Cool School

He took the test in January 2002.

Carlos Centeno, 21, had been enrolled at the University of Kansas for just one semester. He was born in Lawrence (his dad was an international student at KU), but he'd grown up in his family's native Venezuela and transferred from a private business school in Caracas in the fall of 2001. He was a tall kid with green eyes and short-cropped hair who generally wore thrift-store clothes. He spoke English impeccably, except for curling his vowels in a Spanish drawl.

When he arrived in Lawrence, Centeno faced the same social purgatory a kid from Dodge City or Goodland might have. He knew no one.

Centeno lived in Jefferson Commons at 31st and Iowa and rode the bus to school. After class on most days, he would walk down the hill to Massachusetts Street. He'd listen to music in record shops and read magazines at the back of bookstores so he wouldn't have to buy them. A journalism major, Centeno had written a few music articles for a newspaper back home. He considered himself a budding critic.

For the most part, the questions on the test seemed straightforward:

Did he have a computer? What kind? Did he have Internet access? What form?

What equipment do you own, the questionnaire asked, listing the relevant possibilities: minidisc player, digital camcorder, Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation 2, Game Boy, DVD player, MP3 player.

His interrogators sounded like members of a junior high clique, wanting to know his favorite video games, magazines and Web sites; his favorite three recording artists; his favorite movies, clothing brands, sneaker brands.

Then they quizzed him on his knowledge of Lawrence: What record stores were in town? Music venues? Clothing stores? Skate- and snowboarding shops? Movie theaters?

Then they gave the command that comes standard on entrance exams everywhere: Tell us a little bit about yourself (hobbies, interests, etc.).

Now, Centeno is vague about how he filled out the test. He tells the Pitch that he reads small but well-known hip-hop magazines. That his three favorite music groups are Latin and Afro-Cuban acts. And that the Beatles' Revolver always anchors any list of his favorite albums. His favorite movie: Fight Club, in part because he'd read the book by Chuck Palahniuk. His favorite place to shop: Urban Outfitters.

He won't say anything more because he later learned that the test is like a sifter, separating people who are too mainstream or square from people who are cool.

The test had been on a job application for Cornerstone Promotions, a New York company that promotes musical acts, trendy gear and various other consumer products. The company had apparently divined an empirical way to measure hipness.

Seven months after he'd taken the test, Cornerstone executives called Centeno to offer him a position with their Field Activation and Research Marketing (FARM) team.

Though Centeno's new employers had never met him in person, his test results must have confirmed that he was, in the industry lingo, a "trendsetter." Centeno had applied for the position because he was interested in hip-hop culture, and the company put out a hip-hop magazine. Cornerstone managers responded in kind: They were interested in him, and their offer was the hip-hop equivalent of a shoe logo on a Little League coach's cap. Draped in industry gear and backed up by insider information, he would be transformed from anonymous college kid to campus hip-hop expert.

In a fitting introduction to the United States of consumer-obsessed America, Centeno earned his first-ever paycheck in this country by selling his unique style. He would proceed to take on the persona of corporate-codified cool.

Traditionally, the definition of cool is that it just is. It's like obscenity -- you know it when you see it. It's a look, a feeling, an intrinsic quality, a state of mind.

But it's also an economic buzzword, the element that determines which products the public will buy and which will bomb; it's a coveted special ingredient that dictates a product's shelf life. Find that x-factor before a competitor, and profits -- especially those reaped from easily influenced and highly influential young people -- could be unlimited.

In the mid-'90s, this search gave rise to a new breed of professionals: "Coolhunters," sleuths trained to spot the next hot thing. In 1997, New Yorkerwriter Malcolm Gladwell followed Baysie Wightman, a general-merchandise manager who worked for Reebok, and DeeDee Gordon, who worked for a Los Angeles advertising firm, as they searched for kids who could spot coolness. Historically, Gladwell wrote, the idea of what was cool had been based on a trickle-down philosophy, with highbrow clothiers dictating style to the masses. But within the last few decades, he argued, the flow became a trickle-up phenomenon as kids with independent ideas started bucking trends. Gladwell couched his theory in diffusion research: the strategy of tracking how ideas spread (the best-known example was a study that traced how farmers in Greene County, Iowa, in 1928, decided to plant a new type of corn seed). Diffusion research revealed that most lifestyle changes follow patterns, spreading from a few "innovators" and expanding exponentially among other groups of people -- the "early adopters," the "early majority," the "late majority" and "laggards" -- mostly by word of mouth.