Marketing America
By Shashi Tharoor
Newsweek International
December 3, 2001

IN ONE OF those it-could-only-happen-in-America stories, two 18-year-old high-schoolers, Chris Barrett and Luke McCabe of Ocean City, New Jersey, have concluded a deal with First USA Corp., a mega-issuer of credit cards, to pay their first year of college—to the tune of $40,000 each. In exchange, they will be walking, talking billboards for First USA, sporting the company’s logo on their T shirts and surfboards, making campus appearances and publicizing the company on their personal Web site.

How on earth did two utterly undistinguished young men—their passions being “golf, surfing, tennis, concerts and dating”—merit this largesse? They’re hardly rock stars, tennis champs or budding Einsteins. No, they’re just two regular guys with a heck of an idea. And as often occurs in America, they’ve hit pay dirt, not because they’re special but because they thought of it first.

The two teenagers—invariably described in newspapers as “cool, blond and young”—were seniors at Ocean City’s Haddonfield Memorial High School who thought it would be fun to go to college in California but realized their slender accomplishments probably precluded their winning a scholarship. Discouraged by prospective tuition fees of more than $30,000 a year, they saw Tiger Woods on television, his accouterments festooned with logos, and had an epiphany. Why not get someone to sponsor them, too?

That’s where the Internet came in. It was the work of a moment to create a Web site and upload pictures of themselves, smiling and confident; in one, Barrett stands on a skateboard in tan shorts and white T shirt, while a grinning McCabe draws attention to the legend on the back of his friend’s shirt: advertise here. please call for rates! Other pictures suggested your logo here on unlikely portions of the boys’ anatomies. One message on the Web site ran: “We will drink your soda and eat your chips! Where we go, you go!”

It might have ended as the slightly ridiculous jape some of their classmates thought it was, but that’s not how the Web works. People started logging in; word of mouth spread. Then Yahoo made it its “Daily Picks.” The hits multiplied a thousandfold. And then, sure enough, offers from potential sponsors started flowing in. First USA’s was by far the best, not merely because of the money but because, as Luke Tauto logically told The New York Times, “we wanted a message, one that we thought kids could relate to. Everyone can relate to money.”

For First USA, $80,000 a year for the two boys isn’t exactly an act of selfless generosity. The publicity they have already garnered through press accounts of their story—all of which, of course, mention First USA—would have cost the company a good deal more. To put it baldly, some of the ads were priceless. The good gray New York Times, for one, ran a huge picture of Chris and Luke accosted by two comely bikini babes as our heroes emerged from the surf, First USA logo front and center, one on each surfboard. And college students have always been a key target of credit-card companies. In fact, First USA recently concluded a $13 million contract with the University of Oklahoma for the right to market cards to students, alumni and employees.

The pair, who will attend two different California colleges, Pepperdine University in Malibu and the University of Southern California, have to work for their money. They’ve got to don First USA clothing, appear publicly on and off campus, maintain at least a C average in their course work and not do anything that would bring disrepute to their sponsors. No doubt this “morals clause” will be interpreted by the prevailing standards of southern California, land of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, where misconduct often burnishes rather than tarnishes reputations.

As a father only a year away from paying two sets of college fees, I have no hesitation in congratulating Barrett and McCabe for their enterprise and wishing them four fun-filled and financially fruitful years of university life. But as a foreigner still not totally immersed in all the ways of Americana, I cannot help a slightly regretful twinge of anxious scruple. Should we really be celebrating the fact that, in today’s America, two young men felt they had no choice but to essentially sell themselves to a corporation in order to get themselves a college education? Of course, if my own sons had had the idea first, I might feel differently...

Tharoor, has a Web site, too - www.shashitharoor.com - and is not looking for sponsors. His novel “Riot” was published in September