absolutely. this is an msnbc special series. >> two, two, three -- ♪ >> cool. if you could only define it. >> define it would diminish what cool is. >> find it. >> everybody's trying to sell you cool. most of the time it don't work. you can't measure, you can't market. it is what it is. >> catch it. >> i just don't actually think cool exists. i don't think it's actually a thing. >> you could make a killing. >> cool equals dollars.

>> sounds like you're off to a good start. >> that's the eternal quest for those who try to capture cool. ♪ cash money, money >> and sell it. >> all of a sudden, underwear is fashion. brilliant. >> it worked like gangbusters. >> my question is, can it be done? >> i'm not going to speak too much about this because people pay me to speak about these things. ♪ hit it, hit it >> if you have got to promote something to make it cool, then it really ain't cool. ♪ ♪ >> who are you? who do you want to be? you might ask yourself these questions, but you're not on your own. the people trying to sell you stuff, they're trying to figure you out, too. on any given day, you might be exposed to 5,000 ads, and many

of the brands behind them hope you'll pick their product because they're cool. >> advertising marketing, 90% of it is about making your product cool. >> they tell me there's a lot of talent in advertising agencies. >> it's such a tall order for brands to make themselves cool. i almost feel sorry for them. >> what was needed was a new way of expressing the benefits to the motorists. >> right now as we speak, there are people sitting in conference rooms wondering, how do we make our product cool? >> they found the phrase peak pulling power every day. >> in the business of making products cool, first off, you have to have a good product. and from then, it's about telling the story. why is this important to the world? why should we care about this product? >> and here we show the satisfied customer. >> the minute we feel like somebody is trying to sell us something cool, it's no longer cool.

>> we began searching for an advertising theme. >> so, it is permanently elusive goal. >> you could trace the quest for cool in marketing back to one unlikely product. a small car named for an ugly insect. >> this was a car that had so many things against it. >> so, how did the volkswagen beetle come to change the way companies sell us things? and what did the nazis have to do with it? ♪ >> the climate of the '50s was very much a consumerist climate. we had won the war. people had money to spend. >> so they spent, spent to feel american, spent to keep up with the joneses, whoever they were, and spent to fill those

brand-new two-car garages. ♪ >> owning a car meant mobility, it meant freedom. there was a certain national pride to it. a lot of advertisements in that period talked about what the car meant as an american. >> an impressive entry from detroit, just to show that uncle sam is holding his own well against the foreign onslaught. ♪ >> the idea was that advertising worked by encouraging you to conform and to fit in with the mass society. everything was done by a book of rules, according to a formula. it was very mechanical way for making ads. it's this, you know, fantasy world of consuming the glamorous cars, always rendered in full color, you know, visually elongated, depicting as this sort of static machinery.

>> but consumer conformity wasn't for everyone. >> there were people who were very skeptical about the powers of advertising and the powers of consumption. >> many intellectuals were very smart and very shrewd about the changes they saw happening around them. >> there's a lot of resistance towards this consumer culture, towards conformity. >> one of the loudest voices of dissent came from an ad man turned counterculture hero, allen ginsberg. >> the nitroglycerin streaks of the fairies of advertising. >> the larger critique of advertising was that it is the sort of propaganda arm of the mass society. so, we were all becoming mindless consumers being told what to buy. >> show me. >> we were being depersonalized, dehumanized. advertising was taking our soul away and replacing it with packaged desires.

>> and for those who saw in this consumer craze a kind of fascist conformity, a new symbol was about to roll on to american shores. ladies and gentlemen, the bug. >> the volkswagen beetle was such an anomaly when it hit the american shores in the late 1950s. they had an enormous challenge, which to to sell it to the american people who were used to driving cadillacs. >> it was small. it was humble. and its origins were without a doubt un-american. >> officials speaks by hitler, they roll back on germany's motor show. >> it was developed by the nazis. it was originally called the strength through dray car. >> adolf hitler himself asked ferdinand porsche to design a car for the people, mass produced and cheap.

but by the end of world war ii, volkswagen was looking to expand and set its sights on america's deep pockets. so, how do you take a tiny car built for nazi mass consumption and sell it to america? advertising. >> the ad campaign that really changed the advertising industry and basically changed it for all time was ads for volkswagen, which started in 1959. they were put together by a very famous ad agency called doyle dane and back, or dd&b. >> we were always about engaging the intellect, engaging the sense of humor, engaging the consumer on the consumer's terms. in contrast to the multicolor, multipage inserts general motors was running, there was a single-page, black-and-white, lots of quotes, wasted white

space, tiny little car on a big page, "think small." >> these ads defied the conventions of 1950s-style advertising in just about every way. instead of looking enormous and powerful, they make the car look round and strange and small, and the advertising copy would actually appear to be mocking the product. you know, they'd be saying, look, we screwed up. this car was a lemon, you know, or something like that. so, instead of a product being something that you buy in order to signify conformity, the volkswagen is being sold as exactly the opposite. >> there was the mark of an individual. i don't need all the tailfins and portholes. i'm myself, and i'm comfortable in my own skin and in my little, underpowered beetle. >> this is before the counter culture, remember. this is before the beatles arrive in america.

this is well before the haight-ashbury. this is before the summer of love. this is long before any of that happens. >> the gamble worked. the year the ad first appeared, vw sales spiked. and that mysterious convergence, that elusive jackpot of cool and timing hit big. ♪ >> just as the counterculture was starting to explode. >> you could feel like you were so different from your parents, with their loaded, oversized car, that you could feel free and independent and a little bit of a maverick by owning it, and yet, you could still be part of a massive community of people who felt exactly as you did. >> it is the extreme irony, really, that the car that was supposed to be the emblem of rebellion against the mass society came from the worst mass society of them all, the original totalitarian society. >> and they're not afraid of new

ideas. >> vw didn't just transform their product, they sparked a revolution across the entire ad industry. >> you start seeing this idea of selling products not as a mode of conformity, but as a mode of resistance to the mass society. >> it was like our shackles had been taken off. we were free to do whatever we wanted. >> they would write articles in trade magazines about taking drugs and how this made you a more, you know, a more creative advertising man. ♪ orange crush >> it was a complete shift in the way products are sold, and it can all be traced back to a small car that made a big statement. >> a successful brand is one that catches something that has established its culture bona fides, perpetuates it long enough to give it a kind of voice in a marketplace, and then exploits the hell out of it and

rides the wave to selling millions of dollars worth before it ends. >> with a campaign that flipped the script, vw changed the ad game for all time, certifying cool as king. but would cool be cool enough to turn a struggling cigarette brand into a symbol of manhood? ♪ ooh, heaven is a place on earth ♪ uhp. i didn't believe it. again. ♪ ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth? ♪ i want to believe it. [ claps hands ] ♪ ooh i'm not hearing the confidence. okay, hold the name your price tool. power of options based on your budget! and! ♪ we'll make heaven a place on earth ♪ yeah! oh, my angels! ♪ ooh, heaven is a place on earth ♪ [ sobs quietly ] ♪ ooh, heaven is a place on earth ♪ heartburn and gas? ♪ now fight both fast

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this bed. in view of the continuing and mounting evidence from many sources, it is the judgment of the committee that cigarette smoking contributes substantially to mortality from certain, specific diseases and to the overall death rate. >> in 1964, the surgeon general announced its findings of smoking, and it was bad. bad for the 42% of americans who

were smokers, bad for the tobacco industry and its $8 billion a year in profits, and bad for everyone who believed that smoking was cool. >> mm, so good to your tastes. >> the cigarette companies were the most effective, most powerful purveyors of cool that probably ever existed. >> we have to look at advertising from the 1930s and the 1920s. there was in the tobacco industry a real effort. >> sure, i can do it. i know. >> thanks. >> to get movie stars to smoke. so that they would then convince the rest of america that this was a thing that you wanted to do, too, because it's a cool thing to do.

>> when there was talking in films, that's when you got a chance to really start to fall in love with these figures that were cool. the way they smoked their cigarette, the way they drank their cocktail. >> in the 1930s and '40s, as americans poured into movie theaters, they would have been hard pressed to find a movie star who didn't smoke. that's because two out of every three movie stars had cigarette endorsement deals. >> when the cameras stop, john wayne takes time out to enjoy his favorite cigarette, camel. >> and the tobacco industry was just getting started. >> think for yourself about cigarettes. you'll come to vice roy. viceroy is a cigarette with a thinking man's filter and a smoking man's taste. >> and the theater of war opened up a whole new market. >> the dye is cast. america is at war. the crucible of war has brought new heroes to the floor. >> when nearly a quarter of the

u.s. male population shipped off to the front, each soldier received a pack of cigarettes in their gi rations. >> they're the few comforts which make a fighting man's life more bearable. among these, a cigarette. >> everybody jumped into normandy with, you know, cartons of cigarettes. that was part of normal life. here i am, you know, facing who knows what. at least i have something familiar. >> every day, thousands of cases of chesterfields leave the factory bound overseas. >> tobacco's patriotic act was really good for business. consumption jumped 70% during the war. and in 1943, the tobacco companies manufactured 284 billion cigarettes. cigarettes plus soldiers equalled a new market and a new image for advertisers to embrace -- the male hero. >> the marlboro story is interesting from the leo burnett company.

they had some research that said marlboro was not seen as a masculine brand, and they had julie london singing their jingle -- ♪ you've got a lot to like with a marlboro ♪ ♪ a lot to like with a marlboro filter, filter ♪ >> this was a cigarette that was so feminine, they put red material around the filters so they weren't stained by the women's lipstick. >> but for marlboro, feminine was no longer a money-maker. in 1954, the brand captured only a 1% share of the market. it was time for a change. >> they decided to give it a masculine image. >> and they went all the way. agency head leo burnett surveyed his colleagues, and they all agreed that the most manly image around was a cowboy. >> marlboro man was probably the most brilliant insidious

campaign of all time. ♪ >> the marlboro man was macho. the marlboro man was self-confident. >> and profitable. within one year, the marlboro man helped boost philip morris' sales by 3,000%. >> the marlboro man was the ultimate cool guy, right? what's cooler than a cowboy? the individual who doesn't give a damn. >> marlboro tapped into an indispensable element of cool -- independence. ♪ [ whistling ] >> the closest thing to a synonymous phrase for cool is individual rebellion that a person carves out his or her own path. and that can get projected onto a product. >> it wasn't as if people were completely blind to the idea that smoking had deleterious effects. i think that the coolness of smoking kept that at bay for a

while. >> there can no longer be any doubt that the heavy smoking of cigarettes is a serious health hazard. >> but that day in 1964, when the surgeon general made his announcement, everything changed. >> when science finally came into the field to say, uh, you know, not only is it probably not good for you, but it's probably going to kill you, um, that did begin to change the narrative. >> cigarette consumption took a nose dive. big tobacco stood to lose billions. >> smoke which goes into the body. >> and it wasn't enough to deny the reports' findings. the tobacco companies wanted to survive, they had to stay cool. and to do that, they'd have to get creative, relying on fallacy. >> i believe the nicotine is not addictive. >> and feminism. >> you've come a long way, baby.

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in 1964, the verdict was in, cigarettes were declared bad for your health. so, big tobacco had to come one a new strategy. ♪ taste me, taste me, come on and taste me ♪ >> dorale, the new low-tar and nicotine cigarette. >> lights, low tar, longer filters, but no gimmick worked quite as well as that undeniable appeal, to be cool. ads aggressively targeted different demographics, from black america -- >> cool with a "k." here we have this idea that we're flipping something on its head. >> raleigh filtered kings. >> to newly empowered women. ♪ you've got virginia slims now, baby, you've come a long, long way ♪ >> they came out with virginia slims and the tag line was, you've come a long way, baby. look how far you've come.

now you can smoke, just like the men. you can be powerful with these cigarettes, just like the men. >> it's not real feminism, of course, because feminism isn't about having your own cigarettes, you know? that's not really the idea. ♪ >> and there was another group that tobacco companies were chasing. >> you had joe camel, right? joe camel, he was the cool camel with the leather jacket. he was the, you know, he was a cartoon. is it really, you know, a mystery who you're trying to target? when your icon is a cartoon? tobacco knew exactly what they were doing. they were targeting kids. >> that cool rebel image that tobacco companies had so carefully crafted was now tailored to attract some new customers. >> young people, a, think they're going to live forever and there's no vulnerability,

and b, want to taunt that. >> so, it's really important for marketers and companies to capture the adolescent market because they're trying to build brand loyalty. now, brand loyalty is a cradle to the grave kind of thing. >> i dormed in high school, and i had tobacco ads all over the walls. it was wallpaper for me. it was so cool. and you know what, i did smoke. >> meanwhile, big tobacco continued to wage a war against science. ♪ please let me testify >> i believe that nicotine is not addictive. >> i believe that nicotine is not addictive. >> and i, too, believe that nicotine is not addictive. >> but in 1998, the tide began to turn. four major tobacco companies were accused of covering up their product's addictive nature. they didn't admit to wrongdoing, but they did pay out $206 billion, one of the largest civil lawsuit settlements in

american history. >> nearly every state has signed on, agreeing to drop their lawsuits for the certainty of a settlement. ♪ >> ironically, some of this money, it went after the very companies that were paying it, funding a new antismoking campaign that would fight advertising with advertising. >> if you're trying to persuade someone not to do something, you should use techniques that have been successful in persuading them to do something. >> my name is ari murkin. i was a creative director on the truth campaign. >> ari and his team faced a major uphill battle. >> camel filters, they're not for everybody. >> undoing generations of advertising that made smoking cool. >> the cigarette companies knew what triggers to pull. they knew exactly how to position their products, especially to young people.

they were targeting that need that kids have to rebel, to make statements, to do something rebellious. >> the truth campaign had to make their message to kids cooler than the one coming from tobacco companies. >> you look to the youngers, they're the people that are going to change things. >> so, in the year 2000, they set out to change the game. >> we knew that they weren't going to respond to health messages. the only way to reach them was to shift their rebellion. >> you want to rebel against something? you want an injustice? we give you the american tobacco industry. i remember the day of the bonnie beg shoot.

>> how many people tobacco kills every day? >> and here i was in front of the philip morris building, and the kids began to unload these body bags. you know, something happened. >> we're going to leave this here for you so you can see what 1,200 people actually look like. >> this wasn't a commercial anymore. this was an event. it was a protest. we exposed the tobacco industry for what it really was, and that was a group of corporations that are marketing and profiting from a deadly, addictive product that was killing 1,200 people a day. so it was almost impossible to fathom how many people 1,200 actually is until you see this scene in front of you. >> young people clearly don't want to be told what to do.

so, when it was about, oh, these big companies are trying to fake you out, these big companies, the man, the establishment, the authority figures are the ones that are getting you to smoke, now you own rebellion about not smoking, and it was the first campaign that started to move the needle. >> by flipping the notion of cool on its head, the truth campaign began to turn the tide against big tobacco. by 2004, the number of teenagers who took up smoking annually dropped by an estimated 450,000. they succeeded at convincing young people that a product that had always been cool no longer was. ♪ but what if a company wanted to transform the image of a product that was never cool to begin with? a product like underwear?

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this bed.

following breaking news out of california. these are live pictures where there are reports of shots fired at the dell mar racetrack. site of an ice cube concert. not clear if there are injuries right now. the racetrack says the situation is contained and the concert will go on as scheduled. and the family of later senator mccain said one last good-bye as they laid his body to rest in maryland. this follows a week of remembrance in which his legacy was honored. now back to "story of cool." ♪ for marketers, there's no easy route to cool. but some have further to travel. ♪

from loin cloths to coveralls, undergarments have for most of history served a simple purpose -- protect and conceal. >> i feel good all under. you know why i feel good all under? my haines underwear. >> american advertisers pushed comfort and function. >> traditionally, underwear back then was bought by the wife. >> all you need to know is four little words -- fruit of the loom. there's a size for every husband. >> they went to walmart and they got the 12-pack of whatever generic brand. there were fruit of the loom, there was jockey, there were these sort of brands. >> you used to have underwear sold in the same goofy way, guys dressed as fruit, or look at this elastic band. >> check me out, fruit of the loom briefs stand up to higher heat. >> the waistband is a-okay! >> lis literally, the fruit of the loom campaign was guys dancing around in fruit outfits with little, you know, like -- nobody wants to wear that underwear. these guys are wearing -- they're fruits!

♪ >> but in 1992, it was time for underwear to get over being lame. that year, high-end fashion designer calvin klein came on the market with a new hybrid style of underwear. the men's boxer brief. now, how to sell it. >> my name's neil kraft, creative director at kraftworks, my ad agency. we were fishing for a way to advertise the underwear. both calvin and i at the same time opened up "rolling stone," we were thinking about what would we do for the ad campaign. we realized there was marky mark in calvin klein underwear. ♪ yo, it's about that time >> marky mark wahlberg, the 21-year-old rapper from boston who rose to fame as part of marky mark and the funky bunch, struck a pose appropriated from hip-hop culture -- pants low and

his calvin kleins exposed. >> mark wahlberg is a guy who always embraced hip-hop culture, always. always. of course, he wore his pants where they would hang low. that's the way hip-hop culture wore their pants. >> very early on, i think advertisers began to understand that hip-hop was sellable. marky mark himself had been seen as a complete outcast. we didn't buy into his cool when he was marky mark and the funky bunch. we saw that as an affront to authentic hip-hop, but calvin klein saw something that we didn't see, which was a broader commercial appeal, that marky mark had some things in him that white audiences would immediately attach themselves to. >> "rolling stone" readers saw an emerging style. calvin's team saw opportunity. >> we didn't invent wearing

baggy pants low. the african-american community in general started to wear their pants low. when you wear your pants low, what happens? you show your underwear. you know, a white guy takes it up, and he goes, oh, i can do that, too. if you figure out a way to amplify something that's going on in the culture and make it mainstream, that's for advertising when it becomes cool. we hardly had to do anything. marky made it cool. i mean, we just exposed him. >> shouts goes out to my man calvin klein, good looking out for the drawers, not saying i would do another fruit of the loom commercial or anything like that because they don't make the hype shorts. >> that's one of the most iconic campaign, because it felt like hip-hop, expression, but like high art, beautiful, and mark wahlberg represented culture. it certainly put fruit of the looms on notice. >> within a year, 90% of calvin klein's revenue came from its underwear. in this case, the flow from

inner city street to fashion was the elusive driver for cool. >> you know, underwear was one of the most generic thing in the world. calvin klein branded underwear, and basically did a fashion campaign and took young, sexy celebrities. all of a sudden, underwear is fashion. brilliant. >> it's a tactic that worked for calvin klein in the early '90s. but 20 years later, a product that needed to transform faced a new problem and would take the search for cool into uncharted territory. >> i'm on a horse. adults are just kids with much, much better toys. [ giggling ] the c-class sedan, coupe and cabriolet. the thrills keep getting better. the 2018 c-class sedan starting at $40,250.

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freaky fresh. freaky fast. jimmy john's. freak yeah. uhp. i didn't believe it. again. ♪ ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth? ♪ i want to believe it. [ claps hands ] ♪ ooh i'm not hearing the confidence. okay, hold the name your price tool. power of options based on your budget! and! ♪ we'll make heaven a place on earth ♪ yeah! oh, my angels! ♪ ooh, heaven is a place on earth ♪ [ sobs quietly ] how cool can a men's hygiene product be? cool enough to revive a fading brand in the midst of a nationwide recession? in 2009, old spice faced a problem. >> it was pushing 100 years old.

>> good, tangy old spice scent. >> it has the name old in it, and it has all that collective memory about kind of your grandfather's cologne. >> here's a fellow who looks and feels like the top of the morning. mm-hmm. that's because he's starting his day the old spice way. old spice aftershave lotion. >> old spice was something your dad used, maybe your grandfather used, and certainly, any young person wouldn't go near it. >> if they were going to stay alive, old spice needed to capture a new market. one of the few that was thriving in the face of the u.s. financial crisis, men's grooming products. but that was a tall order. >> what they were eager to do was figure out how to introduce old spice to a new generation. this generation has been so savvy about how commercials work. >> you know, ads. >> now let magic happen to you.

>> the things you skip past whenever you can. >> this is a chronic problem in advertising, how to cut through the clutter, you know, and how to reach the cynical and jaded consumer. >> to break through, old spice would have to do something unprecedented. so, they hired an agency that's off the beaten path. in portland, oregon, widen kennedy has built his business model around capturing cool. ♪ >> we're seeing if we can develop this for a music project in the future. >> these people deal in cool because of this point of view they take on the world of being outsiders, a bunch of people tucked away beside a river in oregon. >> the agency threw out conventional hiring practices. >> i was supposed to be an astronaut. >> my degree is in criminal justice. >> i am an example of hiring wrong.

>> and will follow any lead to find something new. >> if i put my feet under my bum, i can now lift it. and now i can do bad stuff to him. >> because they have to if they want to survive. >> this is applicable to all positions in jiu jitsu. it's applicable to all situations you'll be at wieden and kennedy. >> there's so much noise out there these days, for an ad to cut through, it has to be either very funny, it has to be surprisingly honest, it has to be very inspiring, very emotional, it has to just be extremely something, so you notice it. >> it was this type of thinking that helped them form their strategy for the old spice campaign. >> there was a lot of pressure to try to figure out how to make old spice into something it wasn't, which is new. >> what you had in the market in that moment was acts. this might be a personal commentary, but i don't think it was particularly funny.

it was like, put this on, girls will swoon, and then it kind of went into what cools want. >> get caliente. >> when you're 16 and you see the clutter of these kind of ridiculously self-important, not very self-aware, competitive brands who are promising you the world, and you're too smart for that. you know that that's not how the world works. >> wow, what's that after shave you're wearing? >> it needs a little bit more nuance and self-awareness in that. >> the worst -- in fact, that's it -- the people who are cool, are called the people who don't take themselves too seriously because there is nothing worse than that. as soon as you do that, you're out. >> you have to find ways to acknowledge that your audience is in on the joke. that's at the core of i think what cool is, is feeling like you're in the know of something. >> wieden and kennedy set out to create an ad that winked at young men, but they also wanted to target another audience.

>> here's an interesting fact. a huge percentage of deodorant for guys is bought by women, it's bought by moms, it's bought by girlfriends, bought by wives. then it was actually our client who really wanted us to consider doing a campaign targeting women. >> they drew up a plan. but it all hinged on finding a leading man who could pull off the subversion they were aiming for. >> isaiah mustafa is a former nfl football player, not a hugely successful one. he came to a casting call. the way he presents himself is so effortless, so charming. isaiah does not lose his cool. >> mustafa got the job, and when filming began, he didn't disappoint. >> hello, ladies. look at your man. now back to me. now back at your man. now back to me. >> he never misses a beat. he never looks away from the camera. he never struggles. >> sadly, he isn't me, but if you stop using ladies' scented body wash and switched to old spice, he could smell like he's me.

>> meanwhile, the whole world is changing all around him and changing in awesome, awesome ways. >> look down, back up, where are you? you're on a boat with the man your man could smell like. >> so, that's kind of the schtick is how unflappable and unfazed can this guy get when magic is literally happening. >> what's in your hand? back at me. i have it. it's an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love. >> he has got it nailed, and you can feel it, even when we were on the set, you could feel it. >> look again. the tickets are now diamond. anything is possible when your man smells like old spice and not a lady. i'm on a horse. ♪ >> what you see is this timeless pitch of this is what girls like done in such a ridiculously off-the-wall, self-aware and even self-deprecating way that you go, at least they're being honest with me, and i like that. that's pretty cool.

>> wieden and kennedy hit the cool jackpot. in five months, sales doubled and old spice went from dad joke to inside joke. >> the old spice campaign is a model of how advertising can transform a product. >> when you can get a brand to step outside of the norm of how a brand would behave in an ad, to the point where people are like, that was just good, that was awesome, i want to watch that again, that's really something. >> the old spice thing is a case study that we use all the time to show people, you know, what you can do with a rejuvenated brand. it's really quite brilliant. it made that brand cool, you know. >> since the old spice ad first hit airwaves, the formula's already changed. >> right now, advertising is a mess. >> social media is changing what it means to be cool faster than anyone can track.

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♪ ♪ search #cool on instagram. you'll see upwards of 100 million posts. cool, dynamic as ever, has made the leap into yet another new medium. >> social media plays an important role when it comes to spreading what's cool. every day people are posting millions of images of their next thing, which makes the cycles even faster. >> cool has never travelled so fast.

it is more difficult than ever to predict where it will come from next. >> i think because we now have social, because we have so much media pumped to us, you're able to hear these stories about people and brands and things in a much more deeper, more richer way, so you actually find out people are actually cooler than you ever thought. >> the edges form the center now more than ever. >> cool may be more fleeting than ever before, but it's no less valuable to marketers. so instead of retreating, they're deploying the troops. >> whatever's at the margarines is always going to be cool. there are people who are called cool hunters who go hunt for cool. >> it may be over here. can you see here? >> check out sarah owen. >> it's so good to see you, love. what's your favorite part about your outfit? >> so what i'm doing is really scanning those taste makers that are kind of pushing forward the street style agenda.

>> tell us a little bit about what you're wearing today. >> i'm wearing romanian designers. shoes are from thailand and romania. >> we're interested about not only what they're wearing, but what they're thinking, how they're behaving, what they're consuming, what apps they might be downloading. >> as long as sarah can keep up with the accelerating and ever-changing cool, she can sell it to brands at a premium. >> staying relevant to us is important. once you have that time to reflect, snapchat and see what other people saw through the second screen, all of a sudden it becomes more of a cohesive aha moment. >> the screens in our lives should be an advertiser's best weapon. instead, it might just turn the whole industry upside down with the flick of a finger. >> right now advertising is a mess. meaning, the days of just making

television commercials are diminishing. >> listen, like i say, love the internet. it's amazing. uber, can't live without it. i don't know how i can get through a day without googling myself. i'm joking but i do wonder if we should just sort of take a breath and go, where do we want this to go? >> it's blown up media, media as we knew it and used to fill it is eroding under our feet as we walk and social is the net that's there that's going to have to catch the ideas we make. ♪ ♪ >> one group still dominates the marketplace. >> i think teenagers crave cool because they don't have a fixed identity and i think cool provides them a sort of cover-all for who they are. cool is a sort of way to transcend your sense of powerlessness. you can't vote. you can't drive. you can't drink or smoke.

who are you? okay, this is something you can actually do, you can consume and you can be cool through consuming. >> not to be ageist at all, but, yes, i think most trend forecasters are looking at younger people. i don't know the last time that a trend has bubbled and up become cool from a retirement village. >> in the world of social media, the kids are no longer just the targets of marketing. they are the markets. -- marketing. >> almost as soon as a rogue star appears on instagram as this icon of cool, the establishment gloms on to it and is like immediately sending them all kinds of free merchandise and saying will you be in our ad campaign and will you do this and will you do that? >> we have terms now, influencers. if you're trying to sell a shoe, you give it to these taste

makers. >> taste makers, like lucas, an 18-year-old model and stylist whose cool index is at its apex. >> how did i get here? i mean, it's all like really social media helped me out heavy. i'm a taste maker. brands are like this kid, he appeals to a crowd and makes them like things, makes them dislike things. like, i kind of control a lot of things. the young influence the young. we're their future consumers so they listen to us. they pay attention a lot to what we do, and that's why they change their whole brands after us. i don't even have that much time. i -- realistic, i only have two years left before people see me as -- the moment people hear 20 in your name, it's like, all right, dude. >> lucas jet sets between new york, london and paris.

while he rides the ephemeral wave of cool, he gets paid, paid to post things, paid to show up places, paid to put a style on others, like rap star tyga. >> let's do an arms crossed like this. let me just fix the jacket real quick. >> i think clothes are cool. i think music's cool. i think some people are cool. not all people. but creativity is cool. i don't think motorcycles are cool. think cars are cool. i think a lot of things are cool. i could go on for another 45 minutes about what's cool and what's not cool. the most random person can make something cool. like, a 19-year-old kid can sit in his basement and make three jackets and start a multimillion dollar brand out of nowhere. you have a 50-year-old dude in an office on the internet all day finding out about a trend two weeks after it's cool and we're already over it and then

you're wasting all this money for these marketing campaigns and doing all this stuff. we don't even like that anymore. >> before you know it, it's gone. that is forever will be the story of cool. this is an msnbc special series. white lives matter. white lives matter. >> hate is on the rise in america. >> bans on white. >> it's emboldened. >> the war on whites is real. >> normalized. >> the government is nothing compared to the jewish menace. >> and destroying lives. >> this is why -- >> there are people who will say once a nazi always a nazi, and that you can't change who you are. >> but i know change is possle