Dear FRONTLINE,
I am watching your show on the targeting of teens in advertising. I am a 16 year old and am VERY aware of the advertising methods out there.
I just want frontline, and the world to know, that they aren't everyone, and there are a lot of teenagers out there, like me, that don't fall for cool.
My friends and I are a hundred times more likely to go for an ad we think is creative or smart, than an ad that is obviously ment for us. We, the "uncool" group of teenagers, know what advertising is, how it works and most importantly, the control this generation has over it. There have been certain commercials where I have gone out and bought the product, consciously knowing I was doing it because I liked the ad and wanted to support a company that was smart enough to NOT use "cool" to sell commercials such as the snickers pre-election commercials involving a man debating to a voting booth. Cool may sell to a lot, but clever smells too. We know our power.
Amanda Keener
Duluth, MN
Dear FRONTLINE,
I enjoyed your program very much. I have a few thoughts.
First, corporations can't kill meaningful art/culture by using it to sell a product. Great paintings and great music have been used to sell all types of products without denigrating the value of the works. Great art will remain while the clowns in clown faces will be forgotten.
Second, it seems to me that all institutions have used art/culture to reassert their power. Bach's music was for the church, renaissance artists painted for their patrons etc...
The real difference and danger is that capitalist institutions remain in power by getting people to buy things, and they want people to do so at a younger and younger age so that they remain life-long and loyal consumers.
The message to teens and adults should be that buying a product can never be a fulfilling form of self-expression.
michael broudo
NY, NY
Dear FRONTLINE,
As an high school educator, and one who is only a few years from the "teen" years, I'd like to thank your program... It gives an accurate look as to what is presented to teenagers and how many teenagers reflect that culture. A sad culture at that. Any sense of one's true identity is a hard concept many teenagers, along with numerous adults, never attain. .
Being an individual, originality, and creativity in many cases has been replaced by apathy and conformity. And conforming to the so called norms of "sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll", we need to question how much of a rebellion is it? Are you truly rebelling by doing what everyone else is doing? Or does true rebellion remain in uplifting and upholding the morality the teenage culture is called, by advertisers, to rebel against? Who is rebelling in today's society, the one who does right or the one who does wrong?
North Arlington, NJ
Dear FRONTLINE,
Thank you!
It is about time we counteracted this media marketing movement with programming that places a mirror in front of itself and forces us to question that which has now become the norm.
I agree with another of your viewers that there will always be those teens who rebel against the spoon-fed culture they are bombarded with, who are independent thinkers and consumers,. However, now more than ever teens are being sqeezed into an extremely narrow field of what is considered cool, acceptable, an aspiration or ambition,. And this marketing media loop does nothing but contribute to this narrowing.
...It is interesting that most of your teen viewers did not approve of the program, and felt threatened by it. Apparently some of them are defensive about enjoying pop-culture to the point where they will deny their participation. I think many of them missed the point: many parents neglect their children and expect social culture to replace their presence.
This show was a wake-up call to those adults who think TV will baby sit their kids, and to those teens who are being manipulated blindly. It clearly showed that today's teens are TIRED of being force-fed and brain washed and that is exactly why there is always a surge of the anti-mainstream.
NYC, NY
Dear FRONTLINE,
I found the Frontline episode compelling and there were two things that immediately came to my mind while watching:
1. It seems that in many communities, the media are the only people who actually spend time to talk to teenagers. Until more families and communities are willing and able to find time to spend with kids of all ages -- including teenagers, the sad cycle you portray will continue. More of the adult community needs to be listening to the teens, not just those who are trying to make money from them.
2. If you'll notice, business leaders are the ones who have been out front in support of raising 'standards' of achievement for students in schools. When really they mean they just want to test the kids more. Yet at the same time, the corporate america that is responsible for media, marketing and music seem to set no standard too low for themselves or for the kids they are marketing to. Do they not realize that these are the same people who are students in our schools?
New York, New York
Dear FRONTLINE,
As a sophmore in high school, I have to disagree with Frontline's assessment on the amount of impact the media has on teens today. I believe that people exaggerate and dramatize the media's influence on adolescents.
As our society grows there are more and more types of people sporting their own styles, thus forcing people to accept difference. I must admit that there are those few teens who are impressionable and need to do the fashionable thing, but I see a fad of students breaking away from this pattern.
Marisssa Sharpe
Bend, Oregon
Dear FRONTLINE,
I watched your presentation of "Merchants of Cool," with a great deal of interest, being an adverting executive engaged in what we call "Strategic Planning." I execute many of the techniques that you profiled on a daily basis.
While I found the profile to be an interesting and fairly thought provoking commentary on my profession, I would like to offer a counterpoint to your thesis.
Mr. Rushkoff ponders the feedback loop between teens and advertising, and ultimately and inevitably comes to the conclusion that the loop begins with advertising. It must be said that everyone in my industry would most likely contend that we can only follow what we study.
I only wish it were as easy as Mr. Rushkoff makes it seem. The problem with his view is that he only looks at the successes of cool hunting. For every Sprite that has found the right circumstances, timing, funding, and luck, there are 50 other soft drinks that have tried to use the same strategy, but failed.
Advertisers are nowhere near as clever as they seem on the program. Even with all the ethnographic fieldwork and quantitative studies we have at our disposal, the best we can do is guess. There is no science involved, only showmanship and rhetoric. But thanks for making us look so smart!
-Matt Herrmann
Matt Herrmann
New York, NY
Dear FRONTLINE,
I know it's impossible to cover the entire teen cultural landscape, but to present teens as a bleak monolith that only responds to corporate button-pushing and manipulation is wrong.
The rave scene, for example, is a national subculture that has developed and progressed entirely independently from corporate promotion. It is a culture that holds creativity, independence, do-it-yourself mentality and unity at its core values, and is rapidly generating new ideas of art and music. And it's population is overwhelmingly teenaged.
Rushkoff himself wrote a novel about this scene -- I'm surprised he didn't at least give it lip service as an alternative to the 'mooks and midriffs' he's so fascinated by.
Mike Gwertzman
New York, NY
Dear FRONTLINE,
Excellent report, although it should have been renamed "The Bloodsuckers."
While Rushkoff, et al, certainly put a spotlight on how marketers struggle to keep their jobs, it is most plausible that the true movers and shakers in the teen sector aren't telling any of us what they're doing, refusing to even admit they're doing anything! All the while MTV puts that stooge Carson Daly on the front line to tell us all about it, Doin' the Dew, while the emerging underground drinks Mr. Pibb.
Fresca Baby
NYC, NY
Dear FRONTLINE,
I found this episode of Frontline to be deeply disturbing and profoundly interesting. Much of what was addressed is an issue that has been occurring since the early 90s, when Viacom, Time Warner et al, began seeking out alternative cultures and using them as a commodity for all of the young demographic.
Grunge in particular. That was a fledgling fringe culture that was appropriated and milked, ulimately ending in its demise and the demise of its apprehensive frontman. There were similar occurences before with jazz, hippie culture, punk, and definately with rap. What is poignant about today and the quest for cool, is that these forms of expression do not have a chance to grow and produce as a subculture before its snatched up by the marketing firms. Perhaps the Internet is a way around it?
Alba Morales
Brooklyn, NY
Dear FRONTLINE,
... a very subtle documentary with a real warning message!
I am an International Marketing Manager and after watching your show, I can now clearly conceptualize the breakdown of personal values and the calculated desensitization of newly forming consciences young and old kids for money. I grew uncomfortable and focused during your presentatio ,,,, Adult executives want OUR CHILDREN'S actually our money at the cost of their souls.
... As parents this is another wake up call to get involved in our children's lives and heighten our need to make our children and families the priority over money and almost anything else...
AJ King
Detroit, MI
Dear FRONTLINE,
... thought provoking and enlightening. I think that it could be a useful resource for introducing adolescents and young adults to social and cultural analysis. ...
Granted, there is plenty of exploitative marketing in popular media directed at adolecents, but the same practices are at work in society at large. Think about "Must See TV" or shameless political advertising. These are pre-packaged representations of culture that sell us irony and cynicism, as well as informing us of how to style our hair and for which candidate to vote.
There seems to be at least as broad a diversity of voices in youth culture these days as, for example, can be found in the popular news media. Kids might identify with the heterosexist, misogynistic message of ICP, but the same "machine" brings others kids the socially progressive ideas reflected in the lyrics of Rage Against the Machine they certainly don't recieve radical neo-marxist perspectives on Dateline or 20/20.
Perhaps we should look closely for substantive meaning of social messages for ourselves, through the critical lens of self-scrutiny. While you might quote Pink Floyd at the end of the program, you might also quote The Who, because in my opinion, "the kids are alright".
Alexander Burton
Poughkeepsie, New York
Dear FRONTLINE,
The program and web material was particularly interesting to me because this is a subject I've been observing with interest for some time.
Two things stand out:
1. Teenagers, having been raised in today's hpyercommercialized world and knowing nothing else, are at a serious disadvantage in recognizing and understanding what's going on. Many of them don't want to think they're being manipulated and consider themselves threatened if it is suggested that they are.
2. This topic is very poorly understood,... Reading all the interviews with academics and "experts" on this site, I was struck by how poorly integrated their comments were, as if a lot of it was being made up on the spot. There were plenty of good observations, but not a lot of depth. I wish some good people were really studying this stuff.
Jim Connell
Haverstraw, NY
Dear FRONTLINE,
This is a wonderful report, but the elephant in the living room is "haven't we heard this before?".
For years Christian conservatives have fought in vain to clean up this smut. People like Robert Bork have written about this. Where are the ladies with bad hair from the Midwest who have been in the trenches for years? But, of course, they aren't COOL enough to be featured on a PBS show.
I left the show thinking, what organizations are on the FRONTLINE fighting the barbarian invasion, yet no major organizations are mentioned and there aren't even any links from this site???? The show is best entitled "a lone liberal discovers that immorality, paganism and crass corporations are leading to cultural decline."
Perhaps it was the MTV porn show that made the lefties finally realize that moral relativism and the obliteration of decency standards it's in the 1st amendment you know might have consequences.
New York CIty, New York
Dear FRONTLINE,
... I'm part of the target audience teenage-25. I was raised with television since my parents were never home,. But the result wasn't a love for media, it was a disgust with it. I found that to be the result for most of my friends as well.
The only thing that makes them anywhere near the way MTV and other entertainment may portray them is peer pressure and adjusting to your environment, "fitting in".
... Congratulations on making someone who doesn't like media watch it again and be fascinated by seeing the changes in it and marvel at the complexity and silliness of the human way of life. Keep up the good work.
New York , New York
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