The advertising industry is in a constant Sisyphean battle over the word cool. Phrases like 'fully sick' (thanks thorpie) and 'totally dope' have somehow been deciphered as 'cool' and used to sell a range of products from cereal to computer games. Many large agencies and marketing companies have employed cool hunters to do their dirty work. These cool hunters find out what 'today's youth' deem cool and sell it back to the agency at a premium. Websites like Cool Hunting and The Cool Hunter are slowly bringing this phenomenon into an era where it may be a palatable resource. Locally run NOWNOW is a similar initiative run by some Melbourne boys & girls with a penchant for sweet and mysterious parties and events. Yet the epitome of cool hunting has to be the ever-enigmatic Li Edelkoort of Trend Union. She claims to be 'the world's foremost trend predictor', working for clients such as Apple, L'Oreal, Siemens and Braun. Twice a year she and her trend spotting team release a 'trend book'. Highly sort after and respected, the latest issue tackles the possibilities of an 'emerging grey palette'.

In the capital of cool New York, Nylon Magazine have just released a book called The Nylon Book of Global Style profiling subterranean fashion from the streets of NY, Berlin, London, Paris, Tokyo, Copenhagen and our own Melbourne. In a similar vain, the uber-crude Vice Magazine did a recent yet brief run down of street fashions in the same cities. It seems everyone wants a piece of the cool cake, but is it even worth pursuing?

Journalist and cultural critic Mel Campbell is someone trying to find out. She wrote an opinion article for the Sydney Morning Herald on how cool and street are the marketing buzzwords of the moment, but may not be the Midas touch tentative clients think they are. She keeps a regular blog on the subject at Footpath Zeitgeist.

The now common way of tackling the cool debate is to snap at your fat CD, 'if you say it's cool, it's not'. But the irony is that cool hunters are constantly preaching what is and what is not cool. If a client wants their (insert boring product here) to become cool in the eyes of teenagers, I feel the future in consumer culture will be just as boring. At least the people who just want to be part of a dense and exciting society will continue to create so everyone can point and scream 'cool!'