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.”

In its media kit, the L Report sheds a bit more light on the subject, describing trendsetters as “innovative young consumers,” 18-30, who “define and influence their surroundings, rather than the other way around.” As trendsetters evolve in their attitudes, “others take note and begin to emulate them. In this way, small trends gain momentum and are eventually embraced by the mainstream consumers.”

To give me a preview of these proto-trends, Vrachnos generously made LReport.com available to me for a single night’s viewing. It is a fascinating document, a diligent piling-on of floating signifiers and Helmut Langian cul-de-sacs. Picture a kind of über-Dewar’s Profile, reconceived by Bret Easton Ellis and costing roughly the same as a high-end Rolex.

The universe of the L Report is a Manichaean one, starkly divided between near-superhuman cognoscenti and K-Mart-shopping, mouth-breathing plebeians. Not since Highlights magazine’s “Goofus and Gallant” have readers been presented with such a clear choice.

Some examples:

Asked what has impressed them lately, trendsetters cited artist Damien Hirst’s new show, the micro-film fest and “gold Adidas with black stripes.”

The mainstream teens said, “The food at my school getting better.”

Asked what they’re “bragging about” these days, mainstream teens replied: “My mom … my grades … my achievements.” Trendsetters say “buying Nikes before they’re out.” Asked whom they admired most, mainstreamers cited their parents, Christina Aguilera, or “God.” Trendsetters named Stella McCartney.

If mainstream teens were to be granted one wish, according to the L Report, it would be for world peace, health, happiness and “flawless skin.” Trendsetters wished for less gentrification, “that I could have been born in Tibet” and that “my friends would stop taking Ecstasy.”

Asked what they were telling their friends about, trendsetters cited “the wack Scarface show,” “the Dirty Three CD” or “the drug-induced state I was in last weekend.” Mainstreamers said they were telling their friends that “cream blush is better than powder.”

Reading LReport.com, discriminating marketers will learn that trendsetters are reading i-D, Wallpaper and a rave magazine called Urb, and that they garb themselves in Katayone Adeli, Imitation of Christ and Martin Margiela. Mainstream teens, by way of contrast, prefer to curl up with Sports Illustrated and Teen People, while wearing clothing from the Gap, Old Navy and, heartbreakingly, a store called “Mr. Rags.”

Not surprisingly, when asked to name their favorite shampoo, trendsetters proved themselves equally selective. While mainstream teens are content to lather up with Pert, Suave and Head and Shoulders, trendsetters opt instead for Phytologie, René Furturer and, bien s{r, “free ones from fashion shows.”

Asked to reveal how they pamper themselves, trendsetters spoke of champagne pedicures, Evian face spray and “facials at Bliss.” Mainstream teens voiced a sturdy preference for “masturbation.”

When not receiving facials or having their toes dipped in Bollinger Grande Cuvée, trendsetting teens claim to be experimenting with digital filmmaking, vintage computers and “geometric prints from the ’60s and ’70s.” Mainstream teens say they’re having sex, “rolling up my jeans” and “going to college.” Asked about the “newest thing your friends are doing,” the mainstreamers, in a sudden burst of Eisenhower-era conformity retrograde even by their standards, cited “getting married,” “working on cars” and “going to nudie bars.” Trendier types mentioned “freestyling” and “drunk bowling.”

Eschewing Pringles, Oreos and Coke, trendsetters are snacking on tofutti, salt-and-vinegar chips and Italian ice, which they wash down with green tea and fresh peach juice. While their mainstream peers work up a sweat playing soccer, doing sit-ups and “cheerleading,” trendsetters prefer Tae Bo, tai chi and Pilates. When they’re feeling whimsical, they like to collect antique accordions, Weinburg sculptures and “broken toys.” Mainstream teens, by contrast, must content themselves with “bottle caps” and “baseball cards.”

Asked about their personal style, trendsetters described themselves as “indie hipster,” “urban low-maintenance,” “Vogue meets MTV meets ’70s porn star.” The mainstream teens kept it simple, describing themselves simply as “cool” (if they only knew!). Asked to name their favorite body part, trendsetters cited their penis, stomach and neck. Mainstreamers, meanwhile, had a soft spot for their arms, chests and — proving that the two groups could agree on at least one thing — penis. Asked to name their favorite cuisine, trendsetters named soul food, Indian food and Japanese. Mainstream teens, possibly misunderstanding the question, named Lean Cuisine.

There’s more. Asked for their “turn-offs,” trendsetters cited Limp Bizkit, the South Pole and “the Gap empire.” Mainstreamers named Grape-Nuts and Pepto-Bismol.

Asked what they were sick of, trendsetters cited “bling-bling,” “corporate-sponsored raves” and, languidly, “telling my life story.” Mainstream teens said they were sick of school.

Asked what they wouldn’t be caught dead in, trendsetters named leopard-print, raver wear and Abercrombie & Fitch. Mainstream teens were less opprobrious, vowing merely not to be caught dead in “a dress.”

The problem with all this is fairly obvious. There’s no doubt that trendsetters (if any still exist after the bursting of the new-economy bubble) are swell people: They create cool art, sell ingenious drugs and open boutiques on Elizabeth Street that specialize in things like inflatable burlap dresses. What’s less clear is why mainstream conglomerates like Taco Bell and Motorola should use their recondite preferences as a basis for brand positioning. Just ask Pepsi, which suffered a major embarrassment following the introduction of Josta, a soft drink laced with the herb guarana that was yanked from the market when it turned out that mainstream consumers detested it. Or Aramis, which last year introduced Surface, a line of makeup for men. Emboldened by spa-hopping early adopters, the company convinced itself that the middle-American male consumer was ready for concealer, bronzer and other forms of manly maquillage. Early sales, however, have been less than flush.

These alpha-consumer missteps have shaken the faith of even the most diligent trend-watchers. “We had a near-miss with techno music,” says Dan Hilbert, brand manager for Rolling Rock beer. “Boy, that sure didn’t happen the way it was supposed to.” A faithful reader of the L Report and the Cassandra Report, its chief competitor, Hilbert came to believe that “the techno thing would just freaking explode.”

Drawing up plans for a Rolling Rock town fair in Latrobe, Pa., Hilbert contemplated adding a second stage of just techno. In retrospect, he says, “it’s good we didn’t do it. It would have been Bizarro world. People wouldn’t (have) gotten it.”

The problem with trend trickledown, Hilbert says, is that “trendsetters are very micro-trend. The young-adult influencers, they’re into some weird stuff. The way they think is not necessarily an indication of where a company should go.”

As it turned out, the Latrobe town fair was a great success. “Beverages were $3 each,” Hilbert says. “Tickets were affordable. We had the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Moby, Stone Temple Pilots. People were dancing. Everyone had a good time.”

Then, presumably, they went home to masturbate.

Clients loved it. “Some even expressed an interest in attending personally,” says Aaron Hunter, who helped organize the event for BBDO. “That, unfortunately, was not possible. It would have been a little spooky for our campers to realize they were being watched by 20 men in suits.”

According to Neale Halliday, senior vice president and head of brand planning for BBDO Toronto, Brand Camp was born out of a disillusionment with traditional focus groups. “The older I get, the more I need to connect with these young urban consumers in a very high-quality way,” he told me. “We do not always consider focus groups to be a high-quality form of interaction.” In search of a deeper connection, Halliday and his colleagues began to experiment with other modes of observation. “We’ve done all kinds of observational research,” he says. “We’ve messed around with accompanied shops. We’ve gotten people to do diaries … Then there’s the option of moving into their homes. But two things mitigate against brand planners actually living with people. First, it’s not practical. Second, they usually won’t allow it.”

Meanwhile, his packaged-goods clients were growing restless, demanding fresh intelligence from Gen X and Gen Y. Clients such as Wrigley and Hostess are “extremely interested in young urban consumers — 20- to 25-year-olds,” Halliday says. “But [these consumers] are notoriously mobile and itinerant. They don’t have addresses. They can’t be contacted by focus group recruiters … Yet these are the people that set the food trends for the rest of the population.” Just when BBDO was despairing of ever reaching these sought-after snackers, “along came the whole ‘Survivor’/'Big Brother’ phenomenon,” he says. “And we thought, well, wait a minute. How about getting these participants into a space, a confined space, so that we can spend quality time with them in a way that can actually be recorded for client validation?”

In contrast to the jejune insights of the typical focus group, the snack-cake epiphanies from Brand Camp would be deep, fertile and genuine. “As planners, sitting behind that one-way mirror, we tend to get a little bit detached from the real relationships with brands that consumers have,” says Hunter. “We don’t want to be detached, which is why we undertake a project like this. To actually reach something authentic.”

This effort to strike a blow for authenticity seems not to have been reflected in the “Camper Bios,” several of which appear to have been fudged to increase the campers’ cool quotient. Robin Jull, a 24-year-old film production researcher, is described as a “big jazz fan.”

“I don’t know where they drew that from,” Jull complains. “I mean, I’ll listen to jazz if I really have to. But it’s far from my first choice of music.” Slightly more disquieting was the fact that these young trend-setters, supposedly rousted out of rave clubs and latte bars, turned out to bear a suspicious resemblance to their ad-agency observers. “A lot of us seemed to come from advertising-type backgrounds,” reflected Matt Dell, 23. “There was a copywriter. There were a few visual designers. I work as an assistant editor of commercials at a company called Flashcut … But I guess that’s just where the hip people are.”

Whatever the limitations of its respondent pool, BBDO spared no expense in creating an avant-garde space for Dell and his fellow visionaries. “It was all about this retro aesthetic,” enthuses Jessica Waese, 23. “There were soft chairs, a TV, a fireplace, a kitchen. For the workspace, we had these retro work stations divided by translucent screens. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Wallpaper magazine … It was just really well done.” There was a PlayStation, a DVD collection and a fridge stocked with cold beer. Sleeping arrangements consisted of Winnebagos and antique honey wagons parked out back. “Creative thinking demands a creative environment,” says Hunter. “We tried to surround [the campers] with props that would make them comfortable. If you wanted ten Snickers bars for breakfast, you could have them. They were there.”

When not staving off the effects of hypoglycemic shock, the campers attended discussion groups led by BBDO “counselors” who probed their relationships with brands. “They were particularly interested in our early childhood memories of snack cakes,” recalls Jeffery Pearson, 28. “What stuck in our heads? Was it the taste? The packaging? The jingle?”

Eager to expose their youthful palates to a range of taste sensations, staff counselors then escorted the campers to a replica of a convenience store. “There was chicken-flavored gum from Japan,” says Neale Halliday. “Savory prawn chips from Taiwan. From Germany, we had cans of chilled sausage and milk. You can tear the top off, and just slurp.” The counselors watched eagerly to see what products the campers would choose to sample. “They could stroll down the aisles and help themselves,” says Hunter. “[By] watching their choices, we could then glean insights about what they wished for in the market.”

Sadly, the campers’ appraisal of the prawn chips and canned sausage was less than flattering. “A lot of people reacted negatively to the international product,” laments Hunter. “They said things like, ‘This is disgusting.’”

In a video distributed to reporters, the campers are captured in all the expected moments of slacker verité. A pale, tattooed bunch, they can be seen brushing their teeth, playing air guitar and trudging off to the showers, towels knotted around waists. But rather than accusing each other of racism or trading confessions of virginity, participants were caught musing on the benefits of sweet snack food. “With Twix, you’ve got the crunchiness of a candy bar,” drawled a young woman with spiky blonde hair. “But in a way, it’s more cookie than candy.” A telegenic young man in a Scooby-Doo T-shirt wondered, “Can a snack food truly incorporate all the elements of a breakfast food?” Another inquired if “fruit juice can ever be a catalyst for flirtation, a catalyst for sexual activity.” It’s enough to make you long for Richard Hatch.

Meanwhile, the real drama of the weekend was yet to come. Hoping to take the campers from snack-cake ruminations to actual product ideas, agency counselors divided participants into five tribes and asked them to create their own brands. For this purpose, the campers had at their disposal a complete multimedia studio equipped with all the latest graphic-design supplies. “We had all this dummy packaging set up for them,” says Fiona McBride, senior vice president and group account director at the agency. “We had two A/V suites, with two Mac operators working round the clock. We wanted them to come up with novel and interesting product ideas, then finish them up to the very highest standard for presentation.”

Neale Halliday and his group kept an anxious eye on the proceedings. “We knew we only had our campers for a weekend,” he says. “We were keen to extract whatever value we could from them.” The hope was that the prototypes would lead to commercially viable product ideas, or, failing that, at least provide a generalized sense of what young consumers were looking for. “The value wasn’t just in the products they created,” Halliday said. “By studying and analyzing the products they came up with, we could generalize about how this generation thinks about food and the marketplace.”

Says Hunter: “The products that made it through to the final stage are symbolic of a whole process. They are symbolic of all the values, all the conscious or unconscious desires for food that our respondents harbor.”

The products did indeed seem reflective of bottled-up hopes and yearnings. The campers’ proposed product line included Wham Bam Wake-Up Jam, a squeezable caffeinated jam; U-Ho Ice Cream, a portable melt-proof ice cream; and something called “Fruit Snatch.”

“It’s a lunchtime meal in a tube,” explains Matt Dell, who helped create the product. “There are two screw-off caps on either end. On one end is a sweet dip. On the other end is a savory dip. In the middle of the tube are chunks of fruit … We call it Fruit Snatch, because you just snatch it, and go.” Also pushing the envelope of inventiveness was the Smoothie Smacker, created by Robin Jull and his Hearty Meal group. “By smacking it, you mix the juice and yogurt together,” says Jull earnestly. “Our spokesperson would be a monkey … Our marketing campaign would focus on ‘Spanking the Monkey.’”

Will such emanations from the vox populi revitalize the flagging fortunes of Hostess Frito-Lay? Absolutely, says BBDO’s Halliday. “Our campers are sending a clear message that young urban consumers want food that fits into their lifestyle,” Halliday bravely contends. “These campers didn’t ask conventional questions. They came up with unconventional food and packaging solutions. Our clients are very interested.”

I wanted to check with Hostess, Pepsi and Wrigley to find out what they thought of some of these new product ideas. But BBDO said no. “The participating clients are bit nervous,” McBride told me. “They’re all market leaders in their own right. If good product ideas do come out of [Brand Camp], they want to make sure that information is theirs and theirs alone.”

“We’ve been fairly careful about not going into a lot of detail about the learning,” agrees Halliday. “This was an expensive project. There are clients who have paid for this information. We don’t want to give away the farm … What I can tell you is that everyone involved who has had a peek at the findings has had a really good feeling.”

That feeling may be misplaced, according to Lew Berey, president and founder of New Product Insights, a firm based in Overland Park, Kan., that has brainstormed new-product ideas for Pillsbury, Healthy Choice and Hunt’s ketchup. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” Berey tells me. “And I must say, I consider this to be the worst possible approach. New products should be created by new-product professionals.”

Asking consumers to come up with new-product ideas, he says, is like “doctors asking their patients to diagnose what’s wrong with them. It’s construction workers being asked to solve a problem of architectural design … To think that consumers are themselves going to come up with a solution is really an abdication of responsibility on the part of the marketing professional.”

Berey stresses that new-product development, far from being the province of zany creative types, is in fact an excruciatingly precise discipline. “There is a whole system devoted to this,” he says. “We have a mega-brand model that we use. It involves something we call ‘transfer analysis,’ which looks deeply at brand architecture. We use video scenarios. There’s some work we’ve done with Alvin Toffler.”

But surely Berey doesn’t dispute BBDO’s top-line finding: that young urban consumers are looking for food that is “nutritious, convenient and packaged to be environmentally friendly”? The new-product maven scoffs. “When you talk to consumers, you need to have proprietary ways to get inside their mind, so that you get more than just, ‘I want food that’s convenient,’” he says. “I would never let my staffers accept that kind of high-level definition of need.”

At New Product Insights, “we don’t talk about convenience,” Berey says. “We break it apart into ‘makes life easier,’ or ‘saves time.’ Then we start thinking about what possible ways to express ‘makes life easier’ exist in a particular category. And those insights can transfer very easily into new-product direction.”

Not surprisingly, Berey throws cold water on caffeinated jam, go-anywhere ice cream and most of the other new food ideas coming out of Brand Camp. “These are consumers run amok,” he says. “It looks like they’ve come up with ideas that don’t have too much strategic merit.”

Asked for his opinion of Fruit Snatch, Berey sighs deeply. “When I hear ideas like that, I think: What could possibly be the underlying strategy?” he says. “If someone wants health for lunch, they’re going to go with something nutritious and health-oriented. What you’ve described to me has nothing to do with an efficacious, nutritious product.” Wham Bam Wake-up Jam also leaves him cold. “Are you a jam consumer that wants caffeine? Or are you a caffeine consumer who’s tired of coffee? Either way, I can tell you from 30 years of studying the consumer, there are a lot better places to put caffeine than in jam.”

Berey also turns up his nose at the campers’ crown jewel: Groove in a Tube, an edible glitter body art. “We have come up with thousands of ideas just like that in our own brainstorming sessions,” he says. “Immediately, we get rid of them. There is no purpose in that. Again, this is consumer creativity run amok.”

Berey does like one of the campers’ ideas: Apres Chow, a liqueur-flavored after-dinner gum. “If the underlying strategy is to have a portable alcoholic taste in your mouth after you leave dinner — well, then that makes some sense,” he says grudgingly. “There are already after-dinner drinks. But maybe you want it to be longer-lasting and slower-taking. I like it.”

Of course, one might ask, if Lew Berey is so smart, then why didn’t he think of green ketchup? Meeting no conceivable need state, identical to red ketchup in every aspect but its color, it has been flying off grocery shelves ever since its introduction, in October of 2000, by Hunt archrival H.J. Heinz. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, green ketchup was created not by a new-product algorithm, but by a panel of 1,000 kids, who declared that “a new color” was what they would most like to see in their ketchup. And so, Berey’s track record nonwithstanding, the Green Ketchup proviso suggests that heretical new-product ideas may be the result not of transfer analysis and the collected works of Alvin B. Toffler, but of, well, consumer creativity run amok. Today, we scoff at Fruit Snatch. Six months from now, it will have replaced Slim Jim as the subversive snack option for today’s on-the-go teen.

BBDO’s Hunter, for one, remains a true believer. Whatever the outcome of the weekend, he says, it was a profound and moving experience to see a group of consumers engaged so deeply with brands. “They were pretty intense,” he says of his sequestered hipsters. “They really got into it. They were struggling. They were investigating … They didn’t have the answers. They were searching.” When Brand Camp ended, and it was time for the campers to pack up and head home, “some of them were almost disoriented,” he marvels. “They had immersed themselves so deeply in their projects. It was like, ‘Oh, we have to leave now?’ It was like they were in a daze.”

One of the campers, Jeffery Pearson, gently offers an alternative explanation. “We were smoking a lot of pot,” he explains. “There were seven of us, all pot smokers. We hid in the honey wagons. I don’t think they knew.”

The group had been scheduled to start at 8. At 8:15 the respondents started to file in. “Oh my God,” breathed my colleague, Rehana Dutta. Her excitement was understandable. These were not the typical sad-sack focus group respondents, underemployed “cheaters and repeaters” lured by the $50 “incentive” and a promise of free salty snacks. No, these were bona fide international businessmen, fancily dressed in fine-spun wool suits and projecting an aura of crisp success. “Buonasera!” they bellowed in synchrony, shaking hands around the table. “Buonasera!”

“You see what has happened?” whispered our translator, Nicoletta. “They look at each other and know they are important people. So they introduce themself. They exchange business cards … This is the way important men behave.”

She was right. As we looked over the seating chart, our eyes bulged as we saw just who our recruiter, a firm called Market Dynamics International, had managed to round up for our market-research pleasure. Here was Rosario M., head of marketing for Hasbro Italy. Here was Edgar S., finance director for Kodak Italia. The plump gentleman on the far left? He was none other than Giovanni A., director of IT for International Paper. In short, a dream recruit, packed with high-level, B-to-B decision makers at Fortune 500 corporations. I winced as I thought of our last U.S. group — a painful affair, curiously dominated by mid-level sanitary-napkin executives. “This is incredible,” marveled the Headsnack client. “I mean, look at these guys. They are our target.”

Unlike our Fritos-nibbling American respondents, who tend to be grizzled market-research veterans, our Italian group seemed charmingly unaware of the very existence of focus groups. “Let me explain to you,” began our moderator, the stylishly handsome Clara Origlia. “This is what we call a ‘focus group,’ or panel discussion. You have involved yourself in a process to help another company. Please be understanding of that fact.

“There is something else I must say,” Origlia continued, in a tone of urgent purpose. “In terms of honesty and correctness, it is my duty to inform you that I have people in the back room. From behind the mirror, they are watching you.”

The men gazed at Origlia with a ferocious, transfixed expression. “Who are these people?” demanded Giuseppe R.

“They are international colleagues of mine,” our moderator replied.

“I do not like this arrangement!” shouted Giuseppe, as his fellow respondents nodded their agreement. “I am more comfortable seeing people’s faces.”

“If you have objections to the people behind the mirror, please speak up,” urged Origlia. “Please voice your objections. This is your right!

“You are free to leave!” she added. “You are actually free to leave!”

A handsome, bearded man named Augusto jumped to his feet and began to wave his arms passionately. In the back room, Nicoletta deciphered. “He is saying, ‘It is only in prison that this happens,’” she explained. “He is saying, ‘They use this mirror only in jails.’ Now — now Clara is correcting him. She is saying that Augusto has it wrong. She says that it is merely a way of working interactively.”

In the back room, the Headsnack marketing team watched, open-mouthed. “Wow,” whispered Gary, Headsnack’s European marketing director. “This is heavy. I’ve never seen respondents object like that before.” Rehana and I buried our heads in our hands. Our dream recruit had turned into a nightmare. We were convinced that at any minute, our unconsenting subjects were going to break through the glass, smash our cameras and shove our sweaty, prying American faces into our risotto Milanese.

Just then, the lovely Nicoletta leaned over. “Don’t worry,” she said. “This happens every time we do a focus group. We are Italian. We are hot-blooded, passionate. We like to make speeches, eh?”

Before long, the participants simmered down and the discussion settled into something resembling a typical focus group. But what a focus group! I don’t know whether it was the frequent cigarette breaks, the ample supply of grappa and pastries or merely the spirit of alpha-male bonhomie, but for whatever reason, our once-mutinous respondents turned out to be a marketer’s fantasy, reacting to our proposed advertising campaign with cries of approval and delight.

“Now, this, this, this is curious and eye-catching!”

“This is very, very satisfying. An exceptional, very brilliant idea!”

“This data is presented in a fascinating, beautiful way!”

“A splendid presentation!”

Origlia asked if anyone felt differently; if anyone believed the ads are wrong for the Italian market, if any elements should be changed. “Anything at all?” she asked. Silence. The only audible sounds are ruminative supping noises.

“It is the Italian personality,” Origlia explained to me later. “We are very, very cooperative. We try not to displease other people.”

But the Milanese businessmen didn’t just love the Mad Dogs advertising. They also loved Headsnack. It soon became clear, in fact, that Headsnack’s new, Eurocentric marketing strategy is nothing less than a stroke of genius. Unafraid, or perhaps unaware, of the American wave of dot-com ennui, these Milanese businessmen are more than willing to shower any Internet consultancy with handfuls of cash. “It is a sector that is flourishing!” rhapsodized Giancarlo, in English. “It is a sector that is bubbling and sparkling!”

“We now have 120 Internet consultants running around my company,” confessed Arrigo, an executive at a European tire conglomerate. “They belong to 12 different consultancies. We have someone from [a consultancy called] Apricot. We have someone from Ewebbanana … We have exceptional consultants and trashy consultants. It’s hard to know if they’re doing a good job or not.” Arrigo sighs. “Somehow,” he said, “we feel it is important for us to do this.”

Across the table, Augusto nodded his agreement. “These consultants,” he said. “They are quite chaotic to manage. The cost is exorbitant. But we have no choice.” He shrugged. “We are investing billions and billions of lira in the Internet,” he said. “Is it a major generator of cash? So far, no. But who knows? Maybe someday we will reap the reward.”

The group was nearly over, but the moderator had one final question. What should Headsnack do, she asked the group, to endear itself to important businessmen such as themselves? The answers come with barking quickness.

“Good wine.”

“Good food.”

“Good paté. Deals are clinched over paté.”

“Let us meet them,” bellowed Rosario, the executive from Hasbro. “We will help them to polish their image, to raise their profile. To get closer to European culture.”

And suddenly, they were upon us, smelling of cologne and cigarette smoke, beaming, pumping our hands, radiating gregarious pleasure. The moderator, Origlia, had let them into the viewing room.

Nick, head of Headsnack’s Milan office, was in a fluster. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We weren’t expecting — we’re not properly dressed.”

But the Italians seemed to relish our rumpled attire. “Looking at you, I see you are the new economy!” exclaimed Giancarlo.

“Seeing you in your blue jeans, we understand even more the unusual and interesting campaign you developed!” agreed Edgar.

And so we sat together, respondent and client, surrounded by the cozy fumes of delicious home cooking. It was an odd, unexpectedly tender moment — Pavlov kicking back with his dogs, B.F. Skinner inviting his rats over for cheese. Afterward, we returned to our pensiones, feeling happy and drained and at peace. As we slept, we dreamed of billions and billions of lira.

The strategy, Carberry says, is working. Since 1986, when Visa first became a top-tier Olympic sponsor, “an interesting thing has happened,” Carberry says. “In focus groups, people now talk about Visa in the same way they talk about the Olympics. They talk about things like leadership, competence and acceptability … There’s been what we call an ‘equity transfer.’ That, to us, is proof of return on investment.’”

But should it be? Visa’s Olympic sponsorship has always made more sense than most, because of its association with a real benefit — the fact that Visa is more widely accepted than American Express, even at something as big, global and omnipresent as the Olympics. But Visa isn’t content to use its sponsorship of the Summer Games simply to convey a product benefit.

The real goal seems to be to align the Visa brand with an abstract set of Greco-Roman values — leadership, fair play, goodwill among men. In this, it is not alone. Officials of the other major global sponsors also believe that, through an amorphous process of feelings-leak, the spirit of the Summer Games will seep into their own brand. “We have been very excited about our sponsorship,” says Julie Davis, a spokeswoman for Bank of America. “We expect tangible, measurable improvements in attribute ratings as a result of our involvement … Just as you see Olympians as leaders, excelling in their chosen field, consumers will come to see us as leaders, providing a range of innovative financial solutions.”

“We know, based on the research we’ve done, that when you co-brand with the rings, there is a halo effect,” says Steve Burgay, vice president of John Hancock Financial Services Inc. “When you join your logo with the rings, your logo is enhanced. We know that for a quantitative fact.”

It’s not clear how one quantifies an emotional response to a logo, but never mind. It was for this reason, Burgay says, that David D’Alessandro, president and CEO of John Hancock, took to the airwaves during last year’s bribery scandal to urge International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch to clean house. “It had everything to do with protecting our business investment,” Burgay explains. “Our logic was: If the IOC does nothing, eventually the taint will spread beyond the IOC, and leak into consumer perception of the rings themselves. If that were to happen, the value of our investment would be diminished significantly.”

Hancock’s apprehension about its investment is understandable. This year, the Games’ 11 “global sponsors” paid upward of $55 million each for the right to display the Olympic rings alongside their own swirls, swooshes and orbital crescents — a staggering sum that doesn’t even include the media buy. Sponsors wishing to purchase airtime were asked to pony up $615,000 for a 30-second spot — a 40 percent increase over what they were charged in Atlanta in 1996. From an advertising perspective, sponsors have been miffed to discover that they have paid more for less. “As a longtime advertiser, we’re concerned,” says Nike spokesman Scott Reames. “We invested a lot of money in NBC, based on ratings we expected them to deliver. So far, those ratings have not been delivered. They haven’t reached anywhere near the numbers they promised … So we’re disappointed. And we’re concerned.”

Meanwhile, with the XXVII Olympiad poised to go down in history as the Olympics at which the most athletes tested positive for banned substances, the brand builders’ goo-goo-eyed view of the Games as a festival of togetherness seems more naive than ever. Rather than associating the rings with corporately minted virtues such as “leadership,” “excellence” and “quality,” 21st century viewers seem far more likely to associate the Olympic brand with, say, “chemicals” — hardly a fertile area for equity transfer, unless you are Monsanto. Hence the recent decision by IBM to end its 40-year history as a top Olympic sponsor. “The general cynicism the public has toward all institutions, they now have toward the Olympics,” an IBM marketing official told me. “There’s just a lot less trust … The sunny thought that [by sponsoring the Olympics], you get into people’s heads in this deep way … just seems awfully naive.”

Of course, there is one unquestionable thing that advertising during the Olympics does accomplish. “Our research shows that people will only consider doing business with an insurance company that is big, reputable and a leader in the industry,” says Hancock’s Burgay, with some satisfaction. “Those are the ‘price of entry’ attributes that we need to demonstrate to consumers … And those are precisely the attributes that our presence in the Olympics helps us establish.”

In other words, by advertising during the Olympics, what you’ve proved in an equity-transfer sense is that you have a whole lot of money. And indeed, it was this message that emerged as the unsubtle theme of this year’s crop of advertising. The spots I caught were massively overproduced, crammed full of verdant fields and indomitable oceans and people running with the sweat droplets coming off them in slow motion. “Why not cross?” intones a white-robed child in the Bank of America spots, as he marvels at the Golden Gate Bridge, the Spirit of St. Louis and other putative Bank of America projects. “Why not explore … Why not triumph?” Why not spend $50 million to tell viewers that the future is ahead of us, the past behind us?

“We all sort of want to be that child who questions,” explains a staffer at Bozell Worldwide, the ad agency for Bank of America. “It had to be ‘Why not?’ because someone had already taken ‘Why?’”

Chain-saw-wielding maniacs, butch pole-vaulters boasting about girly new hairdos, lesbian couples adopting Asian children — one can see why the question “why?” might have been in high demand. Many viewers were particularly curious in the wake of Nike’s chain-saw massacre parody, which featured Olympic runner Suzy Favor Hamilton using her speed to elude a masked pursuer. The ad, which debuted on the third night of the Olympics, was promptly pulled off the air by NBC after viewers protested that it made light of violence against women. Even after the cancellation of the spot, commentators continued to pile on, blasting the ad and denouncing Nike for its insensitivity.

“Stupid … ill-conceived … repellent,” declared Bob Garfield of Advertising Age. “A far cry from the inspiring and empowering ‘Just Do It,’” agreed the Washington Post. On Sept. 19, Stuart Elliott of the New York Times approvingly quoted a reader who labeled the ad “disgusting and misogynistic.” At a Women in Advertising awards banquet Wednesday, the ad was again singled out for setting back the cause of women. “The outcry still reverberates,” Elliott clucked.

Nike, meanwhile, was left to splutteringly defend itself against the charge of being a woman-hating brand. “This notion that we owe all women an apology is certainly open to conjecture” protests Nike spokesman Reames. “People are going berserk. They’re getting really emotional … They’re saying, ‘We get this. Nike doesn’t.’ When the reality is that women are e-mailing us in huge numbers saying, ‘I get this. I understand this. I understand what you were trying to do with this ad.’”

Personally, I thought the ad was funny. As Hamilton sprints through the woods, the killer gives chase, vrooming his chain saw in bloody anticipation. Soon, however, he finds he has to stop and rest. He squats on the ground, breathing hard. In his hand, the chain saw whirs uncertainly.

Finally, he whips off his hockey mask and heads home, clearly disgusted with himself. The last shot is of the sneaker-clad Hamilton vanishing into the moonlight. “Why Sport?” the title card asks. “You’ll Live Longer.”

Whew! While I liked the ad a lot, I don’t necessarily disagree with NBC’s decision to pull it. The ad is so powerfully shot that it evokes a primal response, thrusting viewers into a visceral experience not of their choosing. (They may have just wanted to watch a little rhythmic gymnastics.) But the shrillness of the response obscures a more interesting, and complicated, issue: the evolving gender politics of Nike advertising. As columnist Barbara Lippert points out in this week’s Ad Week, Nike has long employed a double standard in advertising its men’s and women’s brands. Until quite recently, the ads targeting men were loose, playful and cartoonish, often tweaking or making fun of the very athletes they used as their endorsers. The women’s spots, by contrast, were earnest, didactic, issue-oriented: “If you let me play …”

With the “Horror” spot, however, Nike seems to have stepped down from its soapbox. Hamilton is treated as an athlete rather than as a “woman athlete” who must be self-consciously fawned over and empowered. According to Russell Davis, planning director at Nike ad agency Wieden Kennedy, the shift in strategy is deliberate. “It’s one of those things we talk about a lot,” Davis says. “There’s definitely a shift going on … At one point, it felt like here was something that needed to be said about women’s role in sports. It was all about empowerment, and self-image, and ‘if you let me play’ … Now women’s sports are higher profile. They’ve got their own leagues, their own television deals. They’re much more on equal footing with men. And the advertising is starting to reflect that.”

While not all inequalities have been overcome, “we’re now in a position where that empowering, challenging message has become a bit of a clichi,” Davis says. “It’s become part of the vernacular of marketing … It’s lost its freshness a little bit, especially when used by a brand.” As a result, Davis says, “in the last year or so, we’ve injected a lot more humor, a lot more playfulness, in our treatment of women athletes. We treat Suzy Hamilton pretty much as we would treat Andre Agassi. The ads are fun. They’re meant to be humorous … It’s not a role-model, ‘go out and be like Suzy’ kind of thing. It’s more like: We have a bunch of athletes we love, and we want to put them in our communication. End of story.”

OK, so it’s a bit of a stretch for Wieden to spin a chain-saw-killer ad into a victory for postmodern feminism. Nonetheless, Nike’s evolution away from “Our Sports Bras, Ourselves” agitprop seems a milestone worth cheering — especially when you consider how mired other brands are in the same old first-wave formulas. Consider “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” the Visa ad featuring gold-medal-winning pole-vaulter Stacey Dragila. “When I have a brand-new hairdo … my eyelashes all in curls,” the voice-over warbles, as Dragila hoists her body over the bar. Get it? Dragila isn’t a stupid girly-girl who wears her hair in curls and has a boyfriend. No, she’s a powerful, strong, modern, athletic woman! In the final shot of the ad, Dragila slings her pole vault over her shoulder and walks off into the sunset. “Damn, I’m good!” she says. Quick, get out that chain saw!

While the sneaker company was risking the wrath of whither-feminism colloquies, another, white-shoe advertiser was weathering an Olympic controversy of its own. During the National Gymnastics Championships, John Hancock Financial Services unveiled a spot that was simultaneously hailed and denounced as the first depiction of lesbians in mainstream advertising history. In the beautifully directed spot, titled “Immigration,” two stylishly dressed women stand in an airport customs facility, cooing over an Asian infant.

“Do you have her papers?” the blond asks the brunet. “Yeah, in the diaper bag.” “The diaper bag — can you believe this?” says the blond. “We’re a family.” “You’ll make a great mom,” whispers the brunet. “So will you.”

Of course, John Hancock is hardly the first national advertiser to feature a gay couple in such a matter-of-fact way. Ikea did it years ago, showing a gem|tlich male couple feathering their love nest with inexpensive Swedish furniture. But whereas Ikea was looking to position itself as a young, modern, varied brand for young, modern, varied people, this was clearly not John Hancock’s aim. Having used the buzziness of lesbianism as a dramatic device to get attention, the company seemed unsure of where to go next. So it backtracked, implying it had all been an accident.

“It was never our intent to endorse or to dwell on a particular lifestyle,” explains Burgay, the company’s vice president. Complaints from Christian groups such as the American Family Association convinced Burgay that he “needed to retool the commercial, to help bring the focus on the child, rather than the issue of the child’s parents … We felt we could accommodate people’s concerns, and still have a hell of an impactful spot.”

Before making its Olympic debut, the ad was recut, with the final lines, which make the lesbian relationship explicit, snipped out. Burgay says the ad agency, Boston’s Hill, Holliday, was happy to help. “They understand our business,” he says appreciatively. “They understand that, at the end of the day, this is not art. This is a marketing tool … And if our marketing tool isn’t delivering the result we wanted — then it’s time to modify things. They felt very comfortable doing that.”

The creative folks at Hill, Holliday, not surprisingly, put it slightly differently. “There are people at this agency who fought really hard to get this made, and who fought really hard to keep it on the air,” says one agency staffer. “Now they’re tying themselves in knots to be able to say privately that they achieved a triumph … Of course there were compromises made. But it’s still a triumph. We put a lesbian couple on the air in the Olympics adopting a baby.”

Soon, however, the spot had to be recut a second time. The Joint Council on International Children’s Service protested the ad, on the grounds that it might prompt officials in China, where gay and lesbian adoptions are not permitted, to crack down on single-parent adoptions. So Hill, Holliday went back to the editing room.

“We came up with what we consider to be a very elegant solution,” an agency source tells me. “We very artfully ended up adding an announcement, making it clear that they were at the airport in Phnom Penh [Cambodia]. That way we don’t adulterate the commercial. And we’re sensitive to international adoption agencies in the process.”

“So,” I say lightly, “I guess Cambodians take a more laissez-faire attitude toward this kind of thing.”

“Well,” says the source, “we’re hoping that takes care of that controversy. But we’ll have to see. If issues arise [with the Cambodians], we’ll put other solutions under consideration. One solution might include masking the face of the child.”

Just as long as it’s not a hockey mask.

I love almost everything Brandweek does, but several weeks ago, the magazine published its best article yet. Titled “It’s Good to Be Jerky,” the article reported that beef jerky had changed its image, and was now seen as “a healthful snack for on-the-go urban professionals.” Resounding confirmation of jerky’s surge came from no fewer than four meat-snack professionals. “People’s minds have already changed about beef jerky,” Alan Bridgeford, president of Bridgeford Foods, told Brandweek. James Sampson, marketing manager for Frito Lay’s Oh Boy! Oberto jerky, went a step further, vowing: “If you eat our jerky, you’ll get past your problems.” Yet a third meat-snack executive confirmed the writer’s suspicion that jerky “has arrived.”

Was the New Jerky a legitimate cultural phenomenon or mere wishful thinking by jerky-mongering corporate executives? To find out, I called Sampson. What had Sampson meant, I wondered, when he told Brandweek, “If you eat our jerky, you’ll get past your problems”?

“I’m sure [the reporter] quoted me accurately, but I can’t remember saying that,” he tells me. “That is honestly not my belief. My belief is, if you’ve got problems, you should seek professional help.”

Sampson took pains to emphasize that, in his view, there’s “a hard road ahead” for jerky. “We want to convince people that this thing they never think about is actually a viable snacking alternative,” he says. At the same time, he says, he needs to get folks to stop thinking about Slim Jims. “Right now, if people think jerky, they think Slim Jim,” he says. “And we’re not that. We’re this other thing.”

There is, as Sampson explained to me, a kind of natural order of jerky. At the bottom of the barrel is the humble meat stick — high in fat, so-so in protein and made up of bits of the anatomy of animals that most people would prefer not to eat. “Think about a meat stick,” Sampson muses. “It is highly processed. It has a large amount of stuff in it. You can’t quite be sure what they put in there. They grind up beef. They grind up chicken … They put a number of different species in there.” Sampson points me toward the ingredients stated on a Slim Jim. “You’ll notice that the second ingredient listed is something called ‘mechanically separated chicken.’ Now, I’m not going to get into how the chicken is separated. Let’s just say that it’s a pretty interesting process. But, as terrible as it is, it gives the product its mouth feel.”

Next up the ladder of meat-snack evolution is “chopped-and-formed jerky,” a segment that Sampson finds difficult to explain. “Basically, it’s a re-formed stick of beef or a re-formed stick of turkey,” he says. “It’s finely ground meat, with a relatively high amount of fat, re-formed into something that looks like beef jerky.” But what is it, exactly? “All I can say is it’s been significantly changed,” Sampson says. “It was once something. But it’s not that anymore.”

Up a notch from chopped-and-formed is something called beefsteak jerky. “Imagine taking a piece of natural-style jerky and grinding it up,” Sampson says. “Then, imagine re-forming that into a stick or bar. It’s a quarter-inch thick. It’s naturally low in fat … That’s your beefsteak jerky.”

At the meat-snack summit is natural-style jerky, such as that made by Oh Boy! Oberto. Natural-style jerky is low in fat, high in protein and made from whole cuts of beef. “This is the premium segment of the category,” Sampson says. “You take whole-muscle meat. You marinate it. You slice it in a drying house.”

“Then you grind it up?” I guessed.

“No,” Sampson says. “You don’t grind it up. You package it, just the way it is. It’s natural-style jerky. It’s as close as you get to unadulterated meat.”

Alas, these distinctions are too often lost on the jaded East Coast palate. “We do better out West,” says Alison Melody, account director at Suissa Miller, Oberto’s advertising agency. “What we’ve found is that on the East Coast, jerky is still not perceived as a mainstream snack food.”

Several months ago, the intrepid Oh Boy! team headed to New York in hopes of changing that perception. “We were just reaching out and trying to understand the jerky market,” Sampson says. “Trying to get people talking about how jerky might fit into their lives.” Unfortunately, the discussion got off to a rocky start. Respondents said things like, “It’s roadkill, it’s got to be roadkill,” Sampson laments. “Or, ‘I’d never put that in my mouth.’”

Happily, Sampson believes this consumer antipathy is not insuperable. “It turns out more people eat jerky than we think,” he says. “There’s this constant search going on within the snacking category, which we call ‘The Search for Snacking Alternatives.’ And it’s interesting what happens when you put people in a group setting. If one confesses, they all confess.”

“There are definitely a lot of eaters out there,” Melody says. “It’s not just the kids eating it. It’s the husband eating it. It’s the wife eating it. We call them ‘closet consumers.’” (Later, I was to find out that one of these closet consumers is Salon’s very own book editor Laura Miller.)

Now that the closet consumers have been smoked out, the next step, Melody says, is “actually getting [them] to acknowledge publicly that jerky is a compelling snacking option.” Toward that end, Oh Boy! Oberto has invested in a $7 million advertising campaign, revolving around the antics of a jerky-obsessed septuagenarian, “Grandma Oberto.” In the campaign, Grandma races a mountain bike, jumps out of an airplane and rappels down the face of a cliff, all for the glories of Oberto jerky. “Grandma Oberto is doing active things,” Sampson says. “What we’re trying to communicate is that the product is highly portable.”

But teenagers are unlikely to be weaned off their Slim Jims by the charms of Grandma Oberto alone. To accomplish that task, the Frito Lay contingent is turning to opposition research. “We’ve done focus groups with Slim Jim users,” Sampson says. “We’ve asked them, ‘Do you know what you’re actually eating?’ ‘Nope, I never read the ingredients statement.’ ‘Well,’ we say, ‘why don’t you take a look at that?’”

To the consternation of Sampson and his team, the Slim Jim loyalists turn out to be a pretty stoical crew. “They didn’t seem too bothered by it,” Sampson says. “Maybe one or two would ask, ‘What’s mechanically separated chicken?’ ‘What do you think it is,’ the moderator was instructed to reply. People tended to draw pictures of a chicken carcass flying at a jet engine,” Sampson says wearily.

Informed of the true provenance of mechanically separated chicken, respondents “would get very quiet,” Sampson says. “You could kind of see them working it through their heads.”

“Does that bother you?” the moderator asked. Inevitably, Sampson says, the answer was no. “They don’t care,” he says. “They keep saying, ‘I don’t care what’s in it. I recognize it as a Slim Jim.’”

My next call was to Jeff Slater, vice president of marketing for Goodmark Foods, which manufactures and distributes Slim Jims. I was curious to hear Slater’s response to Sampson’s description of his product as a repellent substance, counter to the dictates of common sense, good health and kindness to animals. I was surprised by his reaction. Far from getting angry, Slater seemed to positively revel in his product’s noxiousness. “I mean, think of it,” he says. “It’s this gross stick. When you bite into it, it snaps. It’s nasty. But that’s OK.”

“Teen boys love the product,” explains Jo McKinney, account director at North Castle Partners, Slim Jim’s ad agency. “They really relate to it. They think it’s nasty. And it is. It’s just a nasty, nasty brand. With nasty, nasty advertising to go along with it.”

The ads are indeed nasty, treating viewers to a peek down the digestive tract and into the stomach, where Slim Jim Guy inevitably creates havoc. In the most recent execution, a teenage boy eats a Slim Jim and then jumps into a pool. “You’re supposed to wait 30 minutes,” yells Slim Jim Guy. “How about a beefy, spicy cramp?” Slim Jim Guy jumps up and down, pulling on the interior walls of the stomach, ultimately giving the boy a terrible cramp. The spot closes with Slim Jim Guy ripping through the logo and bellowing, “Eat me!”

Slim Jim Guy, McKinney says, is nothing more than “a tall, nasty piece of meat,” whose antics will appeal to defiant teens. “We are targeting teenage boys, 12 to 17,” she says. “At that age, you feel invincible. You want to do things that people don’t approve of … You’re risking life and limb everywhere. So our product just fits in.”

But canny Goodmark Foods is already looking forward. Caught up in the frenzy of this jerky moment, Goodmark is shoveling cash at all its jerky brands, including a $10 million campaign that will position its Pemmican Beef Jerky as the natural-style jerky that allows meat-snack lovers to “Survive the Day.” As the teenage eater’s taste buds mature, Goodmark is plotting various ways to make the transition from Slim Jim to Pemmican. There are bold new flavors, a meaty new Web site, even a redesigned, fresh-faced Indian-head logo.

Now Goodmark wants to do even more. “All of us really bring a lot of baggage to the jerky market,” Slater explains. “These days, we’re trying to clean-slate ourselves, and be a little more open-minded.”

Uh-oh. “Jerky has never been marketed as relevant to women,” McKinney says. “It’s had much more of a masculine, tear-into-it image.”

Now the Slim Jim team is hoping to level the playing field. “We’re currently doing a lot of qualitative research with women,” Slater says. “The results have been quite eye-opening. … It turns out when women try the product, they like the product. It meets a real salt craving that they have.”

The project, Slater stresses, is still in its nascent phase; and so there are limitations on what he can tell me. What he can say is that he is working with a Kansas company, New Product Insights; and that together, they are developing a new, hybrid, women-oriented meat snack that is both jerky and, somehow, not-jerky. “We’ve been using some nontraditional brainstorming methods, utilizing a technique called “‘category transfer,’” he says. “How do you take something that’s worked in one category — and make it work in a totally different platform?”

It could be, for instance, that jerky marketers have a lot to learn from companies like Cover Girl and Maybelline. “Think about the way women buy makeup,” Slater says. “Makeup is very compact. It’s very small … It’s easy to fit in your purse. Now, the challenge is — how do we take that attribute and relate it to women who don’t currently use our product?”

“What does any of this have to do with jerky?” I ask, confused. “Let me put it this way,” Slater says. “Think of Altoids. Now think of jerky.” He pauses. “The product may be different,” he says. “The packaging may be different. But the idea is the same. We’re both selling portability.” The curiously strong mint — now available in kippered beef.

Whatever one thinks of Slater’s presumption that the biggest obstacle to jerky consumption among females is … the bulky packaging, his heart is certainly in the right place. And so, inspired by Slater’s quest for gender equity in meat snacks, I decide to try some of the product myself. Spurning the gastrointestinal delights of Slim Jim, I opt instead for the Pemmican, two packs of which Slater has sent via FedEx. Let’s see. There is Sweet Mesquite, and Spicy Teriyaki. I decide to try them both.

Guess what? They’re delicious! The Sweet Mesquite is a fiery concoction, a generous medley of herbs and spices. The Spicy Teriyaki, reputed to combine a “pepper punch” with “the authentic taste of the Orient,” is even better, somehow summing up in one mouthful all the mysterious pleasures of that remote continent.

My plan had been to try a little bit of jerky, then throw the rest away. But it was so good, I had to eat it all — fast. Within two minutes, my fingers were scrabbling along the bottom of both empty bags. “I can’t believe I ate all that jerky,” I say to the redesigned, fresh-faced Indian head on the package. And the sage old Indian seemed to twinkle back at me, as if he’d known it all along.