Marketing Image Culture

Marketing Image Culture

As Alan Liu defines "cool", it is a non-political protest in society, "a gesture of ambivalent oppositionality." In Liu's terms, "cool" is a cultural component of the information age, and can only exist and have meaning within the environment it protests. This essay seeks to explore the relationship image culture, marketing, and Alan Liu's concept of "cool."

In a recent presentation he gave at New York University, Liu previewed his forthcoming book The Laws of Cool : The Cultural Life of Information, which describes the importance of "cool" in the information age. To assist his explanation, he compares corporate culture to the Guayaki tribe of South America. Liu says that in both cultures there is a central problem, an unreasonable demand placed on some people that must be dealt with. As he opens his presentation, Liu makes an important point: being a part of a community is both empowering and stifling.

The demand placed upon the information age worker is to retain productivity and remain valuable in the traditional sense, while in the postmodern sense being flexible and decentralized. Workers must keep order in their jobs to be productive, but also be able to excel at a wide variety of tasks that often require a breakdown and restructuring of corporate structures, departments, teams, and tasks.

For the Guayaki, the job of hunting parallels the demand of flexibility required of Liu's information worker. Hunters are charged with the task of feeding their tribe, and sharing their wives, since Guayaki men outnumber women two to one. (I mention the latter condition because Liu made a point of it; whether or not this aspect of Guayaki life represents normality or hardship was not addressed in Liu's presentation.) Hunting in the forest with a bow and arrow requires a huge amount of skill, with dire consequences if unsuccessful, for the tribe will then not eat. In both "primitive" and technologically advanced cultures, there exists what Liu terms mandatory and individual disempowerment. Both hunters and information workers must defer to the will of their tribe.

In response to stifling, both the tribesman and the information worker develop "cool." "The desire for flexibility and decentralization opens the gap between a culture and its people," says Liu. "Cool" is a technique for expressing that gap between a society and it's people. In the case of the Guayaki, this technique involves singing a highly personalized warrior song at nightfall, which essentially serves to fuel ego and one's sense of individuality.