10 Questions: What's Cool?
(Noise Marketing)
One marketing agency—Noise Marketing—specializes in reaching young adults for corporations like Six Flags and JP Morgan Chase. Its CEO, Noah Kerner, who founded the agency at age 25, just co-wrote a new book on the subject, called "Chasing Cool". He is the subject of this week’s 10 Questions.
1. Noah, your agency, Noise Marketing, has become a go-to shop for brands like Sprite and Yahoo to try to reach a younger audience. What are you teaching them exactly?
Young people are driven by aspiration. They don't want to be spoken to as young people. One of the most common misperceptions is the belief that in order to reach young people, you need to pander to them.
2. You've written about starting to DJ at the age of 14--and becoming such a hit that you even appeared on the Tonight Show. Was that good training for a marketing career?
It was the best training. Like I write in the book, DJing is the ultimate focus group only you're really out there with people seeing what moves them, what bores them, and what it takes to keep them coming back for more. To be a good marketer, you need to be intimately connected to culture. Same thing applies to DJ's.
3. Your new book talks about how companies can stand out in a cluttered marketplace. What are the obstacles, in your view, to brands getting their message out to young people?
Young people are always moving, so you need to move with them...
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