SXSW

Earlier this month the South by Southwest festival happened in Austin, Texas and boy was it a great one. For those of you who do not know what South by Southwest (or SXSW for short) is, it is a festival that happens once annually that celebrates the best and newest trends in music, film, and interactive technology. They have everything from guest speakers, trade shows, and mentor programs, to games, awards, and comedy performances. The one downfall of this event is that it is QUITE expensive to attend. The cheapest badges are around $500 and that only gets you into a limited amount of events. Some badges can even go all the way up to $1695. Seeing as how I am a broke college kid I did not have that amount of cash to dole out for this event (although I image it will be worth the money someday). So instead I had to hear about the festival second hand through a mentor of mine, Todd Copilevitz. He is a partner at J. Walter Thompson in Atlanta, GA and specializes in Digital Strategy. Todd has been coaching a group project that I am currently working on for the UGA Digital Marketing Competition and has been a tremendous aid and has given us insights into the industry that I had never known before. I had the opportunity this Monday to go into the JWT office in Atlanta and sat down with Todd and an associate of his, Breanna Rotell, and spoke with them a little about the SXSW festival. The story that he told me that I found most interesting was about the game that Pennzoil had set up this year in Austin. Pennzoil had teamed up with Nintendo and created a go kart track in order to set up their own real life Mario Kart game. What they did was hook up GoPro cameras to the top of the go karts along with attaching an RFID sensors to each kart so that when they drove over markers on the track it gave them power ups or hurt the speed of their kart. I found this to be a great marketing event because it got people engaged with things that almost everybody loves ( go karting and Mario Kart). It also allowed people to upload their videos of them racing from the GoPro and share them with their friends. I know I would have loved to have raced around on that track with my friends and definitely would have shared the video afterwards through Facebook or Instagram.



Here's the SXSW article on the event:

http://sxsw.com/interactive/news/2014/dont-miss-pennzoils-mario-karting-reimagined

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRmqlrlP2m4