SUGGESTED READING
[download the pdf]
TEEN MARKETING MANUALS WRITTEN BY MARKETING INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS
DeLuca, J. & Lopiano-Misdom, J. (1997). Street trends: How today’s
alternative youth cultures are creating tomorrow’s mainstream markets.
New York, NY: Harper Business.
Takes us inside the world of “stealth” marketing to teenagers.
Explains how marketers can better understand the teen market by infiltrating
it with cultural informants, teens hired to spy and collect cultural data
on their fellow teens.
Del Vecchio, G. (1997). Creating ever-cool: A marketer’s guide to
a kid’s heart. Gretna, LA: Pelican Pub. Co.
Relates what the author considers the best approaches to marketing to children,
Moses, E. (2000). The $100 billion dollar allowance: Accessing the global
teen market. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Discusses the demographic breakdown of global teens according to interest
and disposable income.
Siegel, D.L. (2001). The great tween buying machine: Marketing to today’s
tweens. Ithaca, NY: Paramount Marketing Pub.
Divulges statistical data collected on the youngest subset of the teenage
demographic, the so-called “tweens,” youth aged 10-13 years
old
Zollo, P. (1995). Wise up to teens: Insight into marketing and advertising
to teenagers. Ithaca, NY: New Strategist Publications, Inc.
Presents statistical data culled from Chicago-area teens by TRU Marketing,
specialists in teen marketing
TEEN CULTURE AND THE MEDIA
Giroux, H. (2001). Stealing innocence: Youth, corporate power, and the politics
of culture. New York, NY: Palgrave.
Analyzes the influence media has on the development of teenage identity.
Epstein, J.S. (1998). Youth culture: Identity in a postmodern world. Malden,
MA: Blackwell.
Surveys the social world of teens in what he terms their “natural
habitat” of home, school, the shopping mall, and rock concerts to
research how youth are prone to a collective identity informed by entertainment
Kline, S. (1993). Out of the garden: Toys, TV, and children’s culture
in the age of marketing. New York, NY: V
A review of primary historical and theoretical texts on the subject of children’s
media dating from the Victorian era to the early 1990s.
McRobbie, A. (1999). In the culture of society: Art, fashion, and popular
music. New York: NY: Routledge.
Explores the relationship between female youth cultural production and the
proliferation of teen girls’ magazines.
Quart, A. (2003). Branded: The buying and selling of teenagers. Cambridge,
MA: Perseus Publishing.
Chronicles the day-to-day data collection activities of teen correspondents
in New York’s Upper West Side.
Starsburger, V.C. & Wilson, B.J. (2002). Children, adolescents &
the media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Gives the most current quantitative statistics regarding the influence of
the media on children and adolescents, including its effect on cognitive
functioning, creative skills and the ability to produce original thought.
MEDIA CONSOLIDATION
Alger, D. (2000). Megamedia. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield.
Traces the threads of media ownership from these conglomerates to all of
their subsidiary media outlets.
Branwyn, G. (1997). Jamming the media. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.
McChesney, R. (1997). Corporate media and the threat to democracy. New York,
NY: Seven Stories Press.
Outlines the history of governmental subsidization of commercial media systems
at the expense of publicly owned media outlets.
McChesney, R. (2002). Our media, not theirs: the democratic struggle against
corporate media. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.
PUBLIC RELATIONS AND THE PERSUATION INDUSTRY
Rampton, S. & Stauber, J.C. (1995). Toxic sludge is good for you: Lies,
damn lies, and the public relations industry. Monroe, ME: Common Courage
Press.
Reports how the public relations industry operates in tandem with the marketing
agencies and exposes the means through which both industries manufacture
public opinion at the expense of true critical public discourse.
Rushkoff, D. (1999). Coercion: Why we listen to what “they”
say. New York, NY: Riverhead.
Shows how the media giants leverage their influence across the entire cultural
landscape by utilizing all of their media subsidiaries.
MARKETING
Frank, T.C. (1997). The conquest of cool: Business culture, counterculture,
and the rise of hip consumerism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Traces the development of the hip marketing style that dominates today’s
adolescent media from its inception in 1950s counterculture through its
eventual co-option.
Garfinkel, S. (2000). Database nation. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly &
Associates, Inc.
A meticulous account of how the marketing industry has historically borrowed
surveillance and persuasion techniques and technology from law enforcement
and intelligence gathering communities since the inception of the Cold War
in the 1950s.
Gladwell, M. (2000). The tipping point: How little things can make a big
difference. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
Features a profile of the Look-Look marketing agency and their utilization
of teen informants.
Klein, N. (2000). No logo. New York, NY: Picador.
A call-to-arms for cultural workers to employ critical pedagogy in their
work to promote the development of critical consciousness in their children
and students.
Lasn, K. (2000). Culture jam: How to reverse America’s suicidal binge.
New York, NY: Quill.
A primer for producing independent media as a means to develop critical
citizenship and expand the public discourse.
Schlosser, E. (2001). Fast food nation: The dark side of the all-American
meal. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Documents the growing ubiquity of corporate presence in the schools and
exhorts educators to find alternate means of funding.
Seabrook, J. (2000). Nobrow: The culture of marketing, the marketing of
culture. New York, NY: A.A. Knopf, distributed by Random House.
Theorizes that distinctions between the “high” culture of the
elite and the “low” culture of youth are being made irrelevant
by the ever increasing pervasiveness of contemporary marketers and their
post-modern philosophy of indiscriminate cultural appropriation.
Shenk, D. (1998). Data Smog: Surviving the information glut. New York, NY:
HarperEdge.
Examines society’s growing reliance on statistics and demographics
as a barometer of cultural change
Turow, J. (1997). Breaking up America: Advertisers and the new media world.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Describes how the media conglomerates rely on marketing agencies to differentiate
their sales message to several distinct audiences or demographics.
