one time they were the cool kids. Big companies hire them to come to your schools and the malls where you hang out and the places you like to go to have fun so that they can study you to find out what you like and don’t like, what you are interested in, what kind of clothes you like, what your dating relationships are like, and a million other things about you.
Actually, that’s not completely true. The only ones they really care about getting to know are those that you consider to be cool.
These cool hunters then go back to their companies to report what they found out about the trendsetters in your groups. But why? Not so that their companies can then develop products that you like and might very well buy, but so that they can know how to influence you through their advertising to buy the products that they have already developed, whether you liked them beforehand or not. And guess what? It works, and they make billions doing it.
They pay large groups of your peers to attend the concerts of bands on their record labels, and then televise the action for you to see. All you see is a big group of people just like you rocking out to a band you’ve only heard of once, but having so much fun that it makes you want to go out and buy the band’s CD. The result: The band and the record company get paid, because they have convinced you that their band is cool.
These same companies take what they’ve learned about the trendsetters in your groups, and then create TV shows with characters that you can relate to, doing things that you would never think about doing and talking about things that you’ve never even heard of. “Why”, you ask? So that you’ll watch the show of course, after all, who wants to watch a TV show about their own life? How boring is that! The result: After watching these people you can relate to do things that at one time you never even thought about doing, you start thinking about doing them, and eventually for many people, those thoughts lead to very similar actions.
This is the way cool is defined and developed in our day. You live. They observe. They advertise. You change. And you better believe that your changes are being observed and new advertisements will surely come from those observations, which means you will continue to change if you continue to allow corporate America to tell you what is cool. This is why the things that were cool yesterday are not cool today, and the things that are cool today will not be cool tomorrow; one of the big reasons why our world is changing so rapidly.
But please hear me out on this. They do not care about you! They do not care about what you wear or what you say or what you do with your life, and they do not care about the consequences you might face for bowing down to this god called “cool”. They don’t even really care about the things you like and don’t like. The only reason they want to know what you like and what you don’t is so that they can sell you something that you wouldn’t like unless they told you that you should like it, which is exactly what they do.
In other words, they are using you. They are ones who are the most responsible for the idea that you should care about being cool. They are the ones telling you that you should care. But they are not telling you because they genuinely believe it, or because they think you will be better people for it, but because you put dinner on their tables, BMWs in their garages, and Armani suits on their backs.
Will you let them continue to use you to bring about change?



