(As published in Screen Education)

‘Coolhunting’ is a term used to describe the emerging group of marketing professionals whose sole purpose is to identify trends in order to market them back to the masses. Just like the coolhunter character in William Gibson’s 2003 novel Pattern Recognition, a coolhunter’s job is to observe and make predictions of changes in new or existing cultural trends. They are on the lookout for what will be cool before it is cool. However, the problem with cool is that it is – of course – forever obsolescing. As soon as something becomes cool, it ceases to be cool and naturally by the time the uncool have adopted an idea it will become necessarily uncool. And the very nature of coolhunting validates its existence. New York writer Malcolm Gladwell defines the paradox as a ‘triumphant circularity’.[i] He contends that the better the coolhunters become at bringing the mainstream close to the cutting edge, the more elusive the cutting edge becomes. Gladwell argues that ‘the act of discovering what’s cool is what causes cool to move on… and because cool changes more quickly, we need coolhunters.’[ii] Professional coolhunters are on a cyclical mission to identify and research what potentially could be cool just before everyone else catches on. Coolhunting is a difficult undertaking but the hard work can be worth it because once discovered, cool can be extremely lucrative.

Market research (both qualitative and qualitative) is a major component of coolhunting, with the objective of capturing the attention of a mass market that is worth an estimated of $150 billion a year.[iii] Marketing to a new generation of brand savvy consumers is no easy feat. The market is made up of predominantly teenagers who have more spending money power than ever before but are also suspicious of marketing. Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin investigate the phenomenon in The Merchants of Cool. The insightful documentary examines coolhunting and its symbiotic relationship with the media and today’s teenagers. In the Merchants of Cool, Frontline correspondent Douglas Rushkoff details how coolhunting works and its affect on teenagers. He builds up a convincing case to demonstrate how teenagers run today’s economy and argues that as a market group, they prove the most challenging to influence.[iv] As Rushkoff describes ‘…they are a stubborn demographic, unresponsive to brands and traditional marketing method…but there is one thing they respond…cool.’[v] This is why coolhunting has become an increasingly important component of a company’s marketing strategy. As Gladwell explains, ‘cool cannot be manufactured; only observed’.[vi]

The mere concept of ‘cool’ is riddled with complexities and as a term, it is problematic to define. In his article ‘Coolhunting’, Malcolm Gladwell describes the subtle and variegated nature of cool as not such much as a language but a ‘set of dialects’.[vii] Due to the elusiveness of ‘cool’, it makes sense then that to look for cool you look for people who already possess it. Although coolhunting is sometimes grounded in market research, it works mostly on instinct. A key underlying assumption of coolhunting is that to find cool, you need to be cool. As Gladwell asserts ‘The key to coolhunting…is to look for cool people first and cool things later; and not the other way around…’.[viii] Coolhunters, whose job is to make these observations, identify those who are a head of the pack, commonly known as ‘early adoptors’. There are companies specialising in the business of looking for these individuals. DeeDee Gordan and Sharon Lee’s Look-Look agency hire what they describes as ‘former cool kids’ and give them titles like ‘field correspondents’, arm them with digital cameras and set them loose in search of cool. The coolhunters look for forward thinking individuals who are leaders within their own group. As Ruskoff explains, ‘These kids are really difficult to find…Once they find them, they interview them, get them interested…put them on their website’.[ix] Corporations and brands then pay big money to get access to this information. This feedback loop is brutally efficient; as soon as something is identified it has been quickly adopted (through marketing) by the teenage masses. TIME journalist Lev Grossman states it as ‘an instantaneous, infallible coolometer’.[x] ­­

What is the alternative to hiring coolhunters? There are of course, more cost-effective options. Instead of paying research companies such as Look-Look big money, companies are looking to the internet for help in traversing the uneasy terrain of teenage trends. The Age writer Mary Riekert reports that companies are developing software to sift through the mountains of information on the web, particularly blogs and social network sites.[xi] As Riekert writes, ‘on the frontlines of cool, bloggers with street cred at the unwitting quarry of forecasters anxiously scan the net in the hope of spotting just one thing: the next big trend’.[xii] Bloggers have become a particular focal point. Paris photographer Yvan Rodic and his blogsite The facehunter has received significant attention due to his ability to identify emerging trends in fashion. Reinier Evers of trendwatching website takes it a step further. He defines what he does as ‘virtual anthropology’, advising companies on what they can do with these observations.[xiii] A particular benefit of these websites is that they prove extremely useful in raising the profiles of lesser known artists or designers. As Riekert writes, ‘The blog designspotter.com has played an active role in helping young designers… achieve success in the mainstream…’[xiv] The value of the sites like Rodic’s and other blogs, is of course the price. For companies, it means a free insight into their target market, and best yet, it is instantaneous and readily accessible. The downside is that due to the democratic nature of the internet, it also means that the information is available to everyone. Some marketing professionals also argue that this style of coolhunting is not coolhunting at all because it does not offer a true and accurate trend forecasting service. Furthermore, its application seems to undermine the complexities of a process which can be grounded in a theoretical framework.

The premise of coolhunting can be traced to the ‘diffusions of innovation’ theory. Put simply, the theory describes the process of how ideas spread; purporting that there are ‘innovators’, ‘early adopters’ and then the ‘majority (or the ‘mainstream’) and the laggards’.[xv] Cool hunting works on the concept that outlines a process where an ‘Early Adoptor’ takes an idea from a wild ‘Innovator’ and disseminates the idea back to the masses. As Nick Southgate contests ‘Once cool people have an idea a chain of events is started that means the rest of us (even the uncool) will come to adopt.’[xvi] The Early Adoptors use their position as opinion-leaders to convince the masses to adopt a particular idea or trend. Gladwell goes on to define the Early Adoptor’s role even further by asserting that it has a lot to do with their influence within a specific social network, as he states, ‘it has a lot to do with the influence held by those who have the respect and admiration and trust of their friends’.[xvii] This theory is well known, and some would argue used exploitatively, by marketers and advertisers to sell their products and services.

So who exactly is behind the phenomenon of coolhunting? In 2001, The Merchants of Cool assert that there were five companies responsible for selling youth culture in the Western world; News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Universal Vivendi, AOL Time Warner.[xviii] They made MTV a specific example of the coolhunting process, showing how MTV recovered from their low rating in the late nineties by employing a coolhunting in their strategy. ‘To counter the slide, MTV embarked on a major teen research campaign, the hallmark of which was its “ethnography study”—visiting teens’ homes to view firsthand their lives, interests and ask some personal questions’.[xix] This system closely monitored and studied the young to understand what would push their buttons in order to capitalise on the information. Rushkoff details how MTV in conjunction with other commercial outlets orchestrated the rise of Limp Bizkit despite the group’s objectionable lyrics.[xx] It throws into contention, the exploitative nature of coolhunting.

Some would argue that the act of coolhunting is nothing new. It can be traced as early as the 1930s with the arrival of Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, to America. Adam Curtis’ four-part documentary The Century of the Self charts the history of how Freud’s ideas of psychoanalysis were used to manipulate the masses. During the1930s, Edward Bernays began to link his uncle’s theories of sociology and psychology to that of the traditional press media. Credited as the father of the Public Relations industry, Edward Bernays ‘…showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn’t need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires’.[xxi] Bernays, whose job at the time was to promote America’s involvement in the war, was already learning how effective this was in his work with the government’s Public Information Office. His expertise in finding innovatively ways to manipulate the unconsciousness found an affinity with companies who were looking at ways to expand their businesses. After the First World War, Bernays assisted several companies to change consumer attitudes. He was a significant catalyst in the marked transition that occurred during post-World War One America when America turned into a desire-based society rather than a necessity-based society. In simple terms, people were buying products based on wants and not needs. Paul Mazer, a Wall Street banker from Lehman Brothers in the 1930s encapsulated this change in Curtis’ documentary. He is quoted to have said, ‘People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs’.[xxii] The main objective, as Curtis’ contends was ‘to encourage people’s inner-selfish desires, by keeping their inner irrational desires, people could be made happy and docile’.[xxiii] The government saw this as an opportunity to control their citizens. As for the companies, Curtis’ argues that ‘it was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express their individuality’.[xxiv] Soon techniques were developed by businesses to read and fulfill the inner desires of the self including public relations and marketing companies. This has led to the rise of an all-consuming self and the ‘me’ generation which dominates the world today.

This process of manipulation and its role in coolhunting highlights some serious cultural and ethical questions. Underground subcultures, which exist as a throwback to the conformity of mainstream society, are now under threat. The Merchants of Cool’s case study on Insane Clown Posse (ICP) exemplifies this disturbing trend. The musical content of ICP were entrenched with violent, misogynist and pornographic content but the work of a coolhunter ensured that the group and their messages were marketed right back to the masses. This was an endorsement of rage rock being cool.[xxv] Rushkoff argues that if teenagers turn back and fight the process, ‘the battle is then sponsored, packaged, and sold right back to them’.[xxvi] The relentless pursuit for cool has no room for ethical considerations and as a result, coolhunting has no accountability or responsibility for the messages it helps market. Perhaps what is most alarming about the ICP example is that it suggests a real threat to teenage resistance. As Quentin Crisp says, ‘the young always have the same problem – how to rebel and conform at the same time’. Coolhunting plays on this dichotomy of insecurities. And Coolhunting by its very nature encourages homogeneity. Using MTV as an example, New York Times writer John Seabrook, warns against this ‘closed loop’ process. ‘Because what MTV shows you is very limited in terms of the choices that you can make, the life that you try to lead based on MTV becomes very sterile and homogenous and boring.’[xxvii] There are many adverse consequences to coolhunting pertaining to its influence as messengers, but it could also be argued that the real inherent danger to coolhunting is that it kills originality by encouraging conformity. As Southgate argues, ‘coolhunting is guilty because it coopts ideas and force-feeds them to us, reducing their chance to flourish and our chance to choose’.[xxviii]If this is indeed the case, then we should be very wary of any process that diminishes one of our greatest freedoms, the ability to think for ourselves without the help of marketing.

[i] Malcolm Gladwell, ‘The Coolhunt’, The New Yorker, 7 March 1997, p.78.

[ii] Gladwell, p.78.

[iii] Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin, The Merchants of Cool, PBS, 2001.

[iv] The Merchants of Cool, 2001.

[v] The Merchants of Cool, 2001.

[vi] Gladwell, p.78.

[vii] Gladwell, p.82.

[viii] Gladwell, p.78.

[ix] The Merchants of Cool, 2001.

[x] Lev Grossman, ‘The Quest for Cool’, 30 August 2003 TIME, p.5

[xi] Mary Riekert, ‘LiveWire’, The Age, 21 September 2006, http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/coolhunting-on-the-web/2006/09/20/1158431719559.html, Accessed 7 February 2009.

[xii] Riekert, 2009.

[xiii] Riekert, 2006.

[xiv] Riekert, 2006.

[xv] University of Twente, ‘Diffusion of Innovations Theory, http:/www.cw.utwente.nl/theorieenoverzicht/levels of theories/macros/diffusion of innovation theory.doc/ Accessed 7 February 2009.

[xvi] Nick Southgate, ‘Coolhunting with Aristotle Welcome to the Hunt’, Research2003 Conference Papers, p.7.

[xvii] Gladwell, p.78.

[xviii] The Merchants of Cool, 2001.

[xix] The Merchants of Cool, 2001.

[xx] The Merchants of Cool, 2001,

[xxi] Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self, BBC, 2002.

[xxii] Curtis, 2002.

[xxiii] Curtis, 2002.

[xxiv] Curtis, 2002.

[xxv] The Merchants of Cool, 2001,

[xxvi] The Merchants of Cool, 2001,

[xxvii] Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin The Merchants of Cool, 2001, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/themes/doingtokids.html, Accessed 7 February 2009.

[xxviii] Southgate, p.7.