Needs Assessment
The Merchants of Cool is a documentary about researchers and marketers exploring out into the society to see what is popular or cool in the latest trends within teenagers. These people would spend days going around the streets, malls, and even schools to find out what is the next big thing that will give them the attention from people. They would have the teenagers participate in surveys and studies while analyzing them thoroughly to portray the founded characteristics into the media.
These marketers realized that teenagers are actually portraying themselves to the media so the media would then reveal it back to the teenagers, which teenagers then sees it and portrays them that way. The only disadvantage of that was once the marketer reveals what is cool to the world, they would have to go on the radar and find out what is the next thing that is cool. We live in a culture, a consumer culture to be specific where we are driven to buy things, especially teenagers, which is fueled by corporate motivation to annual grow profits.
There was a teenager in the video and she stated that no matter where she goes, she must always get ready to look nice before she leaves the house. As mentioned earlier, sometimes the media depicts things that will cause teenagers to feel like they are not good enough, thin enough, or pretty enough and the negative thoughts build up. Although this video was made about twelve years ago, teenagers are still the same as today.
Teenagers should not have look into the media or advertisement to find out what they want or how are they supposed to be. Each individual is different with a unique mind so every teenager should act and be like however they want. Teenagers just needs to understand that the cool hunters are just being paid to find people who they think are cool to ask questions and find answers, which advertisers and producers will then use this cool information to sell more products.
