The 3 Brands That Define Today’s College Campus
As observed by an average college student
The culture of today’s American college campus can be summed up in precisely one word: aesthetic. Those currently roaming the dorms and lecture halls of universities across the country represent the heart of the infamous Gen Z — a generation raised on social media.
The first to post to Instagram, the first to send Snapchats, and the first to deem Facebook as archaic a technology as landlines, we Gen Z’ers have little memory of life without online profiles. As a consequence, the primary concern of the average college student today is how things look.
It is the driving factor behind most every decision — whether it be choosing which sweatshirt to wear to English 100 or what table to claim in the library.
No matter how hard we try not to care, it can’t be helped: we want to look cool.
We have, after all, spent the majority of our adolescence in a competition for who can have the most “perfect” life on Instagram.
As superficial as it may seem, it is only natural for a given person to want to be perceived as desirable. Our generation’s roots in social media have shaped us to believe that the best way to achieve this is through our external appearance.
This is why today’s college campuses have been taken over by the following brands:
Apple
Walking to class? Pop in your AirPods. In class? Pull out your MacBook. After class? Check your iPhone.
In any given classroom, dining hall, or house party, the vast majority of personal technology will trace its roots back to Cupertino, California. Unless you venture to the depths of the engineering school, all it takes is one glance at a lecture hall to see that campus technology runs through Apple.
This dominance lends its hand to Apple’s ability to create the most aesthetic products in tech.
Instead of screaming “Look at me!”, the sleek and simplistic products subtly draw attention to themselves and, more importantly, their users.
Everyone notices the savvy student taking notes with an Apple Pencil and iPad Pro. Likewise, it’s rather easy to spot the hardcore classmate banging away on a souped-up PC.
While the latter may be better equipped for the course work, he inevitably finds himself cast toward the bottom of the campus hierarchy — right beside the lone Android user agonizing the iMessage group chat.
There are headphones that sound better, laptops that run faster, and smartphones with more storage, but specs are irrelevant — you don’t buy a Rolex because it’s the best timekeeper.
Lululemon
Once exclusive to the women’s yoga studio, Lululemon pants have become a staple of the college campus for boys and girls alike — walk into any 101 course in America, and you will be overwhelmed by the amount of joggers and leggings donning the Lululemon logo.
Their extreme comfort and high quality fabrics make them perfect for surviving lectures in even the most uncomfortable seats; their high price tags make them perfect for expressing affluence and status.
Combine this quality and exclusivity with the minimalism of their branding, and you create the ultimate wardrobe “flex”. Wearing expensive clothing that is loud (see Supreme) simply suggests that you use your parents’ money to try looking cool. The aspect of subtlety, though, signifies that you care about quality, not appearance.
With only a careless glimpse, you may not even notice the brand of joggers the student in front of you is sporting. Those who grew up on Instagram, though, always know where to find the logo.
Seeming not to stress about appearance and brand names, ironically, is the key aspect of looking cool on a college campus.
Yeti
American universities always have been, and always will be, characterized by three beverages: water, coffee, and beer.
Yeti has them all covered.
From classroom to library to darty, there is a constant need for quality drinkware — and where there is a need for something, there is undoubtedly a challenge for making it aesthetic.
Like Apple and Lululemon, Yeti thrives in this appearance-conscious culture. Anyone can buy a cheap water bottle on Amazon, just as anyone can buy a plain t-shirt instead of a designer alternative. College students, like luxury consumers, value brands that are reliable and recognizable — nobody wants to feel left out in a campus of thousands of their peers.
Having built a brand name that represents both quality and status, Yeti is perfectly poised for success on college campuses.
Boiling down college students to superficial creatures whose only concern is appearance seems harsh and oversimplified, but not as much as you may think. I should know — I am one.
In reality, we are this way because of the unique environment in which we were brought up; one that focuses so greatly on expressing a desirable external self.
While the underlying reasons aren’t as shallow as they may seem, the truth is that today’s college students are more concerned than ever with how their appearance is judged by their peers.
So, if you want to know whether a brand will thrive on a college campus, simply ask yourself: “Would it look good in an Instagram post?”
