Geek-chic

No movie reviews this time, but expect some soon. This time a real topic. The nature of Advertising and "Cool-hunting"

For the last decade or so advertisers have been struggling to stay ahead of the trends, finding and exploiting new trends in their infancy before they have a chance to hit the mainstream on their own.

Let's be honest here, we all know the definition of "Cool". Cool is "What I have but you haven't gotten yet".

By this definition these advertisers have succeeded in keeping themselves "Cool" by all terms. There are of course the regular hit-and-miss campaigns where they get the tip that something is going to be fashionable, but ends up not being. But these can be discounted as a factor of the volume of campaigns in action at any given point.

The major problem that advertisers face is that while there is the percentage of the market that enjoys being spoon-fed new trends as they come in, that is not the entirety of the market. These days it's not even the majority of the market.
The real target audience that they need to be focusing on are the disenfrachised. Those people who have been permanently labeled as "uncool", the geeks.
These people have no interest in designer jeans or top of the line sunglasses. They have their own interests, and being "Cool" isn't one of them.

This audience is one of focused attention, they very often have a couple hobbies that they spend alot of their time on, but are otherwise your normal every-day wage-slaves. These hobbies serve as their sanctuary from the real world. Many of them get into RPG's of one kind or another, a literal escape from reality as they stop portraying themselves and portray someone else.

To get this audience the advertiser needs to accomplish two things:
1. He must become the geek. This market is very good at smelling phonies, If you've never played dungeons and dragons, you have no chance of marketing your product to them. They might buy it anyways for reasons of neccessity or convience, but they won't seek out your brand of sunglasses just because you claim to be in their hobby. You have to prove it to them.
2. He must accept the geek. This market tends to shy away from standing up for their hobby in the real world. While they don't expect to be cool, they don't want further social rejection. To gain their support, you need to support them. Be willing to alienate your "Cool-seeking" audience for the approval of the geeks. You can't expect to gain both audiences, you have to pick and choose.

This is not even really theory at this point, it's proven fact. A number of people have managed to gain quite a following through this method. Two notable examples are Felicia Day and Joss Whedon. Day has taken the MMORPG crowd and turned them into her own personal cult by casting off her standard Hollywood actor persona and accepting her videogame loving persona. It's not even clear if she is even an active videogame player, I know she plays Dungeons and Dragons once a week (Her twitter tells me so), but no hard evidence has been displayed that she is an active videogame player. Because she doesn't need to be. She's proven that she's atleast knowledgable about the subject, and has embraced it fully. And so, her fans have embraced her and anything she wants to sell us.
Joss Whedon is an amazing example. He doesn't need to divulge too much personal information about himself, his writing speaks for itself. It shows that he is into conspiracy theories, Sci-fi, westerns, vampires, werewolves, demons, etc. Even musicals are represented in his work. Whedon's shows are like a mecca for those who love that genre, so while he might not have his hands on the entirety of the audience, the audience he does have is intensely devoted.

The most amusing thing about this whole phenom is that advertisers are not sure what to do about this. For decades they have been trying to sell us an image of what they think we want to be. Now we have an audience who already knows who they want to be, they just need people to sell them things that they want to have. Some marketing for this audience would be simple to write. Want to sell more Pepsi? Show 20-something people playing whatever the latest videogame is and drinking Pepsi while they play. Others would be much more difficult. It'd be hard to convince this audience to buy a Gucci purse for a ridiculous price. However, offer them a Gucci gaming bag for a more reasonable price and they're in. You might have to compete with the $15 target bag that suits their needs just aswell. You can't sell them something that they can get just as good, for cheaper.