PEOPLE.

Getting kids to listen pays off for marketer

To the unhip, the names Buckcherry, Radiohead and Limp Bizkit are gibberish. But rock cognoscenti recognize them as hit makers. And they're Ron Vos' bread and butter. His Carrboro-based Hi Frequency Marketing peddles these and other groups to a choice demographic -- buyers under 30 with money to burn -- on behalf of record labels such as Columbia and MCA.

To convince kids and twenty-somethings that they want what he's pitching, Vos, 36, employs six full-time workers and 200 part-time field representatives -- average age, 20 -- in 60 cities. Field reps hand out cassette samplers from new albums in music stores. They hang concert posters at cool coffeehouses, piercing and tattoo parlors, snowboard and skateboard shops -- anywhere Gen X and Gen Y hipsters are apt to see them. They tell Vos about placement of clients' products in shops. "They have to know their city, be out there at the clubs mingling," says Hi Frequency's president.

His company was recently hired by Independent Music Network, which casts itself as MTV's Internet competitor. Vos' field reps are helping gather material for TV commercials to be aired this summer. "Our reps show up at concerts in TV vans that we've leased and interview kids about the hot bands in their area."

Vos, a Long Beach, N.Y., native, almost didn't make it into the business. In the '80s, he was flunking out of business courses at New York University until he discovered a major called music business. "I figured it was a great way to bring my grades up. It was the first time I ever saw music as a business." After he got a bachelor's in music in 1991, he worked in the mail room and, eventually, marketing at Geffen Records.

Vos moved to Carrboro in 1993 to join colleagues wanting to form a youth-marketing group. He founded Hi Frequency with them in 1995 on a shoestring and a $125 used computer. "Labels were downsizing, and it was cost-efficient for them to outsource marketing."

Billboard magazine says it's a player, but Hi Frequency is still flaky enough to leave its office answering machine off for days. It's still small -- about $1 million in revenues -- but growing 50% a year. To stay fresh, Vos' management team locks itself in an office until it comes up with the perfect idea. "It's like an election. There's negative campaign ads and mudslinging." How does it resemble the Gore-Bush race? Well, the two most acidic insults a staffer can hurl at an idea are "too...