PBS Frontline: Merchants of Cool

Direct link to the Google Video here.

Today’s gem of a video comes courtesy of Google Video where you can watch the entire one-hour PBS Frontline documentary “Merchants of Cool” which takes an in-depth look at how American teenagers are marketed to, researched, and cultivated in this age of rampant trend-setting.

Teenagers in America number more than 30 million and command over 150 billion dollars in disposable income. They are exposed to over 3000 advertising messages in an average day. In contrast to adults, teenagers respond to whatever is “cool”, as determined by the trend-setters of the moment. This documentary examines how businesses seek the ever-elusive “cool” and use it to sell products to teens. Alas, once corporations find cool, it soon ceases to be so; this means marketers are forever searching for new products and strategies to capture the attention of their target audience. This documentary also looks at how real life and TV life are blurring together, acting like a feedback loop to push popular teen culture towards more violent and sexual behaviors.

I would recommend downloading the video entirely ASAP as you never know how long full videos like these stay up on Google. That way even if you don’t watch it now, you have the complete video file to watch in the future (even if it does get yanked from Google Video).

Find out more about it at IMDB.