In 2005, Cotton Incorporated picked a new challenge: increasing college students’ awareness of the benefits of cotton clothing. It sounds easy: After all, college kids do nothing but slack in cotton T-shirts and jeans for four (or more) years anyway, right?

The Cary, NC,-based research and promotional arm of the cotton industry knew better. While its surveys showed that more than 66 percent of Japanese, German, Italian, Chinese, and Indian consumers named cotton as the fiber they wore most often, only 52 percent of Americans did.

The demographic it was aiming at was part of Generation Y — the 82-million-strong army born between 1979 and 1994 that spends $150 billion annually, and influences an astonishing 81 percent of their families’ overall clothing purchases, according to Kelly Mooney, president of Resource Interactive, a marketing and technology firm headquartered in New York.

Understandably, companies rub their hands in glee over marketing to this cohort. Until, that is, they realize Gen Y’ers react to most marketing as if they have been vaccinated against it. So Cotton turned to New York-based experiential marketing agency Jack Morton Worldwide Inc. to find the right approach.

The companies’ research showed that the most effective way to engage Generation Y is to engage them in groups of their peers close to their physical turf. You help them experience the brand directly, so they can reinforce its popularity among themselves just as they would at MySpace, Facebook, and other social-networking sites without a media middleman butting in.

For Cotton, that meant giving them a mobile marketing event that was a mash-up of “Project Runway,” TV game shows, and free music downloads. Labeling the event Cotton’s Dirty Laundry Tour, Cotton and Jack Morton selected a cross-country list of 10 colleges — including campuses in Texas, Nebraska, and Indiana — for the tour’s debut in Fall 2005. Cotton chose locations based on obvious logistical factors (such as the size of the student body and available physical space), but also targeted campuses in cotton-growing states, which it felt would help reinforce the brand with students.

About one week before the Dirty Laundry Tour hit town, Cotton scattered the seeds for its event in each market through ads in student newspapers and postcards distributed by student associations. Opening for one day between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., the event featured a field of six tents on a 100-by-110-foot footprint.

It may have looked like a come-one, come-all carnival, but from games to giveaways, the marketecture was all geared to Gen Y’s interests in philanthropy, personalization, and freebies.

In a 2000 survey of Gen Y buying habits, a Cone/Roper poll revealed that 91 percent of the cohort value companies that support charitable causes, and that 89 percent were likely to switch brands to one that associates itself with a good cause.

Pressing the Good-Samaritan button is especially important when capturing customers who have not yet declared their brand loyalties. “They’re starting to form the brand attachments they’ll carry with them for life,” says Jane Hawley, vice president and account director for Jack Morton. “That’s why it’s important to reach them now with something that goes beyond product attributes.”

In 2006, Cotton hooked the students with its “From Blue to Green” denim drive. Starting the week before the tour arrived and continuing the day of the event, the drive asked students to donate their used jeans so they could be recycled into insulation that would be used to rebuild schools damaged by Hurricane Katrina. By the end of the tour, students had donated more than 14,000 pairs.

Customization interests Gen Y’ers as much as good works. Cotton asked students to BYOC — “Bring Your Own Cotton/Clothes” — to a Fashion Independence station where they could personalize the clothing (or T-shirts provided by Cotton) using heat-press transfers, airbrushed artwork, and stencils.

A common thread that runs through every student generation is the desire for free stuff. When it comes to swag, Gen Y is the Six Million Dollar Man — better, stronger, faster than previous generations. Accustomed to free file-sharing sites, complimentary online newspapers, and gratis e-mail, Cotton knew that giving away pens and T-shirts wasn’t exactly going to shock and awe the students into brand loyalty. Instead, Cotton offered a Rock and Load Sweepstakes near one tent, which awarded a washing machine retrofitted with a TV, DVD player, video-game system, stereo, and speakers.

In the Dorm Décor tent, where students picked up tips on real-life dorm-decorating with cotton products, a DJ spun tunes while the students entered a raffle to win prizes of room furnishings.

Students modeled the newest fall fashions on a catwalk, while in the Wheel of Cotton area visitors answered trivia questions to win a variety of prizes, including a chance to spin the wheel and win an iPod.

Cotton Inc. didn’t expect immediate results, but it did want to test whether the Dirty Laundry Tour expanded cotton’s mindshare among students. In the Survey 101 area of the event, it polled students who took part in at least two of the event activities. The survey found that 71 percent of students stated they learned something new about cotton, which formed a baseline metric for future tours. The percentage of students who now knew cotton is an all-natural product rose to 93 percent from 85 percent before the event, and the percentage who now believed cotton is appropriate for formal wear rose from 52 percent to 71 percent. Dirty laundry never smelled so sweet.

For most minorities in America, a bank is, as Bob Hope once said, “the kind of place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.” Washington Mutual Inc. (WaMu) wanted to change that perception among minority customers, but it was going to need some real Magic.

It would take a lot more than free toasters to build trust with and attract lower-income African-American, Hispanic, and Asian consumers and draw them to the Seattle-based financial-services firm’s new Home Loan Centers in cities such as New York, Chicago, and Miami. With predatory loans from other financial institutions gouging mostly minority Americans for more than $9 billion a year, the banking industry’s relationship with minorities wasn’t exactly warm and cuddly.

Located in the cities’ underserved communities, the centers’ events would educate its customers on the home-loan process, and make it easier through innovative lending programs. Aided by Extraordinary Events Inc. of Sherman Oaks, CA, WaMu crafted an event strategy out of the truism that banking, like politics, is ultimately local.

Two weeks before the first Home Loan Center was scheduled to open in New York’s Harlem neighborhood in October 2004, WaMu began publicizing the event. Instead of shotgunning radio and television ads, WaMu favored personal invitations to current customers and prospects in a small area. It sent out just 1,500 postal and e-mail invitations within Harlem’s traditional geographic boundaries. It tapped several multicultural-communication specialists to provide recommendations on which dignitaries, sponsorship organizations, non-profits, and others to alert. Besides inviting the mayor, a councilman, and the area’s Congressional representative, WaMu asked its Home Loan Center staff to invite clients, friends, and family. WaMu invited residents and local businesses, and it asked shopkeepers within a few blocks of the center to hand out flyers for the event.

The event itself was as simple as a neighborhood block party: an open house from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. with basic food and beverage, simple décor, and background music. In keeping with the local strategy, WaMu hired only local caterers, florists, and musicians. “Customers could see for themselves that WaMu was doing right by the community because it was hiring local people [the attendees] might actually know, and putting money back into the community,” says Isabelle Zimmerman, an account executive for Extraordinary Events.

WaMu also provided a draw for the event that was specifically tailored to its audience. When the Harlem Home Loan Center opened its doors, hundreds of people were standing in line, but not because they couldn’t wait to talk about the prime rate. Inside, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, the former Los Angles Lakers superstar, was waiting to meet the crowd.

Johnson today is CEO of Los Angeles-based Johnson Development Corp., whose mission is to increase home ownership for the nation’s underprivileged. Johnson appealed deeply to WaMu’s customers. His minority status, his business savvy, and his consistent efforts to develop low-income areas made him an icon they could believe in.

After Johnson signed autographs, visitors registered, and then met the 25 WaMu staff, who explained how WaMu would develop loan programs to benefit local residents. Several walked out with loans on the spot.

WaMu hoped to attract 400 people to the event; instead 800 showed up. By visibly localizing the many aspects of its event, WaMu compounded its success. In fact, it banked on it.

The Chinese business landscape is littered with global companies that hit a great wall when they tried to compete in the world’s most populous market. According to Usha C.V. Haley, co-author of “Asian Post-Crisis Management: Corporate & Governmental Strategies for Sustainable Competitive Advantage” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), about one-third of multinational corporations have never recorded a profit in the Chinese economic funhouse.

So when Exhibit Works Inc. decided to open a branch office in Shanghai, the Livonia, MI,-based exhibit and event marketing company knew if it didn’t target the right demographic in exactly the right way, it would end up with egg foo yung on its face.

It wasn’t just Exhibit Works’ first Chinese branch; it was the company’s first international branch, period. But the venture was worth the risk: The Chinese economy has galloped at a 10-percent annual growth rate for the last 20 years, and the exhibit industry in China was soaring at a 20 percent yearly rate. But easy growth didn’t mean easy entrée. “Succeeding in China is like cooking a good roux,” says Matt Hubbard, corporate director of marketing and communications for Exhibit Works. “It takes time.”

In China, business success comes from how patiently and elegantly you build your relationships. “Contracts are not a guarantee of anything,” James McGregor wrote in “One Billion Customers” (Free Press, 2005), his primer on doing business in China. “It is the relationship … that will give your business some hope.”

Holding a launch event was the obvious way for the event company to introduce its new branch. But Exhibit Works knew that no matter how well executed, an event held prematurely would fizzle in this new market.

Helped by Danielle Xu, a Shanghai native and Exhibit Works China business manager who has worked in the United States for 10 years, Exhibit Works built a list of domestic and Chinese influencers. It then subdivided the list by exhibit designers, show producers, industry vendors, and convention hall officials, as well as key auto-industry officials and analysts the company would quietly begin to build relationships with for months before the actual grand-opening event.

Like a roux — or, more appropriately, a good Peking duck — the pre-event strategy to establish Exhibit Works’ credibility was a slow-cook process. Besides the years it spent cultivating contacts, the company took three steps over nine months that culminated in the division-launch event.

In January of 2006 — six months before it opened its Shanghai office — Exhibit Works began simmering interest at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit. Exhibit Works paid for Chinese journalists from four of the country’s top automotive publications to see first-hand the exhibit it designed for Chinese car manufacturer Geely Auto Co. While some American press ho-hummed Geely’s presence, numerous articles on Geely were published in Asia. In fact, 35 percent of the China-based news coverage of NAIAS focused on Geely. Feeding off the boosterism of those pieces, one Chinese-business blog gushed, “Against all odds … Geely has generated the biggest buzz at this year’s North American International Auto Show.”

In July, Exhibit Works unrolled part two of its strategy. To announce its Shanghai debut, Exhibit Works sent a “chop” to 355 selected clients and press. Usually carved from sandstone, a chop is a stamp that is pressed in red ink and imprinted on government and business documents. For centuries, the chop has been the official mark or seal of a company in China.

When designing its own chop, Exhibit Works didn’t want to perpetuate a hokey, pagoda-and-chopstick image of China. Instead, it hired the Liu-Li glassworks (called “the Waterford Crystal of China”) to design a chop that fused a traditional look with 21st-century design — an apt metaphor not lost on the Chinese — using the Chinese character for the word “dream.” From that point on, Exhibit Works added the chop to every marketing piece promoting the Shanghai office.

Later in August, the company held a two-day press event in its Shanghai office. For the first day, Exhibit Works invited 15 automotive-industry journalists. It didn’t offer them one-on-one sessions, just interviews en masse. In the United States, that would send journalists the signal that they’re unimportant. But in China, Exhibit Works knew the journalists would be more comfortable with the hive format that the state-controlled press was long accustomed to.

Inviting the automotive media was a no-brainer given Exhibit Works’ depth in that industry, but for the second day, the company invited 15 economic and business journalists, deftly playing the “What’s good for Exhibit Works is good for China” card. It’s an attitude that’s important to the Chinese, wrapped in the slogan Chairman Mao used to quote from the Qing Dynasty, “Make foreign things serve China.” After 28 of the 30 invited journalists showed, more than 30 articles appeared in influential Chinese publications such as Autocar, Shanghai Business, and Auto and Parts. The “foreign things” were serving China’s need for intellectual capital, and China was now opening to Exhibit Works.

In September, Exhibit Works fired the third and last salvo of its strategy, starting with its own exhibit at Shanghai Design Biennial. Nearly 700 attendees visited the bamboo-meets-Blade Runner booth, and Exhibit Works personnel led two of the show’s seminars. The company reported “20 key conversations.” They were all a dim-sum appetizer for the grand-opening event that would tie everything together.

Near the end of the show, Exhibit Works hosted an event on the top floor of Yong Foo Elite, a former British Consulate turned chic club of dark wood and red hanging lanterns. Exhibit Works invited 130 of the journalists, designers, industry vendors, and others with whom it had been building relationships over the prior years. Nearly 90 of those invited attended the event. One of the key conversations at the event was with an official from Shanghai’s upcoming 2010 World Expo (which is expected to draw 90 million visitors), who also attended the larger launch event later that night. The result: Exhibit Works was named one of just 22 preferred vendors for 2010 World Expo, which may mean millions alone for the company. By carefully cultivating a market in a culture that eschews fast negotiations, Exhibit Works proved that sometimes a slow boat to China is the fastest way to get there.

Ask viewers of “The Apprentice” what symbolizes success, and they’ll tell you caviar and Cristal. But those answers would be as mystifying as The Donald’s comb-over to the 15th century Dutch who aspired to owning tulips, or to modern natives in rural New Guinea, who covet the colorful cassowary bird’s feathers.

Sunrider International faced the challenge of identifying the symbols of material success for its distributors. A Torrance, CA,-based multi-level marketer (think Amway) of herbal foods and nutritional supplements, Sunrider wanted to convey to attendees at its annual convention last July the message that selling Sunrider products could bring them the kind of wealth you can measure in Mary Kay Cadillacs. The trouble is, the audience for this message was 90 percent Asian females, mostly from the United States and China. “We had no idea what images communicated wealth to them,” says Greg Jenkins, the president of Bravo Productions Inc. in Long Beach, CA, which helped design the event. “When we think of mansions, do they see pagodas? When we dream about diamonds, do they do fantasize about jade?”

To find out, Jennings and Sunrider embarked on a strategy of researching what represents affluence in Asian culture in several specific categories, including housing, shopping, travel, leisure, and more. What they found surprised them — and vindicated their strategy.

While 3,000 attendees crowded the yearly two-day convention at the Anaheim Convention Center, only one fifth attended the event Sunrider held on the last night at the Hyatt Regency in Garden Grove, CA. It wasn’t for lack of space or budget. “Sunrider invites everyone,” says Jenkins, “but only the first 800 to respond can come. It rewards the go-getters.”

Inside the hotel’s ballroom, attendees walked into a montage of money. But it wasn’t the Forbidden City stereotypes of terra-cotta warriors and priceless silks you might expect. Sunrider’s research showed Western images from “Dynasty” and “Dallas” had done far more than the Cold War to conquer China.

That’s why, to represent the Asian image of haute housing, Sunrider didn’t build some exaggerated Grauman’s Chinese Theatre castle, but two mansion facades instead, one a knock-off of Scarlet O’Hara’s Tara, the other an Aaron Spellingesque abode. They stood near four faux storefronts for high-end brands Hermes, Versace, Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany’s, luxury names that now command more mindshare than Mao among the Chinese, who today are the third-largest consumers of luxury goods in the world.

An Eiffel Tower and a Leaning Tower of Pisa symbolized leisure, because Sunrider’s research showed the Western icons stirred a romantic reflex in its target audience. Panels with silhouettes of exotic destinations such as Thailand and Malaysia reflected the studies that showed the popularity of those destinations among upscale Chinese travelers.

Even with the ascending Chinese economy, the dollar sign still says you’re in the money more than any other economic emblem: 7-foot-tall dollar signs rendered in gold and silver colors were positioned around the floor, while gobo projections of dollar signs sprinkled the ballroom’s surfaces like monetary confetti. Each guest also received a necklace with the symbol as a keepsake. To appeal to the once-classless society that is now Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ third-largest market, Sunrider parked a candy-apple red Rolls-Royce that belonged to Sunrider’s CEO on the floor.

Where Sunrider found the West and the East parted ways regarded spirituality. In Asia, getting rich has a near-religious side that has little to do with TV evangelists. To capture the harmony between the two, Sunrider mixed clouds — which represent spirituality and the universe in Asian cosmology — with mammon. The company placed the faux mansions on top of a layer of fluffy “clouds,” and used the gobos to paint the ballroom with them as well. Planted in and around the brand-name buildings were birch trees, on whose bark the early Buddhists wrote their sacred manuscripts.

By evening’s end the attendees had supped, sipped, and mingled in a room rich with symbols of wealth that transcended language and culture. “After most events you go home and put your notes away,” Jenkins says. “The connection’s lost like a dropped cell phone call.” Not this one.

More than 70 percent of attendees reported that they felt motivated by the event and the conference information to sell more products in the new year, and more than 80 percent said the symbols of wealth had real relevance to their lives — making them much more than just a pretty visual. Sunrider’s aspirational gallery proves that math isn’t the universal language — money is. e