COOLHUNTER:
What is cool?
There have been dozens of slang terms to express the concept .... but in the
end, they all mean the same thing.
Cool. In marketing, cool is IT.
Companies, advertisers, they all want to know what's cool.
Cool is the key to success.
Cool is that desired quality
which gives a brand, a person, an idea, the power to rise above it all and
stand out from the crowd. If a
company can identify what's cool, they can use it to make their product stand
out from the crowd... But how do they figure out what's cool? In the past, what was cool used to be
defined by the big advertisers and elite fashion designers. They came up with the styles, they
promoted these fashions to the masses, and trends would trickle down to the
common people. Media set the
trends.
But today, what's cool could come from anywhere.
People don't like to be told by advertisers what's cool, they like to discover
it for themselves.
In fact, a lot of what's cool comes from a very creative demographic: the youth
demographic.
Teenagers and young adults.
The youth demographic is a tricky one to market to.
They don't fall for the normal advertising strategies.
They are rebellious, creative, innovative. they start the trends.
Well, a few of them do. These are the trendsetters. The
trendsetters define what's cool, and the rest of the kids follow.
Well, this is where the coolhunter comes in.
More and more companies are hiring them. They
hunt for the newest pioneering styles, trends, and innovations.
Often they were the trendsetters of their generation. and they know how to spot
the trendsetters of the next generation. Coolhunters find what's cool and they
present this information to their clients, the big brands that are hoping to
sell their products by making them seem cooler. The
coolhunter brings in what's cool from the streets. and the big brands repackage
this 'cool'' to sell it back to the mainstream. So
instead of styles trickling down from the top, they trickle up from the
streets. then get sold right back to the masses.
Take, for example, Hush Puppies, the famous brand of shoe.
In 1994, Hush Puppies were basically a thing of the past.
Only 30,000 pairs were sold in the U S in 1993. The brand
was dying. then, coolhunters noticed that teenagers in New York's East Village
were going to thrift shops, looking for classic, vintage Hush Puppies styles.
For some reason, the trendsetters had latched on to this style; they loved it.
Hush Puppies were totally cool, at least with the hip trendsetters.
After the coolhunters reported this information to fashion designers, the most
elite designers started demanding a line of Hush Puppies that looked like the
classic styles.
The company rushed to come out with the shoes that had suddenly become so cool.
Fashion designers started having their models wear them in fashion shows, and
the shoes started popping up in magazines. By
1996,, Hush Puppies were selling over 1.6 million pairs in the US per year.
If the coolhunters hadn't seen
those teenagers in New York sporting those classic Hush Puppies, the company
may never have found out that all they needed to do was release the classic
designs again. Hush Puppies
might have just been a brand from history... but now, it's one of the most
popular shoes brands in the world. You
see, it pays to know what's cool.