America's focus on emulating Teens

I just finished reading http://www.rushkoff.com/essay/sportswearinternational.html, an article on why companies will profit economically by focusing their energies on coming up with more creative ideas/designs instead of looking to kids for what’s cool.

Here is one of the author’s more interesting points:

“The problem with being the center of attention is that it gives [teenagers] nowhere to turn, themselves. When even their parents long for the adolescent sexual utopia of the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue or the idyllic and equally adult-less Dawson's Creek, kids have nothing left to aspire towards. None of them are experiencing anything close to the good times suggested by these brand-image universes. They are teenagers, for God's sake. It's a terrible, terrifying time. But they have been put at the very center of the universe. Marketers want to please them. Their parents want to *be* them. All eyes, and all cameras, are trained on the teen.”

I think this point is a good one. Just look at the small kids trying to dress like teenagers and wearing makeup as a teen would. Or notice the middle-aged woman who looks as though she accidentally walked into her daughter’s closet that morning instead of her own.

Another one of Rushkoff’s ideas that struck me is:

“And by removing yourselves -- yes, you adults -- from the equation, you have denied your young customers the one thing they could really use from you: your adult creativity. Instead, you relegate kids to a prison of mirrors, and rationalize that you're simply meeting popular demand”

Considering that the author, Douglas Rushkoff, teaches media theory at NYU, it is kind of interesting that he’d say teen consumers could benefit from anything marketers have to offer at all, and furthermore, act as a consultant for these companies, telling them what they should be doing. The idea that looking to kids for ideas on what to market and how to market it is to under-use your own resources (adults) is pretty cool though. It makes sense. As Rushkoff points out, “In most societies, teens tend to emulate adults”. There has been a shift in America and now this is not the case, but teens emulating adults does appear to be the natural tendency so perhaps there would be momentum if a swing back toward that system began.

The amazing thing is that the shift of focus from adults to teens is something we have seen in our lifetimes. While we were still kids, there really wasn’t such a pull to emulate teens rather than adults. Think about the shows that were on television. Hardly any were geared for a teenage audience. And when shows did attempt to fill this hole they did not always meet much success. My So-Called Life, for example, was cancelled after just one season. As we entered middle school, however, things were already changing. The WB was born, teen pop made a comeback (You know you loved N’Sync), media and marketers were finally catching onto the fact that kids' disposable income surpassed their parents' (a phenomenon that occurred in the 80s).