BRIDGING HIP-HOP CONSUMERS AND SUITS
By JEFF LEEDS, NYT
September 22, 2004

HP in the house!"

It was 2:30 a.m. in a converted factory space near downtown Miami, and the music entrepreneur Steve Stoute had briefly leaned into a microphone to trumpet his client, the computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard, to anyone on the dance floor who could hear him over the beats pounding from the speakers.

The MTV Video Music Awards had ended hours earlier on what would be just another work night for Mr. Stoute, a former record executive who has leapt into advertising. Sean Combs, in town for the awards and the party's official host, had taken the stage to place an order with the bar for 500 shots of tequila, while barely clad dancers writhed in cages on platforms around the floor. On Hewlett-Packard's tab, hundreds of fans were dancing, drinking and, so went the hope, trying out the company's mini-printers or digital photo technology.

It is in such climates, Mr. Stoute said after last month's party, that a buttoned-up brand name like Hewlett-Packard's can loosen up and, potentially, become cool. "It's not a party," he said of the event. "It's a Puffy party, which makes it an event that only the finest of the fine get invited to."

These days, a bevy of blue-chip companies are pressed up against the velvet rope, desperate for access to the trend-setting youth market, and many are turning to Mr. Stoute for a pass inside. At 34 he has emerged as one of Madison Avenue's surest guides to the wide world of young consumer spending, hip-hop style. Teenage spending alone was estimated at $175 billion last year, according to market research firm Teen Research Unlimited.

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