Love Affair Brews on Webpage

The couple will exchange wedding vows today in the first official marriage of the Molsonites, members of one of the most successful company-sponsored Web chat forums in Canada.

Molson's ``I Am'' Internet site is a corporate experiment in on-line community building offering Net surfers a virtual social club where they share nationalistic fervour, hockey insights and phone numbers.

And unlike other chat forums on the Web, that socializing takes place in an environment infused with the mystique of cool parties, proud-to-be-Canadian hip and Gen-X vitality that beer companies spend millions of dollars to create alongside their corporate identities.

Think of it as an on-line beer commercial that has inspired dozens of friendships, dozens of real-world gatherings in bars and cottages across Canada and at least a couple of marriage proposals, all in the name of corporate branding.

It's the place where Yelle, a freelance computer analyst in Barrie, and Green, a technical support co-ordinator for Newbridge Networks in Ottawa, first gazed upon each other's on-line prose a couple of years ago. ``We talked for three or four months before we met face to face,'' the 24-year-old Green recalls. ``I got to know her pretty well. But I didn't know what she looked like.''

Then they found themselves together at a Molsonite gathering in Toronto. Green needed a lift to a friend's place at the end of the evening. Yelle had a car.

A long-distance relationship took shape, conducted on weekend visits and over the telephone, but also on-line in the very public Molson forums (www.molson.com).

``He kept proposing to me and posting repeatedly that he loved me and so finally (in early December) I said on the board, `This is ridiculous, I'll marry you,' '' says Yelle, 32, who plans to tie the knot with Green outside Barrie today.

But what does all of this warm and fuzzy community building have to do with bottom-line corporate profits?

``It's very effective as far as brand loyalty and marketing our products goes,'' says Sandy Wills, supervisor of Internet projects for Molson.

``Molsonites are evangelizing our site to everyone they know on-line because they feel like it's theirs. It's like they're all meeting around a table in a bar.''

Companies have long been searching for the secret to building that kind of strong on-line community in their corporate Web spaces. But most have wrestled with the idea of opening up their official sites to public banter, preferring instead to keep a close rein on the content and their public image.

``I've been to other beer sites but there isn't much interactivity there,'' says Blair Gilmore, a Torontonian who moved to Vancouver in September with another Torontonian she met on the site.

``(Molson's site) is a lot more interesting, filled with fun-to-be-with people.

``It's converted everyone on there. I would never drink anything Labatt.''

Jeff Coleman, Gilmore's new roommate in Vancouver, attributes his own Molson conversion to the sense of community he's found on the company's Web site.

``I really didn't have a particular favourite beer before,'' says the 25-year-old computer technician who joined Gilmore on the drive to Vancouver, stopping along the way to visit Molsonite friends in Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton.

``Now, I stick with Molson Dry.''

Web watchers agree that Molson's on-line effort is a study in successful on-line marketing.

The content is irreverent, free-flowing and distinctly uncorporate.

While company information is included on the site, the high-traffic public forums are controlled by about 14,000 registered subscribers who fill the site's ``bathroom wall'' with ongoing debates about everything from abortion to Canadian identity to hockey's greatest goals.

``As a corporate site, I don't know of any other one that's achieved this kind of popularity,'' says Barry Wellman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto who studies on-line communities.

``The world is filled with Web sites hoping people will come, but most don't get much traffic. Molson should be congratulated on their success.''

Molsonites say there are other reasons why their favourite beer company has succeeded in on-line community building where so many others have failed.

They have a lot to do with the company's identity as fun, youthful and Maple Leaf focused.

``The site is largely Canadian so you don't feel alienated like a lot of other chat groups on the Net that are so American,'' says Dave Fudge, a 20-year-old Oakville resident who planned a Molson getaway weekend near Collingwood last summer that drew about 30 Molson followers from as far away as Vancouver.

Emanuel Melo, a Torontonian who visits the Molson site every day, says his Molson loyalty is just an expression of gratitude.

``They've given us the opportunity to make a lot of friends. I don't even like beer, but I have this loyalty to Molson's because I've made a dozen good friends on their site.''