TRYING to be cool costs marketers vast amounts of money and time. But what is ''cool'', anyway?
New research has found that marketers jumped on the term in the 1960s and have morphed its meaning to define a state of being that can be bought by brand selection.
The author Lauren Gurrieri has just graduated from Melbourne University's business and economics faculty after penning a doctoral thesis on how the advertising industry constructs the notion of cool.
She found that marketing trends had stereotyped cool identities as male, wealthy, heterosexual, white, sexualised, attractive, and able-bodied.
Dr Gurrieri said these consumer stereotypes were exploited by marketers, who fed on the need for fantasy, pleasure, novelty and escape.
She traced the history of cool to the 15th century, when a west African spiritual concept was being used to describe a feeling of composure and inner peace. Use of the term ''cool'' exploded during the jazz age of the 1920s and '30s and later the hippie movement, before marketers jumped on the term in the 1960s.
Today marketers strive to be seen as cool in the eyes of consumers. ''Originally cool was about being different and going against the mainstream but the growing influence of marketing has changed in meaning, in the process confusing consumers who are sold these competing messages,'' she said. ''Now, whenever cool products are sold, consumers are subconsciously buying into an experience that is determined by social order and hierarchy.''
Dr Gurrieri, now a post-doctoral research fellow at Griffith University, studied an unnamed fashion label and an alcohol brand - both deemed to be cool in the eyes of consumers. She also worked with two unnamed Australian advertising agencies, which are both producing ''cool'' campaigns for their clients.
''There are lots of examples of cool brands - Apple, Nike and Virgin - which have tapped into the notion of cool brilliantly and they've succeeded because they listen and collaborate with consumers,'' she said.
But some brands failed in their attempts to be cool, she said.
''So many brands jump onto something that they believe to be cool right now but in fact they can completely miss the mark with their consumers because they're trying too hard, and it's obvious and can turn consumers off. [Kraft's] iSnack 2.0 is a classic example of a brand that failed in the cool stakes.''
