Branded: the buying and selling of teenagers

Alissa Quart

Basic Books, Feb 19, 2004 - Business & Economics - 247 pages

Generation Y has grown up in an age of the brand, bombarded by name products. In Branded, Alissa Quart illuminates the unsettling new reality of marketing to teenagers, as well as the quieter but no less worrisome forms of teen branding: the teen consultants who work for corporations in exchange for product; the girls obsessed with cosmetic surgery who will do anything to look like women on TV; and those teens simply obsessed with admission into a name-brand college. We also meet the pockets of kids attempting to turn the tables on the cocksure corporations that so cynically strive to manipulate them. Chilling, thought-provoking, even darkly amusing, Branded brings one of the most disturbing and least talked about results of contemporary business and culture to the fore-and ensures that we will never look at today's youth the same way again.

What people are saying

Review: Branded: The Buying And Selling Of Teenagers

User Review  - Rebecca - Goodreads

Definetly something I worry about happening to my kids. The amount of advertising in America is insane. Knowing what is going on, may be a part of the battle. It is difficult to explain to kids that ...

Review: Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers

User Review  - Tanvir301 - Goodreads

An easily readable account of the harmful effects of consumer culture on teenagers.

Editorial Review - (c) 2002

For the readers still waiting for a substantive follow-up to Naomi Klein's No Logo, this is the book. Quart, a former media columnist for the Independent, follows the bread-crumb trail from the Fourth Annual Advertising and Promotion to Kids conference (no joke, unfortunately) to the mechanics of "peer-to-peer marketing," product placement in video games and the ever-escalating parties of the "bar mitzvah showcase." She hones in on teens' delicate self-fashioning and how it's manipulated for profit by adult "teen trendspotters" who insinuate themselves into the lives of "Influencer" teens in order to cop "youth buzz." Quart is brilliant on the world in which teens "obsessed with brand names feel they have a lack that only superbranding will cover over." She gets great quotes in her first-person encounters with her mostly female subjects, giving the book real voice. And Quart's analyses-of teen movies, SAT tutoring (to improve scores and pose college choices as brands), teen SUV ownership and the role of parents-are sharp and funny. Her exploration of how teens internalize and express market logic-through a process of "self-branding" that can include teen boob jobs and kid-produced anorexia Weblogs-is original and striking. The book lacks a broad cultural perspective: most interviewees are white, middle class and female, so it's difficult for Quart to generalize about how American teens and tweens as a whole use money and products to define themselves. Nevertheless, by the end, readers should be able to spot certain youth demographics and deconstruct their branded worlds instantaneously-and with empathy and anger. Agent, Peter McGuigan. (Feb. 1) 

Contents

• III: 3
• IV: 17
• V: 37
• VI: 47
• VII: 63
• VIII: 77
• X: 97
• XI: 113
• XII: 129
• XIV: 143
• XV: 165
• XVI: 189
• XVII: 203
• XVIII: 215
• XIX: 225
• XX: 233

Popular passages

Page 133 - O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength ; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.‎

Page 84 - You see us as you want to see us: in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.‎

Page 50 - You can tell someone about a bruised finger. How can a little girl describe a bruise deep inside? No, your daughter won't ever tell you the humiliation she's felt in begging those precious hours of television from a neighbor. You give your child's body all the sunshine and fresh air and vitamins you can. How about sunshine for his morale? How about vitamins for his mind? Educators agree — television is all that and more for a growing child. When television means so much more...‎

Page 204 - ... isn't looking, how to know when he is looking, how to make him think you are working when you know he is looking. He learns that in real life you don't do anything unless you are bribed, bullied, or conned into doing it, that nothing is worth doing for its own sake, or that if it is, you can't do it in school.‎

Page 83 - ... girls jived in the aisles. Those expelled from the cinema vented their rage on a tea-stall situated on the pavement outside. Cups and saucers were thrown about. It was a very English riot. It represented a new convergence: trouble-as-fun, fun-as-trouble. The two image clusters, the bleak portraits of juvenile offenders and the exuberant cameos of teenage life reverberate, alternate and sometimes they get crossed.‎

Page 84 - Saturday in detention for whatever it is we did wrong, but we think you're crazy for making us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us: in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.‎

Page xvii - Teens suffer more than any other sector of society for this wallto-wall selling. They are at least as anxious as their parents about having enough money and maintaining their social class, a fear that they have been taught is best allayed by more branded gear. And they have taken to branding themselves, believing that the only way to participate in the world is to turn oneself into a corporate product or a corporate spy to help promote the products to other kids. A counter to the unbearable commercialization...‎

Page 23 - slightly awkward or overweight or not conventionally pretty'. She speculates that '[W]hile many teenagers are branded, the ones most obsessed with brand names feel they have a lack that only superbranding will cover over and insure against social ruin' (Quart, 2003: 31). Be this as it may, trend scouts are interested in the people who possess an expertise in predicting and or even anticipating fads and fashions, who have a motivation to constantly stay at the top of the field, to use Bourdieu's terminology....‎

Page 97 - Skateboarder Tony Hawk maneuvers near a Quiksilver sign. When Hawk melons or lipslides on a thin ramp, the Quiksilver logo is visible again, on his T-shirt. The action moves to Tokyo. When Hawk and his skater pals perform airwalks, they flash past the ubiquitous Quiksilver logo, which is nestled among all the other stickers and bright neon lights and the signs blaring brands such as Nokia and Jeep.‎

About the author

Alissa Quart is a graduate of Brown University and the Columbia School of Journalism. She has written features for publications ranging from the New York Times and Lingua Franca to Elle, The Nation, and Salon. She lives in New York City.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Branded: the buying and selling of teenagers; Art of Mentoring Series
• Author: Alissa Quart
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Basic Books, 2004
• ISBN: 0738208620, 9780738208626
• Length: 247 pages
• Subjects: Brand name products; Brand name products/ Marketing; Branding (Marketing); Business & Economics / Advertising & Promotion; Business & Economics / Consumer Behavior; Business & Economics / Marketing / General; Consumer behavior; Consumers' preferences; Psychology / Developmental / Adolescent; Psychology / Developmental / Child; Reference / Consumer Guides; Social Science / Children's Studies; Teenage consumers