P Diddy himself, and his conglomerate Bad Boy Entertainment, is expanding his horizons to increase profitability. Like P Diddy, Louis Vuitton and Kate Spade are expanding into other markets. Louis Vuitton, in addition to purses and luggage, is now designing and marketing shoes, and clothing. Kate Spade has expanded their catalogue to include shoes, clothing, stationary, pajamas and skin care products above and beyond purses and luggage. Stephen Sprouse, the graffiti typeface designer Vuitton has used for a number of their products, is now designing a line of clothing and accessories for the discount department store Target in the United States. Product diversification recently, it seems, is essential and obligatory to maintain a level of competition and admission to large market exposure. It appears that these corporations are attempting to saturate the markets that they are able to flourish in, in order to exploit the potential to create capital and increase consumer consumption. Youth subculture is not exempt from this practice, it is compromised and taken advantage of as corporations co-opt facets of "cool" to sell back to the mainstream mass youth market. The ability to sell to youth culture as well as selling the culture itself first requires being able to standardize, and then commodify the culture. This process is extremely involved, and it is becoming increasingly intricate; it is becoming less of an art and more of a science. This intricacy is especially apparent with the level of difficulty involved in evaluating the youth market accurately. Goodman and Dretzin explicitly describe the youth market as "stubborn" and "unresponsive". Youth culture is ever evolving. It is hard to pin down, which makes it very unique and difficult to standardize. The Merchants of Cool prominently features "Cool hunting", an investigative method of observation, that plays a big part in the evaluation of youth culture. It attempts to permeate subculture on a personal level by going out on the frontlines to document, report on and use young people's own ideas for mass-market appeal. There is no question that youth culture is a big business. The demand for specificity in the youth market grows every day. Theodor W. Adorno, in his essay Introduction to the Sociology of Music, illustrates the notion of the teenager who experiences pseudo-individualism through the commodification of popular music (31). Adorno's analysis presents the idea of the "ideal listener". This individual both remembers a hit song, and is able to identify the lyrics as pertaining to his or her own life (27). This analysis can be extended from popular music to the interpretation of advertising targeted towards teenagers. Barak and Goodman clearly demonstrate that advertisers aim to have teenagers identify with their copy as much as possible. This goal is achieved, as Adorno mentions, through a process of standardization and commodification. Adorno explains the concept of standardization as making a product as palatable, desirable and digestible to as wide an audience as possible. Once a commodity good is standardized, it can be produced on a mass scale, generating a surplus to sell for profit. "Cool hunting" begins this process. Marketable components of youth culture are then exposed and sold back to young people, and are made into signifiers of commodity fetishism used in advertising. The other side of this argument is that this practice and relationship is not a new one. The corporation takes a role early on in our lives. Children's play is lead by narratives produced by cross-integrated toys and television programming such as Teletubbies, Sesame Street or G.I. Joe. Corporations are presenting marketing strategies to establish product for advertising campaigns, rather than producing advertisements for established products. This was the case in the 1980's with the Strawberry Shortcake doll and cartoon series. Thirty-minute cartoon advertisements were broadcast as advertising to sell the dolls. The doll and the show were a marketing campaign released together (Kline 307). Advertising influences imagination and establishes ideals early on for consumerism and corporate reception (Kline 311). Stephen Kline delves into children's play further in his book Out of The Garden: Toys, TV and Children's Culture in the Age of Marketing, examining the way in which play has been manufactured to encourage consumption of commodity goods. Via this lens, it is reasonable to raise the supposition that although it is youth subculture actively being sought out and appropriated, it is possible that the subculture is anticipated and expected somehow, and then expertly cultivated to perform for the corporation and not for the subculture.

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