You're not alone. Fortune 500 companies have been asking themselves the same questions. Stumped by the vagaries of youth culture, afraid of being caught flat-footed by the next big trend, managers of mainstream brands have become fixated on "early adopters." The alpha consumers. The top of the pyramid. The edge of the wedge. The scenesters and snowboarders and thugged-out matrix skaters whose consumption patterns set the trends for the rest of America.

In their zeal to understand this elite crew, executives at conservative companies now spend a great deal of time communing with consumers who bear no relation to the actual users of their product. Connie Jones, senior culinary researcher for McCormick spices, recently attended a workshop called "Trend Tracking in Trendy South Beach." Joined by executives from Amway and Hallmark, Jones visited "a lot of edgy places," she says. "Scooter stores, that kind of thing. We went to a restaurant called 'Bed.' All the food was served on a bed! But we didn't make judgments. We just recorded the data."

Jones says she can't wait to add a sprinkle of Miami cool to her McCormick product line, which is perhaps best known for its onion powder and meat tenderizer. "We do a lot of rubs and condiments," she says. "Maybe we should introduce some more complex flavors. In other words, not just a straight sweet-sour thing. Maybe it should be sweet and sour, and then go into savory." Breaking bread at Bed, Jones realized her company could be doing much more to entice trendsetters. "Suddenly, you get into succulence," she muses. "You get into bounty ... You get into flavors that are comfortable, but not terribly comfortable ... Trendsetters are very intelligent. They require constant stimulation."

But who are these trendsetters? Even as they study them, dote upon them, observe them in their native habitats, executives such as Jones seem hard-pressed to describe exactly who they are. "It's hard to put it exactly into words," she says. "They are just a lot of people who are very open to new things, very at home in their bodies."

This was a pleasantly puzzling tidbit. But I wanted to know more. So I called Maria Vrachnos at the L Report, an online guide to the culture and psyche of trendsetters. Four times a year, LReport.com publishes the results of its surveys of 2,400 trendsetters in six cities -- New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago and Seattle -- along with a corresponding set of preferences for mainstream kids. In 1997, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell called the L Report "a kind of grand matrix of cool ... Few coolhunters bother to analyze trends with this degree of specificity." The fine print comes at a price. Content Web sites may worry that a $30 fee will scare off readers, but LReport.com has its hand in a much fatter wallet. A subscription to the site costs $20,000 a year. Amazingly, there are takers. Clients include Levi's, Motorola, Warner Brothers and Taco Bell.

Asked what makes a trendsetter, Vrachnos was understandably coy. "We don't want to say too much about our philosophy and methodology," she says. "That's just giving insight to our competitors." Vrachnos did allow, however, that "musical taste has a lot to do with it."

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