the search for cool

Above: a cool person.

Below: people who are not cool.

Wieden + Kennedy Creative Director Tony D and Managing Director Neil C appear in Channel 4 documentary The Search For Cool. This news comes a bit late for anyone who might have wanted to watch it (like members of Tony and Neil's immediate families) as it screened this morning in the not-exactly-primetime slot of 9.30am.

The synopsis is:

It's something people strive to be and if you could bottle it, you would. But what really is 'cool'? In The Search For Cool, advertising man Martin Cole (of Grey London) is on a mission – he's going on a journey across Britain in search of the meaning of 'cool'.

In his line of work, Martin travels the world observing and predicting trends. And more and more, the companies he's working for are all after the same thing. They want to know what's cool and they want to use that knowledge to make their products cool.

On his quest in search of 'cool', Martin visits skateboarders in Edinburgh, 'grime kids' in London and indie bands.  Martin also examines the financial gains to be made from understanding what's cool. He meets the advertising men who spend their lives trying to make brands appear cool and looks at the re-invention of Honda as a 'cool' brand.

That'll be us, then. You have to be very wary of doing these things. It's very easy to come across as, quite frankly, a bunch of self-important advertising luvvie twats. Particularly if it's anything to do with being an arbiter of 'cool'. Clearly, anyone who was actually, genuinely cool would have no truck with a TV show called 'The Search for Cool'. They'd be too cool to appear on it. But the show seemed to showcase our work in a fairly positive way and we didn't come across as too twattish. (I hope.) We certainly didn't pretend to know anything about cool other than that trying to be cool is uncool, for a brand just as for a person. And the fact that it went out at 9.30 am on a Thursday means that probably no-one we know saw it anyway. But I've now managed to upload a clip, so if you want to watch it, here it is. Judge for yourself.

You can see a trailer for the show here. But as this is an edit of the best bits, it doesn't include Neil or Tony.