journal entry on merchants of cool

The Merchants of Cool shows how marketers observe what teenager’s interests are to help them advertise and sell a product or image. In life people are constantly changing, especially teenagers. Growing up, a person is constantly changing. From your morals, values, style, and goals change creates the person you are. However, a lot of what a person’s morals and values may be is influenced by marketing and advertising. For example, many marketers today are using sex to sell. Although this has been going on for a while now, it has only gotten worse. Commercials even on children’s channels are sometimes very inappropriate. It only takes five minutes to catch a child’s attention. Children will imitate and copy anything they find “cool.” That child could easily think that it is okay to show too much skin, or speak in a tasteless matter to adults. Advertisers need to realize that our children today are the future, and they aren’t just advertising to teenagers. Our culture could lose sight of what really matters in life. The media advertises too much of how a person should dress, speak, and act, when we should be open to all different kinds of personalities. I can already see how people today are afraid to be themselves because we are always being judged by someone else. However, when it comes down to it, maybe sometimes we are judging ourselves. If we don’t want our culture to lose complete diversity we need to stop immating what we believe to be cool, and simply be who we are.