• by March 29, 2007

On a chilly night in late January, two teams of architects met in downtown Manhattan, where they competed to build environmentally friendly designs on a model of New York City’s Stuyvesant Town. The kicker? They were charged with designing the green rooftop out of cheese. Yes, 25 pounds of cheese.

If you think that’s weird, how about fashion designers who faced off in a duel last year at a studio in Noho that had them vying to construct an outfit out of tin foil.

Those events — part performance art, part flash mob — were just two examples of stunts masterminded by LVHRD (short for “Live Hard”) a semi-secret creative society organized by thehappycorp global, a New York City-based digital creative shop that’s putting a new spin on branded tie-ins.

LVHRD, a members-only group of professionals across career disciplines — art and design, fashion, health/science, media, and entertainment — stages monthly and often bi-monthly parties where participants typically confront a challenge.

Eager to forge affinities with LVHRD’s eclectic and savvy 22- to 35-year-old members, brands such as Dewar’s, Brooklyn Brewery, Lincoln Mercury, Sapporo, Absolut, Adobe, and Zipcar have partnered with the group.

The agency’s approach with LVHRD might well spawn a new model for events, promotions, and branded associations. “We love working with LVHRD. Our beer gets in the hands of those clever creatives and their friends, who experience our brand through the events,” says Lysandra Gibbs, marketing director of Brooklyn Brewery. “Dance competitions and beer, crazy fun bands at the MoMA and beer … it couldn’t be a cozier fit for us.”

Doug Jaeger, CEO and founder of thehappycorp, says LVHRD began in 2004, driven by the idea that technology should play a role in bringing creative people together. Wireless text messaging, which at the time wasn’t as popular in the United States as it is today, was a big part of the equation. LVHRD members are notified by text message of event locations and details on the same day as the event to promote an aura of secrecy and exclusivity.

In the beginning, says Jaeger, LVHRD (lvhrd.org) held events on Monday nights, since that’s when many spaces weren’t booked. An average of 200 to 500 people attend each ticketed event, all of which are intended to facilitate interaction among LVHRD’s 3,500 members. The organization also publishes LVHRD MGZN, a multimedia e-zine featuring video clips and plenty of animation, and a blog. LVHRD is also poised to expand to other cities.

Another LVHRD venture, its Bi-fold series pairs artists who work in different mediums to discuss their work, inspiration, and approaches. For example, last summer, comics artist Paul Pope, who’s designed installations for Diesel during New York’s Fashion Week, teamed with musician Mark Denardo, who uses devices like a Nintendo Game Boy to compose music.

A corporate Bi-fold sponsor, Brahma Beer, said the promotion added to the brand’s impact in the New York market. “The LVHRD/Bi-Fold event provided the perfect vehicle for Brahma to launch in New York,” says Lisa Vega, communications consultant for Brahma Beer. “The event targeted Brahma’s desired demo,” she adds.

One of the wackier events was a vending-machine challenge in which teams competed to see who could eat an entire machine’s worth of junk food the fastest. Last year’s challenge pitted a team of designers against members of the New York City Ballet — who normally don’t consume one Snickers bar, let alone 10.

LVHRD’s most ambitious event to date was an association with New York’s Museum of Modern Art in a social experiment of sorts, where nearly 1,000 attendees surrendered their cell phones for the evening and enjoyed a concert in the museum’s atrium. Each phone was sealed in a ziplock bag and pinned up on a board; the phones vibrated, rang, and beeped all night as bewildered party-goers wondered if they’d ever get their phones back.