Vice is happy to be known as a hipster media company. From its headquarters in a former warehouse in Brooklyn, the company oversees magazines covering youth culture in 23 editions distributed in 26 countries, an online television network and a record label. Vice's identity -- and skill at content creation -- is what makes its current partnerships with Dell and Intel both possible and surprising. The deals call for Vice to create sites filled with images, videos and text that evoke a cool-kid image those companies want to connect with, although not necessarily with specific products. It's an unusual arrangement for a media company. But Shane Smith, a co-founder of Vice, said his pitches to clients usually start simply: 'Every company is now a media company.' Getting companies to agree with that sentiment is the easy part, Smith said, as most are now familiar with the opportunity to get their message out through social media. Much tougher is getting a company to move away from the usual marketing tropes, like 30-second advertisements and online banner ads. That approach is much easier when the target is the millennial generation, those in their late teens to their early 30s, a notoriously tough demographic to reach, and the one that Vice considers to be its core audience. 'We have to appreciate that it's not a passive age group, sitting in front of the TV with ads blaring at them,' said Deborah Conrad, chief marketing officer at Intel, which started talking to Vice a couple of years ago. 'We trust that Vice knows their audience.' So last year Intel decided to put its faith in the idea that Vice could produce events and populate a website with material that would appeal to that demographic. Intel is not alone in investing in content. In 2009, companies spent $47.2 billion on custom marketing -- from magazines to websites -- according to a survey conducted by the Custom Content Council, an industry group in New York, and ContentWise, a newsletter. 'I think a lot of brands are realizing that they have to create content, and when they do it, it works,' said Gene Liebel, a partner in the Brooklyn agency Huge, which is not working with Vice or the two technology companies, though it has worked with Intel previously. The partnership between Intel and Vice includes the creation of a website, thecreatorsproject.com, which began in May. Earlier this year, the partnership also began producing events in five cities around the world -- New York, London, Sao Paulo, Seoul and Beijing -- that are one part concert, one part art exhibit, one part conference and many parts party, as the doors open in early afternoon and close after midnight. The Intel and Vice logos are present, but subdued. The drinks are free. Still, it's the website, Conrad said, that's really the 'nerve center' for the partnership. The site says it is meant to 'continually identify and celebrate the work of visionary artists.' Each week, it introduces a new short video -- often around six minutes long -- presenting a profile of one of those artists. Vice decides which artists to consider visionary, and then produces the video. One of them is the musician Alan Palomo, a composer for Neon Indian, a band that relies heavily on electronic sounds made with synthesizers and other technology and who performed at the New York event in late June. In a video on the Creators Project site, Palomo describes how video games from the 1980s influenced his music and how the band uses projectors at its concerts. And in an interview, he said that he found the Intel connection at the New York event 'refreshing,' because it did not seem that the company was selling any product. 'It's like you're expecting the usual suspects, like a Converse banner,' he said. The deal with Dell is similar. On motherboard.tv, a site that describes itself as devoted to 'sniffing out the smartest, most groundbreaking arbiters and advances of tech-related culture,' Vice oversees the blog posts and videos. Dell's logo is incorporated into the site's logo, but the connection is otherwise out of sight. Artists and topics that can connect with a young demographic are valuable assets, said Ian Schafer, chief executive of Deep Focus, an ad agency that has worked with Vice in the past, but is not involved in the Dell or Intel deals. It's a model, he said, that more media companies may need to consider. 'With something as scarce as good and quality content, the price has upward pressure on it,' Schafer said. 'It's what prevents all of advertising from a race to the bottom.' Neither Vice, Intel nor Dell would discuss the financial terms of their deals. Conrad and Michael Tatelman, vice president for sales and marketing at Dell, said they knew there was an inherent risk in handing over the content oversight to Vice, whose magazine and website have a long history of running occasional nude images. These relationships do not always work out for the best. Last year, Microsoft teamed up with the television show 'Family Guy' to promote the Windows 7 operating system. A special commercial-free show was to include references to the Windows 7. But Microsoft executives backed out of the show, reportedly after finding some of the topics distasteful. 'We have values and norms that support our brand,' Tatelman said. 'Vice has been great about staying within those brand tenets.' But at the same time, Conrad and Tatelman said the value of working with Vice was the ability to capitalize on the media company's cachet with the chic crowd. They said that the two sides must find a middle ground that did not tarnish either Vice's brand or theirs. So far, no interventions have been necessary. And walking that fine line has also allowed the companies to touch the trend-setters, a group usually out of their reach. 'It's so cool, when you think about it for us, to see how people are using technology,' Conrad said. 'You can only get so excited about spreadsheets.' 