Corporations long have used college campuses to market their wares, but now many companies are taking a new tack: hiring influential students to push their products for them. Businesses such as Microsoft ferret out the movers and shakers on a given campus—those who are highly involved in school activities, perhaps, or who have scads of Facebook friends. They then pay these de facto marketers to advertise their products to their fellow students—sometimes paying them thousands of dollars a semester to do so. “We are the people who understand what kinds of things the students will be open to,” says Alex Stegall, who helps American Eagle on the University of North Carolina campus. “It’s marketing for the students, by the students.” Other companies are sponsoring college activities to draw new customers. Target, for instance, sponsored a welcome dinner for incoming UNC freshmen on the Friday before the fall semester began. Then on Saturday, it hired buses to take students to Target for a round of late-night consuming. (The New York Times)