I feel popular culture is a Corporate Giants’ best friend. What drives sales? What does everyone want? Retail sales are driven by fashion, fad, and the monkey see monkey do principle.
For example, the iPod. MP3 music players have been available for years. Marketing geniuses at Apple targeted the young and influential popular culture. My opinion is that most of the popular culture is mostly made up of young people. Big business knows this and capitalizes on their naïve vulnerability. iPods are in vogue and you wouldn't be caught dead with a knockoff version of the iPod. The same holds true of clothing, hairstyles, fashion, and even personality.
Popular music is one area that is heavily influenced by pop culture. Rap, Hip-Hop and other categories of today's music is geared to appeal to pop culture and to sell records for corporate
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9 comments:
Jim, nice blog.
THanks for reminding me of the Pink Floyd Song. (My husband is a huge fan).
And, I never really knew how long ipods had been around.
I think reality shows also corporate greed (greater profit in not having to pay actors, so unfortunately, as long as there is an audience, the are likely to stay around).
I agree, if you think about it would there ever be popular culture if money or big bussinesses were not a part of it. Who makes money off of popluar culture..I sure dont.
I agree with Jim. It seems as if the only thing these companies care about is making a quick buck. The record companies don't care about the artist. They only care about who will buy their cd, or download their songs. The clothing companies don't care about their employees. They only care about how much of a profit they can scam off of the consumer. Following the examples that Jim has provided, we have to keep in mind that getting a profit is all big businesses really care about. It all comes down to the greed factor for the big businesses. I believe that is why our definition of real "popular culture" has been so skewed. We, as people, are so obsessed with the newest, hippest gadget that we have lost track of our own, dare i say it, morals. But, all and all, I do believe what Jim is saying is entirely true. Great Blog Jim.
I agree with what you said about the ipod, but I just want to add some clarification. Early mp3 players could only carry about 20 songs. Early ipods could hold lots and I believe the ipod was introduced about a year after the first mp3 player. I do see Apple marketing their product everywhere and how it fits into pop culture. I will say one thing. You may disagree with me, but I have owned both an ipod and another brand of mp3 player and the ipod functions better than the others. This may be a reason why this is such a big part of our pop culture becasue technology is a big part and Apple keeps raising the bar.
I agree with you. The corporate world is only concerned with making money. They don't care who they exploit to do so as long as they can bring home a fat paycheck they're happy. And we as the consumers of these products just buy into their game. We want the newest and the coolest so we pay thier outrageous prices.
I agree completely when you talk about how in the electronic field people make purchases based on a name. Nowadays when people purchase an mp3 player more than likely they have an iPod in mind. When people purchase an iPod they are purchasing a name.
I think you explained popular culture really well. Big businesses are definitely a part of pop culture. They create the most popular things so we buy them and turn them into the newest fad. Popular culture probably wouldn't affect our lives as much if they weren't apart of it. They are the ones that advertise and make their product a must have.
I agree with you when you say that talent is over looked in the music industry. There are artists who have amazing talent, but at the same time the newer music coming out, well you can barely call it music.
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