Actually now Im thinking about the way that marketing has evolved - TopicsExpress

Actually now Im thinking about the way that marketing has evolved since the 80s when people first realized that children were a powerful demographic. At the time it was easy to sell to kids because you just had to make the product cool. Radical. Tubular. Awesome. Very straightforward. Create and feed an appetite for excess. But each generation becomes hip to the tactics of the previous generation so as years went on, in order to sell, the product had to come from some antiestablishment place. Anyway fast forward to today when were so aware that everyones trying to sell us something, even from a very young age, that the only way to successfully market a product is to do it with a wink. Instead of creating and feeding an appetite for excess you have to create and feed an appetite for irony. Which I guess in itself is ironic so well done. And as a result all the child stars and cartoon characters are unbearably sassy and self-referential. We dont even trust sincerity anymore because the 80s trained us to look for the pitch.