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05.17.2002

“HartBeat” is The Hartman Group's FREE online newsletter, providing insight, analysis, information and strategy to give business leaders the knowledge and vision to build sustainable brands.

This issue of HartBeat is excerpted from a recent N|sight Magazine, The Hartman Group's bi-annual publication exploring the dynamics of the health and wellness arena.

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Starbucks, Blue Note And The Birth Of Cool - Part One

The Hartman Group talks a lot about what we're referring to as the coming Soul Age and the cooling down of the culture and the American Spirit. But how does that relate back to the American Company?

Recently in business and marketing circles there has been a renewed interest in all things "cool." Anxious to capitalize on "hip cachet" and catch a free-ride on the coat-tails of the buzz factor, marketers are devoting serious resources in effort to better understand precisely how "cool" works. Whereas 20 or 30 years ago many in the business world equated cool with labels such as "fad," "trend" or "popular" (e.g., pet rocks, hula-hoops and silly string were cool), our understanding has now grown ever more sophisticated. That is, we now view cool as something of a posture - a contrived (though unconscious-appearing) attitude or stance that acknowledges the absurdity, artifice and pretense of human existence with a knowing wink.

Jack Kerouac was the quintessential expression of cool - an ordinary, salt-of-the-earth guy whose rejection of tradition and conformity appeared implicitly natural (doesn't everybody hitch-hike around America drinking and writing?). Ditto for Chet Baker, Dorothy Parker and Bobby DeNiro. By contrast, folks like Dennis Rodman, Britney Spears and Barbara Streisand aren't cool at all. They may be notorious, they may be popular, but they lack a refined sense of "poised nonchalance" - the defining element that separates the cool from the cartoon caricatures among us. This is a point best illustrated by Henry Winkler's character Fonzie from Happy Days, a fellow whose relentless efforts to convey cool to the lowest common denominator of a national television audience rendered him best suited for posters, refrigerator magnets, lunchboxes and magazine covers (e.g., Dynamite).

Of course, we could also extend "cool" to describe other arenas of social life - ideas, attitudes, styles, objects, etc. Whether it be in the stylistic trappings of mid-Twentieth Century bohemian subculture (poetry, coffee or jazz) or in more recent, but now dated, developments of authentic youth culture (ripped jeans, flannel shirts and grunge), we rely on these markers to separate the "naturally cool cats" from the imposters.

* * *

Recently, while in the midst of revising the above paragraphs at a local Starbucks, I glanced at the table next to me and noticed an entire display casually devoted to Blue Note recordings and paraphernalia. Cluttered around the table were Blue Note CD samplers (collections of jazz recordings by the likes of Chet Baker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, etc., which were previously released on the Blue Note record label), bags of Starbucks signature "Blue Note Blend" coffee, assorted promotional literature and a handbill advertising an upcoming in-store concert by Blue Note artist Ray Brown. That's right, soon we can expect to catch our favorite jazz recording artists at our neighborhood Starbucks.

Be it the Bohemian subculture of the 1950s or our present-day culture of "Lifestyle"; coffee and jazz - the tools of cool - make comfortable bedfellows.

Stay tuned for Part Two of "Starbucks, Blue Note and the Birth of Cool," where we answer the question, Should Cool Be Fabricated?

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