Bold experiential marketing stole the show at SXSW 2024

From guerrilla-style takeovers to large-scale sponsored experiences, brands did everything in their power to capture their audience’s attention and time. result? These experiential trends are moving beyond “one-offs” to elements that can ultimately have a long-term impact on brands.

Here are three SXSW-inspired trends you should consider permanently incorporating into your brand strategy.

1. Apply both immersive and sensory aspects to activation

The gap between brands focusing on basic product sampling and truly immersive, multi-sensory brand experiences was evident at this year’s festival. Using sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell (yes, smell!) to increase brand and experience recall was utilized successfully throughout SXSW.

Consider the Audible sound experience. I love a good audiobook, but what’s even better? Experience Austin from several stories above ground on a giant Audible-branded Ferris wheel. The combination of excellent audio messages, the “wow” visual experience of a Ferris wheel in the middle of a downtown building, and the visceral sensation you can only get on an amusement park ride had a huge sensory impact on the audience.

And Tide has launched a “revolutionary” laundry tile. When I stepped into this beautifully designed space, what immediately hit my senses was the distinct scent of Tide. The intentional use of smell made the rest of the experience even more enjoyable.

Consumers within the experience do more than just watch trailers and scan QR codes to get coupons. A complete sensory experience is what stays with viewers, especially in a crowded brand activation market like SXSW.

2. Plan strategically using a portfolio approach

One of the big changes in experience this year is not so much the activations themselves, but how marketers are opening up about how they discuss them, using a “portfolio approach” to build a roadmap for their annual events. This is what we discussed.

That’s natural. The science of event measurement and attribution has advanced rapidly in recent years. Just as dashboards and trackable actions have existed in digital for years, experiential tools have also improved significantly, giving brands confidence in where they appear with a more critical lens. You can now select

Brands no longer attend events just because “that’s what we’ve done in the past.” The science of roadmapping and portfolio analysis can now mimic the way individuals plan their financial investments.

Internal KPIs, budget tiers, and the ability to reach a very specific target audience are the first steps in determining whether an event like SXSW is a “go” or “no go.” Only after a thorough planning sprint does a brand consider creating an RFP or creative brief for agency partners.

3. Go beyond theoretical limits. Putting AI to practical use

Artificial intelligence was a topic of discussion in nearly every conversation (scheduled and impromptu) at SXSW. From fear of the unknown to real-world creative and operational applications, AI is here to stay. Brand marketers are quickly moving into real conversations about how to apply technology.

But talking about it and showing it are two completely different things. There are dozens of public conversations about AI every day, and the ones that resonated most with our audience were those connected to real-life examples.

My colleague Carley Faircloth, Spiro’s global chief marketing officer, shared such an example in a fireside conversation with Erin McElroy, a program director at IBM and a veteran of executive programs and events. We talked about one. The company is not just talking about her AI products, but is also creating an entire experiential program for prospective customers to try out these tools. The gamified Watsonx experience elicited empathy and understanding from participants, allowing them to understand the tangible benefits of automating certain customer service tasks to better focus on customer needs.

I spoke with David Isaac, VP of Creative Production at Chobani, about the importance of cultural and organizational readiness as the key to successful AI experiments within your company. Eliminate the unknowns of AI by integrating genAI into your creative process and starting small with visual brand content experiments to show results. Then, see first-hand how this technology can provide consumers with a more engaging and personalized brand experience. And that’s impacting our bottom line as well. Chobani’s Halloween experience, which incorporates AR and AI, increased his spend time by twice as much as the industry average benchmark and increased his purchase intent by 8.3 points.

Now is the time to not just talk about AI trends, but to set up an experimentation process to strategically select the right AI products to test, learn, and improve your creative and operational marketing outcomes.