SXSW Attracts Main Advertisers. Right here’s Why

South By Southwest has successfully taken over the streets of Austin, Texas.

With model activations spilling out of bars, eating places, parking heaps and venues, and a whole lot of celebrated founders, entrepreneurs and tech savants talking on panels in and across the metropolis’s downtown lodges and conference middle, the excited buzz of the pageant is palpable all through town.

Main advertisers have descended upon town in tandem with SXSW, each as pageant sponsors and as members. C4 Vitality, Itaú Financial institution, Porsche, Showtime, Slack, Volkswagen, White Claw are the occasion’s main sponsors, with differing ranges and codecs of name presence all through the pageant.

Dozens of different manufacturers are concerned in several capacities, from merely paying to have an SXSW-branded sequence of occasions, contributing to panel discussions or sponsoring particular parts of the pageant, like music, movie or comedy.

Entrepreneurs instructed Adweek that the pageant’s cross-section of attendees—starting from music and comedy to movie and rising tech—provides a novel proposition for model sponsors.

“South By is only a large, broad, cultural, revolutionary tent,” Puja Vohra, evp of name advertising and technique for Showtime, instructed Adweek. “You simply need to be there.”

Showtime exhibits up once more

Along with its standing as an excellent sponsor for SXSW, Showtime additionally sponsors the SXSW Go app. Every time attendees open the app, they see an advert for Showtime’s model activation centered on the thriller/horror sequence Yellowjackets, which is open to the general public on March 11 and 12. The model’s brand can also be on half of SXSW’s iconic tote luggage—HBO Max has its brand on the opposite half of the branded stock.

Showtime declined to share how a lot it paid for its sponsorship deal, citing aggressive causes.

Whereas attendance numbers received’t be finalized and obtainable till after SXSW wraps, Peter Lewis, chief partnerships officer for the occasion, instructed Adweek that it expects this yr to be “on par” with the sort of participation they noticed previous to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Partnership costs for 2023 had been larger than final yr, when Covid-related uncertainty stored costs a bit decrease, famous Micky Ogando, CEO and chief inventive officer at Austin-based indie company Bakery. Final yr, Bakery shopper and Texas-based beer model Shiner was the official craft beer sponsor of the pageant. This yr, the brewer’s diverting these funds to different partnerships, Ogando mentioned—partly as a result of elevated value of sponsoring SXSW.

Bringing Slack to life

Slack, one other SXSW tremendous sponsor, is bringing its personal immersive expertise to the Texas capital this yr. Whereas the communication platform additionally activated at SXSW final yr, its 2023 presence has a a lot larger footprint and a broader mission—to point out people that Slack can do much more than simply ship messages to your colleagues.

“We’ve an enterprise viewers, which is extra of these software program resolution makers, C-suite people, after which we’ve got our self-serve viewers, that are staff influencers and common inhabitants,” Colin McRae, head of name and artistic at Slack, instructed Adweek.

The activation itself, which sits alongside Congress Avenue in downtown Austin between March 11-14, brings to life a few of Slack’s newer and lesser identified options. That features issues like automating rote duties or connecting by way of huddles and clips, McRae defined.

Celebrating 50 years

For Patagonia, bringing the model to Austin served a special objective. The corporate as we speak launched its fiftieth anniversary marketing campaign, coinciding with the primary day of SXSW.

The marketing campaign focuses on “activism, aware consumption and connection” as a approach of “connecting folks to motion and serving to meaningfully change folks’s habits,” defined Aileen Ottenweller, head of name and enterprise affect at Patagonia.

“To kick off at South By, we deliberate a sequence of occasions that assist catalyze that for the Austin group,” she mentioned. That features internet hosting runs, glad hours and path cleanups in addition to offering areas for grassroots environmental teams like PODER, City Roots and Austin Youth River Watch to attach with folks. Patagonia’s restore truck may even be obtainable to assist folks hold their gear in play for longer.

The corporate paid a price of round $5,000 to co-brand its SXSW-related programming and to make sure that its occasions can be found to attendees by way of SXSW’s on-line and in-app schedule, Ottenweller mentioned. Whereas it’s not an official sponsor, Patagonia’s CEO Ryan Gellert can be onstage with Katie Couric for a keynote on March 12.