Analysis Of The Coolhunt By Malcom Gladwell

The Trendsetters and Followers
In Malcom Gladwell’s 1997 article, “The Coolhunt” published by The New Yorker, he discusses the topic of ‘cool’, and how quickly it fluctuates and transforms into something completely different and sometimes the exact opposite of what it previously was, therefor creating problems for merchandisers. Gladwell points out, “The quicker the chase, the quicker the flight. The act of discovering what's cool is what causes cool to move on, which explains the triumphant circularity of coolhunting: because we have coolhunters like DeeDee and Baysie, cool changes more quickly, and because cool changes more quickly, we need coolhunters like DeeDee and Baysie.” Throughout Gladwell’s article, he discloses the findings of DeeDee Gordon and Baysie Wightman, two

Gordon and Wightman go around looking for outcast teenage kids, in the streets of big cities to discover what is cool and upcoming. Gorgon says, “There were a lot of places could go to buy vinyl records. It was a strong place to go for looks. Then it went back to being horrible.” It just goes to show how style is always changing, and everyday new items are in demand. Gladwell uses one of the most famous diffusion studies from Bruce Ryan and Neal Gross's with their analysis of the spread of hybrid seed corn. The first to use this hybrid seed corn were “innovators”, next were “early adaptors” then came the “early majority” and “late majority”, finally there were the “laggards”. The “innovators” are the trendsetters in what is and is not cool, and everyone else are the followers. Once the laggards are doing what is deemed cool,