Lifestyle

JOSH SPEAR

JOSH Spear is living the slacker dream come true. A 24-year-old college dropout dressed in a T-shirt and sneakers, he’s the in-the-know guy corporate suits call into their boardrooms to answer the question: “How can we get young people to think we’re cool and buy our product?”

His title of online strategy consultant doesn’t really do justice to Spear. As co-founder of the digital think tank Undercurrent, he’s an arbiter of all things hip to the Internet generation, courted for his insights by companies from CNN to Ford.

In short, Spear helps boring old businesses create online buzz.

And it’s not just corporate suits eating out of his hand. Spear was one of a number of young entrepreneurs recently called to the White House to discuss job creation, and he’s been named a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum.

Spear may dress like a slacker, but the native of leafy Litchfield, Conn., is as driven and fast-talking as any Wall Streeter. @Work sat down with Spear at his headquarters on Lafayette Street — complete with gumballs, Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots and a staff of 16 — to find out why he’s such a hot commodity in the business of cool.

How’d you get started in cool?

I went to college for a year in Boulder, Colo. I’d graduated high school a year early and wanted to go out there and check out the climbing and snowboarding. I was just a part-time student, taking classes in journalism. Mostly I was sitting in back of a lecture hall, blogging. I started a blog called JoshSpear.com. It was a cool-hunting, trend-spotting site. I wrote about music I liked, or shoes, or T-shirts. Products, trends, travel, you name it. And it caught on.

How do you turn a “NoName.com” blog into a career?

My readership started as friends and family, and they told friends and family. And before I knew it, it was this growing entity. Next thing was I started getting e-mails from companies wanting to advertise. First Audi, then Nike and Adidas and BMW.

They came to you. Why?

No. 1, my timing was good. There were very few sites writing about products, travel, art and design. And No. 2, it was good. It was written by me every day of the week. Maybe I’d land in Copenhagen, and the first thing I’d do was blog about the hotel, the restaurant. I was dedicated to it, and eventually I hired a dozen contributors. Now the site reaches 100,000 readers every month, as we scour the globe for the next big thing.

What caused the shift to doing consulting?

As I communicate with advertisers, I’m also getting e-mails asking my opinion on how to market to young people. It snowballed. And then the conversation went from a shoe company asking what I thought of the color of their sneaker to them asking about the Internet in general. Companies wanted to know what people were saying about them. They’d ask: How do you build a strategy to engage this audience? We’re kind of like their SWAT team, their secret weapon for attracting an online audience. We help them understand a crop of consumers who are expecting new things from their brands.

What’s a typical day like?

I don’t really have an average day. I travel for about half of every month, all over the world. I do a lot of speaking to business leaders or our clients, often in Europe or Asia.

What do you tell them?

Mostly that the time has come to create things people seek, instead of things that seek people. The goal is to build an entertainment or service or utility that people will seek out and tell their friends about. It’s not some advertisement that finds them and says “Buy me, buy me!”

How about an example?

OK, Charmin is now doing something that’s working really well. It’s a mash-up between Google Maps and a site that shows you all the clean toilets in New York City. It’s an iPhone and BlackBerry application that allows people to use GPS and find clean bathrooms. It’s advertising, of course. But it’s through a utility.

So, you don’t do pop-up ads?

Absolutely not. Companies spend millions on banners online, and they get a 1 percent click-through rate. We say, take that money and apply it to something that’s not interrupting the consumer, but instead adding some value.

Are viral videos valuable?

They’re practically immeasurable, at least the good ones. Like the LeBron James miracle shot for Nike. I have a theory on viral videos. All the successful ones have one or more of these four qualities: sensuality, comedy, mystery or amazement. Actually, there’s one category that’s an exception to that theory: kittens and puppies.

What’s your advice to someone who wants to follow your path?

When speaking to corporate America, give them an uncut, honest opinion. You’ve got to understand that the advertising agencies they’re used to working with are loaded with yes men. When I was just getting going, I think for the first time ever I was giving them honest feedback. They got obsessed with me. They’d call and ask what I thought. I’d say, “That was cool” or “That sucked.” Give them a no-holds-barred consulting style.

mkane@nypost.com