Article on Common Knowledge

Although this article is an easy read and makes various points, it seems to me that it is common knowledge. Even people who don't understand design, marketing, and advertising can see that targeting teenagers is very successful. It is the perfect age to per sway an individual on what is cool, and how they should look, act, and what they should wear. I believe (because I've been a teenager) that people are more concerned about what people think of them, and how they fit in, at this point in their life more so than any other time. Not only that, when your a teenager you get the chance to earn and spend money for the first time, and teens love to spend money. Most teens spend most, if not all, their money as soon as they can, they're not thinking about saving for the future. The clothing market takes advantage of this. Both middle and high school kids follow trends and define themselves by the way they dress, and act. This is heavily influenced by big brands that sell the image of cool incorporated with their products. Trends come and go, and the market takes advantage of this by selling every possible aspect of any given trend. People will buy anything they think is cool, as long as the advertising is not lame, as a result of trying to be cool. I experienced many trends in my teenage years starting with the grunge phase (around 1994-influenced by the death of Kurt Cobain) to the skater phase, the punk's, the come -back of swing and ska, goth, hipster, emo, gangsta the list goes on. The market takes advantage of kids trying to be cool, and they sell the crap out of the image. For example, when the whole goth look got popular they made a store "Hot Topic" that sells black clothes, chains, and awful music. Since then you can always count on seeing a lot of anti-social, misunderstood teens dressed in black with eye makeup wandering the malls. Doesn't this act go against what they stand for? Well I guess it's important to look cool while your acting like you hate the world. Anyway, I'm going of on a tangent. Back to the reading. So this article pretty much states the obvious. Whether its targeting a particular gender, race, or lifestyle, large corporations will continue to research teenage influences and sell the image back to them at a high price. Bottom line; if a company can sell the idea of their product being cool to the desired demographic, then teens will buy the product until something cooler happens. Corporations have been doing it for years and will continue. I'm actually surprised that it took people till the early 90's to figure this out.