How marketers at FX, Paramount and Criterion feel about experiential at SXSW

As marketers, agency execs, filmmakers and musicians returned to Austin this past week for SXSW — which runs until March 15th — so too have the brands like Criterion, FX, Paramount, Amazon and Alaska Airlines with various experiential activations on the ground. In the past, marketers believed that having an experience was a must and brands faced irrelevancy without one. Now, after having experienced the shutdown of experiential efforts during the pandemic, marketers, agency execs and attendees believe experiential at SXSW (and elsewhere) shouldn’t solely be about relevance, but to give attendees a real way to interact with the brand.

While marketers today are still tracking hard metrics like foot traffic and the number of social posts following an activation, they’re more focused on how consumers feel after the experience and looking for ways they can show a boost in brand love. Today’s marketers see increasing brand love as a current goal — something that came up during more than one panel at SXSW — but they recognize measuring that love isn’t nearly as easy as foot traffic and social posts.

That’s something Criterion is trying to deliver with its mobile truck experience — a first foray into true marketing for the brand, which is turning 40-years-old this year. SXSW is the third stop of the experience; the first took place in Manhattan during the New York Film Festival last fall garnering roughly 900 attendees and the second was last October in Brooklyn with some 400 attendees. Throughout its four days open at SXSW, Criterion had to extend the hours of the truck and close off its line early on due to film lovers’ interest in the experience, noted Nur El Shami, chief marketing officer at Criterion. More than 1,000 attendees went through the experience throughout SXSW, according to Criterion. 

The idea of the mobile closet experience as Criterion’s first major marketing execution came from listening to fans of the brand who grew attached to the closet series online. “So much of our social comments and the general discourse has become people going, ‘Can we come to the closet? We would do anything to do the closet,’” said El Shami, who said the experience felt “authentic” to “the brand’s DNA.” El Shami did not say how much the pop-up cost but did note that the company used the same truck it had already built out for the previous pop-ups.

While SXSW is an early move into marketing for Criterion, other more seasoned marketing organizations still see an experiential offering at SXSW as a way to launch new properties with an influential audience. “We see SXSW as an opportunity to target a great audience of tastemakers,” said Kenya Hardaway Green, FX’s svp of integrated promotions. “It’s important for us to create experiences that really allow [people] to be immersed, allow them to take an active role in the experience so that they’re creating and exploring the story through their own lens.”

During SXSW’s first weekend, FX hosted an immersive activation to promote its new series, Alien: Earth, which featured actors taking attendees five at a time through various scenarios in the aftermath of a wreck. The experience, aptly named “The Wreckage,” took two days to build before SXSW kicked off and the festival is the first of three stops for the activation, which FX worked with design shop VT Pro Design on for the five months on the “substantial build,” said Hardaway Green, who did not provide costs.

The experiential offerings at SXSW varied from the more involved immersive activations of those from Criterion and FX to more holistic takes on the brand from Amazon and Paramount+. The latter companies served free drinks and provided photo opps for the various entertainment properties that each brand wanted to promote this year.

“We’re focused on fostering fandoms and building lifelong, personalized relationships with our audiences, this includes in-person touch points that give fans the opportunity to connect with the best of what Paramount+ has to offer,” said Michelle Garcia, svp of marketing at Paramount Streaming, in an email, noting that Paramount’s experience, dubbed “The Lodge” is in its third year at SXSW. “Success is not just about foot traffic but about the way consumers feel when they leave our space.” 

As marketers consider what’s working and what isn’t about experiential marketing today at SXSW and beyond, the metrics of success continue to evolve from relevance on the ground to beyond the bounds of SXSW. 

“Do brands have to do experiential [marketing] to matter at SXSW? No — but if you’re going to invest in it, it needs to be relevant to your brand, give people a reason to engage, and, most importantly, create moments worth capturing and sharing for those not in Austin,” said Greg Swan, a 17-year SXSW veteran, senior partner and Midwest digital lead at Finn Partners. “If someone goes to a brand activation and doesn’t share it, did they even attend? Nope.”