Merchants of Cool

Even though teenagers are stubborn, as said before, they are also in a confused stage of their life where they deal with body and emotional changes. Teenagers are known to be very hormonal. When the media outlets keep projecting sex symbols such as famous Britney Spears or other known women in crop t-shirts this gives out a message that in order to be successful or famous this is what a girl needs to do. The media focuses on the physical appearance which makes girls, like the one in the documentary trying out to be a model, to believe that is the only way up the ladder. For males on the other hand, the media puts out an image that if a boy is inappropriate and a jerk that is the way they're going to be loved and wanted by girls. Media outlets film midriff and mook teenagers and air it on television so that e teenagers watching can have a reaction of "that's so cool, I want to be like them". This is where teenagers imitate other teenagers that are projected doing things the product producers themselves told them to do.

To conclude, in some aspects of the marketing business it's the media imitating the teenagers which can be seen when the teenagers are studied in their home or in focus groups. Also, the teenagers do imitate the media in advertisements like Sprites and their website launch party. The feedback loop is a complicated cycle where the producer and the customer imitate each other to survive. Mass marketing can be compared to the riddle "what came first, the chicken or the egg", but in the end the both go hand in hand and without the other the cycle would