Finding "cool"

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to identify details about future trends.

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.

COOLHUNTER1: 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.

COOLHUNTER2: 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.

COOLHUNTER3: 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.

COOLHUNTER4: 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.

COOLHUNTER5: Take, for example, Hush Puppies, the famous brand of shoe. In 1994, Hush Puppies were basically a thing of the past. Only 3, 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.

COOLHUNTER6: 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 U S per year.

COOLHUNTER7: 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.