Week 9--Wednesday Class Response

The short life cycle of coolness demands that the culture industries try to always stay ahead of the curve. The underground advertising of groups like Cornerstone is a way of smoothly riding the curve, getting inside of the curve. This means the product gets so associated with everyday life that it moves effortlessly along the curve. And cool is automatically up-to-date because the product just becomes incarnate organically through the close association with the audience. MTV felt they needed to get a closer connection to their audience in 1997, and they did and their ratings skyrocketed to the highest in history.