Corporations shifted from advertising products to engineering youth culture itself

Evidence

Marketers commercialized a teen counterculture with new entertainment media that could serve their purposes well. A PBS documentary, The Merchants of Cool, provides a glimpse into how marketers crafted the media to shape the buying habits of teenagers (Dretzin & Goodman, 2001). Through “cool hunting,” marketers looked for what was cool and the trendsetters and early adopters. The hunters must become cool themselves to avoid being seen as establishment outsiders. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 999 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Corporate commodities become playgrounds where children negotiate value and meaning — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 375; Advertising shifted from promising cures to selling consumers a better version of themselves — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 213; Marketers shaped youth culture to drive teenage commercial spending — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 999 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Commercial media manufacture teenage identity and counterculture to drive consumerism #expands (0.92) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 999