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By Root 791 0

and immediately began to cultivate proactive relationships with brands.5 Every company today seems to think that its customers want them to provide entertainment, or even “community,” and as Bill Shiller I endeavored to prove them correct. I joined “Weber Nation,” a virtual realm where owners of Weber Grills can share stories about how much they love them. I enlisted in the “Pontiac Underground,” a message board “where passion for Pontiac is driven by you.” I signed up for the “Diesel Cult,” for devotees of Diesel jeans. (“Fill out this form and hopefully you will be accepted,” the signup page said. I did—and I was!) I set up an account with MyCokeRewards.com, making sure to leave checked the boxes inviting promotional e-mails not just from Coke but their countless “partners”: Kodak, Adidas, Six Flags, Blockbuster, Delta. I lounged around for a bit in Pepsi World, playing animated games (in one, an Eskimo child catches snowflakes on his tongue as Pepsi cans periodically pop out of the snow behind him) and designing my own pimped-out automobile rims. On a similarly urban tip, I layered up some hip-hop beats using the Verizon Beatbox Mixer. I strolled through Want2bSquare.com, a strangely abstract virtual world created to promote the Toyota Scion. I created a page at Krystal Lovers, an inexplicable MySpace-style social networking site created by the Southern fast-food chain.

One might imagine that the typical consumer, with a hundred cable channels, YouTube, and BitTorrent downloads at his disposal, is unlikely to spend much time on corporate websites watching videos about their products. But the designers of word-of-mouth marketing campaigns do not see it this way, and Bill Shiller did not either. I turned on Bud.tv, the beer giant’s online television network, featuring advertisements and “shows” that feel like advertisements. At an Intel site called ObsoletePC.org, I watched user-generated-looking videos (real? staged?) in which people come up with zany new uses for their old computers. I sat through the first “webisode” on “In the Motherhood,” an unfathomably bad comedy series “conceived” by the unholy union of Suave, the haircare-products company, and Sprint, the telecommunications provider. I surfed through Kleenex’s LetItOut.com, to which users are supposed to contribute tear-jerking videos, photos, and aphorisms. At MyCadillacStory.com, I viewed photos and testimonials from Cadillac enthusiasts, people like Ian Nelson, who wrote: “You see, I am not only a Cadillac fan, but a fan of an art form that I feel too many overlook today: PURE unadulterated American luxury.”

On MySpace, Bill Shiller sought out corporations as his only companions. A minimalist cartoon square named “Smart” was the avatar of Wendy’s fast-food chain. “It takes flare to be a square to be hard core enough to dare to be made the way you like, to be JUICY to be FRESH to be BEEFY is to be the best,” its profile said. I asked the square to be my friend, and was pleased when it accepted. Sprite’s profile was called Sublymonal; “I am a combination of lemon and lime. I am refreshing. Be my friend,” it said, and Bill Shiller complied. MAKE FRIENDS WITH AQUA-FINA® AND MAKE YOUR BODY HAPPY®! said Aquafina’s profile, and this I did too. Coke, for its part, had a profile called Virtual Thirst: twenty-three years old, female, in Atlanta, Georgia, with a zodiac sign of Aries. She had only 159 friends; Dell Computer, meanwhile, had more than 8,000 friends, and some of them had left testimonials, e.g.: “dell laptop fan, just stoppin in . . . showing some luv . . . if thats possible.” Another: “happy halloween!” Even the Ford Fusion had a page; status: “Swinger.”

After two days, I had twenty-eight friends: three fast-food chains, three cell-phone companies, six cars, six beverages, three network television shows, one Hollywood movie, and two video-game consoles, plus Dell, Nike, Starbucks, and an acne cream. I sent all of these friends a bulletin. It read:

Sorry I haven’t had a chance to write each of you individually. But I want you to know that I love all of