"I don't know where they drew that from," Jull complains. "I mean, I'll listen to jazz if I really have to. But it's far from my first choice of music." Slightly more disquieting was the fact that these young trend-setters, supposedly rousted out of rave clubs and latte bars, turned out to bear a suspicious resemblance to their ad-agency observers. "A lot of us seemed to come from advertising-type backgrounds," reflected Matt Dell, 23. "There was a copywriter. There were a few visual designers. I work as an assistant editor of commercials at a company called Flashcut ... But I guess that's just where the hip people are."

Whatever the limitations of its respondent pool, BBDO spared no expense in creating an avant-garde space for Dell and his fellow visionaries. "It was all about this retro aesthetic," enthuses Jessica Waese, 23. "There were soft chairs, a TV, a fireplace, a kitchen. For the workspace, we had these retro work stations divided by translucent screens. I don't know if you're familiar with Wallpaper magazine ... It was just really well done." There was a PlayStation, a DVD collection and a fridge stocked with cold beer. Sleeping arrangements consisted of Winnebagos and antique honey wagons parked out back. "Creative thinking demands a creative environment," says Hunter. "We tried to surround [the campers] with props that would make them comfortable. If you wanted ten Snickers bars for breakfast, you could have them. They were there."

When not staving off the effects of hypoglycemic shock, the campers attended discussion groups led by BBDO "counselors" who probed their relationships with brands. "They were particularly interested in our early childhood memories of snack cakes," recalls Jeffery Pearson, 28. "What stuck in our heads? Was it the taste? The packaging? The jingle?"

Eager to expose their youthful palates to a range of taste sensations, staff counselors then escorted the campers to a replica of a convenience store. "There was chicken-flavored gum from Japan," says Neale Halliday. "Savory prawn chips from Taiwan. From Germany, we had cans of chilled sausage and milk. You can tear the top off, and just slurp." The counselors watched eagerly to see what products the campers would choose to sample. "They could stroll down the aisles and help themselves," says Hunter. "[By] watching their choices, we could then glean insights about what they wished for in the market."

Sadly, the campers' appraisal of the prawn chips and canned sausage was less than flattering. "A lot of people reacted negatively to the international product," laments Hunter. "They said things like, 'This is disgusting.'"

In a video distributed to reporters, the campers are captured in all the expected moments of slacker verité. A pale, tattooed bunch, they can be seen brushing their teeth, playing air guitar and trudging off to the showers, towels knotted around waists. But rather than accusing each other of racism or trading confessions of virginity, participants were caught musing on the benefits of sweet snack food. "With Twix, you've got the crunchiness of a candy bar," drawled a young woman with spiky blonde hair. "But in a way, it's more cookie than candy." A telegenic young man in a Scooby-Doo T-shirt wondered, "Can a snack food truly incorporate all the elements of a breakfast food?" Another inquired if "fruit juice can ever be a catalyst for flirtation, a catalyst for sexual activity." It's enough to make you long for Richard Hatch.

Meanwhile, the real drama of the weekend was yet to come. Hoping to take the campers from snack-cake ruminations to actual product ideas, agency counselors divided participants into five tribes and asked them to create their own brands. For this purpose, the campers had at their disposal a complete multimedia studio equipped with all the latest graphic-design supplies. "We had all this dummy packaging set up for them," says Fiona McBride, senior vice president and group account director at the agency. "We had two A/V suites, with two Mac operators working round the clock. We wanted them to come up with novel and interesting product ideas, then finish them up to the very highest standard for presentation."

Neale Halliday and his group kept an anxious eye on the proceedings. "We knew we only had our campers for a weekend," he says. "We were keen to extract whatever value we could from them." The hope was that the prototypes would lead to commercially viable product ideas, or, failing that, at least provide a generalized sense of what young consumers were looking for. "The value wasn't just in the products they created," Halliday said. "By studying and analyzing the products they came up with, we could generalize about how this generation thinks about food and the marketplace."

Says Hunter: "The products that made it through to the final stage are symbolic of a whole process. They are symbolic of all the values, all the conscious or unconscious desires for food that our respondents harbor."

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