Chapter 4: Culture

Thoughts and Ruminations:

Article: Who is Alex from Target and what is he doing all over Twitter? by Chris Tisch

Somebody wanted But so then 

On November 2, 2014 "Rims" posted a picture of a rather attractive but other wise ordinary looking target employee which got retweeted thousands of times, so by monday afternoon the picture had been retweeted 900,000 times then "Alex from Target" became an internet celebrity.

Map:

I chose southeastern Europe because Italy is the fashion capital of the world. Thousands of fashion trends have started in the fast ion hearth of Milan and from there the diffused throughout Europe and some of them throughout the world. 

Extra Credit Video: 

             This south african comedy humorously illustrates the differences between two vastly different cultures: that of the bushmen of the kalahari desert and that of the "civilized" man.  The clear contrast between the two cultures is apparent within the first twenty-five minutes of the movie and continues to be demonstrated throughout the film. The film begins by following the bushmen in there everyday peaceful lives. In their totally isolated culture they have no greed or evil but when a Coka-Cola bottle falls from the sky it brings something that for the first time cannot be share equally. The feelings of greed and fights that arise over the bottle cause the bushmen to get angry and to deem it "the evil thing". Funnily enough the Coka-Cola brand is debatably one of the most easily recognizable symbols of capitalism in the world, so one might definitely argue that movie is saying that capitalism is evil and brings evil and greed. Regardless of the symbolism of the coke bottle Xixo the bushmen decides to throw it off the edge of the earth and thus embarks on his joinery to find a place to do so. 

             After examining the once peaceful life of the bushmen the film turns to the life of the civilized man who they say "refused to adapt himself to his environment; instead he adapted his environment to suit him.".  The narrator comically presents the ultra structured life style of these "civilized men" by going through one of their days by the hour which made them appear as if they were just funny little bugs with no real purpose other than to buzz about. There lives in contrast to those of the bushmen appeared fast paced and confusing. Later in the movie a violent warlord attempts to assassinate the president which is a concept totally foreign to the bushmen because have never even had the idea of violence between people in their tribe. In fact when he sees a gun he asks if the funny stick grew on a tree. The bushman's completely isolated culture had kept them in the dark about all the technological advancements of the rest of the world. On the bushman's journey to throw the bottle off the world he finds a pasture with goats and unaware of the concept of property proceeded to shoot one which promptly landed him in jail. His trial was especially difficult because they did not have a word for guilty in his language, but (spoiler alert) eventually he was let out on a work permit and in the end was able to throw the bottle off the earth and return home. I think this movie was an excellent depiction of how isolation can protect a culture from both the good and bad aspects of other cultures but also comes with the price of being incredibly disconnected from the rest of the world and their cultures as well.

Thoughts and Ruminations Essay:

Readings: PBS Frontline Merchants of Cool by PBS 

Question: What demographic is targeted more than others by market researchers and why? 

They have the expendable wealth, the numbers and the desire to have fun and stay trendy.  Who makes up this demographic? They are the american teenagers. Today teens are being targeted by marketers more than ever in a desperate attempt to capitalize on this growing market. This generation of teens is the largest it has ever been, even larger than that of their baby boomer parents and marketers are ecstatic. One executive in the film noted that "teens are like Africa" in the sense that they are going to be moved in on by marketers as Africa was colonized by the europeans.  In a market where a trend disappears very shortly after it is discovered it is vital to stay one step a head of the game at all times. In order to keep their products a part of the popular culture companies must always be ready to move on to the next big thing. material culture of teenagers is valuable to marketers who can use this knowledge to create products that the teenage consumer will devour. Cool hunters also create focus groups where they pay teenagers to come in and answer questions on what is cool, all to gain more information on how to better target the teenage demographic. Everyday teenagers are studied for so large corporations can make a profit, but why is this? The answer is simple the teen market is home of the fastest changing trends, a large amount of wealth and they care about being cool.

To do this they use specialists who have been deemed "cool hunters". These specially trained marketers go out into the public and look for trends that are rising before most of the demographic has even heard of it. They search for the teens who are ahead of the trends and then study them. Sometimes cool hunting involves studying a specific cool teen and asking him or her on their opinion on things such as new products or even just looking at their clothes and they types of music they listen to. Any insight on the

The media is one of the markets who aggressively targets teens. The music industry constantly studies teens to predict what they want to listen to and see so they can break out with the next big thing. Because trends spread from celebrities to the general public through hierarchal diffusion the media has the power to set trends in motion at will. The often will back product to get that product to be more popular among the general public, such as what Sprite did to repopularize their brand. In an attempt to make their brand more popular Sprite hosted a party where they payed teenagers to dress cool and dance to hip hop music while drinking Sprite. They also payed several popular rap artists to come and preform under a huge neon Sprite logo thus making the brand appear cool. Then they 

filmed the party and put it on MTV and immediately had a jump in sales. This spending power that teenagers weild is extraordinary and corporations realize that the teenage demographic is a valuable resource that if used correctly can be a major money zone for far over a hundred of thousand companies.