Gender Stereotypes In The Merchants Of Cool

In today’s media obsessed society, youth is greatly influenced by advertising. For example, Marketing to kids gets more savvy with technologies is how they ,“Online games like Webkinz show ads on the site draw youth to buy the product or just to look at it for ‘money’”. Because this tactic works, the ads are an excellent at make youth to talk about this and be annoyed. In Facts about Marketing to Children, it says, “Children pack 8.5 hours of media a day’, is what the Facts about Marketing to Children says.” Because children are on the media so much it is easy for marketers to advertise and get children to buy the product. “ Anne Lappe says that when her daughter grows up, and goes to a movie, the character might have a soda or fast food.”

Will Rogers once said, “Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.” Targeting youth by advertisements happens in all forms and advertising companies are the only ones getting the profit from it. Advertising affects the life of youths lives in many negative ways because it has skyrocketed health risks, lowers self-esteem and increases money spent by youth.

Thesis statement: With marketers aiming their advertisements more towards teens every day, researchers are looking into how effective and ethical these advertisements really are.

The film, “Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood” takes a closer look at how the negative impact advertising and marketing is having on the children who are the main targeted audience especially because they are easy to manipulate. The United States is a country that cares a lot about consumers. People are around advertisement and marketing all the time in every place they go. In fact, people live to buy, people need and want things constantly and it will never stop. In the American economy consumerism may be a leading role. Most would say the advertisements are a way to promote information about services and products, but in most cases, it involves deception and manipulation. For years now consumerism has been the trademark of the American way of life and now that society has embraced it so fully, it seems that even children are being born and raised with the same mindset. The kids influence their parents buying decicions and they’re the adult consumers of the future.Our bank account might be affected by advertisement, but many adults don’t realize the ways are brain are affected by it. Parents have to teach their kids that many of the things advertise are not good, by not always buying what their kids want. Government regulations need to put a stop to corporations that live, breathe and sell the idea of consumerism to children.

Teenagers have a “... need for independence, rebellion, and personal control,” (Source F). Marketers can use this in many ways. They can use it to their economical advantage by manipulating teenagers into buying their goods. But, PSA’s can really show teenagers the facts and promote good morals. Recent studies look into how advertisements affect adolescents, “... these studies show that social marketing has successfully changed health behavior such as smoking, physical activity, and condom use, as well as behavioral mediators such as knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs related to these behaviors,” (Source F). While it's true that it's easy for teenagers to be manipulated by commercials, a lot of other commercials can be a strong influence in building better lives for them. If people could focus on the pros rather then the cons, then they could see the big picture of marketing to

The Elements of culture in teen culture varies between each teen. Material is one of the largest aspects of teen culture, because teens tend to want a lot of material things. Technology is one of those big material items in teen culture, almost every teen has a phone, tablet, TV, computer, and many other devices. These technical devices are the things that take over a teen’s life that is why it is the largest material. Other items would be things like clothes, makeup, cars, jewelry, shoes, video games, and many other things. Sometimes this is all some teens think about is the material things.

Advertising to teens is nothing new to marketers they have been doing it for so long and they know that teens can be easily influenced by their desires such as merchandise, fashion, and music and they are also the impressionable consumers of tomorrow.

Whispers fly around the hallways, yelling can be heard from classrooms, the lunchroom is in no regards a sanctuary, but rather a social jungle of cliques and cliches. A high school is the perfect example of the decline in morals in America, but that’s a common misconception across many generations. Being a rowdy teen is a part of growing up and discovering who you are. Even though some teenagers can be difficult and exhausting to deal with, it’s a rite of passage and an important part of their childhood. Morals aren’t declining in America, instead teens are going through a series of mistakes that will shape their lives and will develop who they are as a person.

In her article “Selling to Children: The Marketing of Cool” Schor discusses the techniques used by ad makers to manipulate children. She points out that marketers look at consumers to understand what is cool for youth—by tapping hip-hop and rap culture—and the reverse, creating a feedback loop. Also, Schor argues that cool is usually associated with an antiadult sensibility, and thus ads portray children with a blatant adverse attitude towards authority, such as parents and teachers by promoting an antisocial and mischievous behavior. Furthermore, ads are targeting kids using products and messages initially conceived for an older audience—strategy knows as age compression. A perfect example of this new trend is the Victoria’s Secret “Bright

Since the dawn of radio, large corporations have exploited this vulnerability by spending large amounts of money on advertisements aimed at convincing youths and teenagers that they need their products in order to be happy. When successful, these corporations unrealistic expectations of the value of consumer products, as they convince children they will find happiness through obtaining the latest Power Ranger action figure or eating a Big Mac. The graph (Source A) demonstrates how media is targeted at various types of audiences segmented by age, like kids, teens, and adults. It is particularly telling that commercial advertisements about foods are particularly geared towards children. This may be because children are the most impressionable in this area, or this may be because children at that age develop lifelong eating habits. One would expect children to have too little purchasing power to make their own food choices, Benady suggests a possible rationale for this targeting: children have a substantial “pester power” to pressure their

Statistics show that today companies spend nearly $17 billion annually marketing to kids. This paper will explore the effect that advertisements have on the growing mind of a child. It paper will support the view of the video “Consuming Kids” in the context that yes in fact advertising to children is a social problem and that adults should understand the seriousness of this matter; and they should also take steps to help the change the environment that their children are part of in-order to build a healthier future for them. The first section of the paper will take glimpses into early, tween and teen ages of a child and examine the social effects of technology and advertisement. The second section of the paper will discuss the

The PBS video, Merchants of Cool is about the merchant and media outlets that target the teenage population with their estimated $150 billion annual spending power. The video looks at how these merchants, through both pop-culture and teen surveys (i.e. cool hunting), give the impressionable teenage market what they want and what today’s top five enormous companies push them to want. Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Universal Vivendi and AOL/Time Warner are responsible for selling nearly all of youth culture; they are the true “Merchants of Cool”.

            Today, advertisements is an issue that brainwashes the youth and drains the money from their parent’s pockets. Jonathan Rowe, director of the Tomales Bay Institute, and Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, published an article called, “Corporate Marketing Is Responsible for Childrens’ Materialism” in 2006 through Greenhaven Press. Both writers of the article explain the marketing industry in today’s generation, and influence their readers’ thinking about the horrendous outcomes it has on the youth. Rowe and Ruskin’s thesis states that advertisers are frequently able to avoid parents when promoting their merchandises to the children. In result, corrupt marketers undermines the authority for parents, and conquers the children’s confidentiality. After the launch of televisions and the internet, there has been countless of different types of advertisements. The markets’ advertisements tries to appeal to the youth that include the ages of teens and even younger. Rowe and Ruskin used their article to argue that the government and politicians should be more aware of the marketing these days, and how the marketing industry influence the future. Within their article, there are copious examples and situations that they set out for their readers to better understand their argument and reasons. Rowe and Ruskin effectively employs the rhetorical appeals of logos, ethos, and pathos to establish

“The merchant of cool” is 2001’s special documentary of PBS frontline on culture and mass media, which was produced by “Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin”. This documentary explores the heavily dependence of youth on the mass media. This documentary is about the selling and buying of cool. In America mostly consumers of cool are teenagers. In a certain year, hundred billion dollars of their own money spend by the teen agers. While teens influence their parents and fifty billion dollars were additional spend by them. Film studies revealed that, there is relationship among mass media, who frequently sales cool and teenagers. Throughout the film this relationship discussed. Some people affirms that desires and wants of teens expressed by the media. On the other hand, some people believed that, to earn profit, media has created a cool market. Conclusion of this film revealed that many people believed that media and teenagers are in a loop of feedback. It is believed that purpose of this feedback loop has to blend the teen culture and real culture. By blending these two cultures to make a new single culture. No one can determine that which culture will be more influenced. Conglomerates like Viacom, Walt Disney, Vivendi Universal, News Corp and AOL Time Warner, these are some media giants. These media giants own these products and often sold these products to the teenagers. Marketing methods of different companies were studied and researched from these conglomerates throughout this

In "The Merchants of Cool", the relationship between significant media combinations and their teenage clients is analyzed through investigating the diverse strategies commercial ventures use to find and market the following "cool" thing. Commercial ventures keep up what the narrative alludes to as a "criticism circle" with their clients, which is a cyclic, supply-and-request relationship that hazy spots the line in the middle of fiction and reality. It has ended up difficult to tell which side is copying the other: who do the items and patterns that characterize prevalent youth society have a place with? Besides, the sexual and forceful hormone-energized practices on TV and in music characteristic in youths or would they say they are counterfeit