Is Your Marketing an Experience?

Last week I attended South by Southwest, and while the festival itself was the main attraction, the events and parties that sprung up every night were examples of great and cheap marketing that many small businesses could learn from.

This year was my first SXSW, and leading up to the event, I was told often by veteran SXSW attendees that the festival is 'all about the parties'.  I was only able to attend one party, as I was invited to speak at the Conversation Starters event sponsored by Dell, The Social Media Club of Austin, The Conversation Group, Federated Media and Bulldog Solutions.  The event itself featured several of the most popular business and tech bloggers, including Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, Chris Heuer, and Jeremiah Owyang.  The event was fabulous, as myself and everyone else got the chance to talk with some amazing people doing amazing things in the social media realm. 

But as I was talking to others at the event, I remarked that you could look around the venue and you didn't see banners with logos everywhere.  Dell and the other sponsors had created an experience for us that had become a marketing tool for the company.  And Dell and the other sponsors had the added benefit of getting to pick the brains of some of the most accomplished bloggers on the internet.  At one time I was in a discussion involving three members of Dell's senior marketing and online management, so the company was a very active participant in the event.

But this event was one of dozens that were held, and sometimes created on the fly, during SXSW.  Chris Brogan posted about what a blast it was to attend a Rock Band party that WashingtonVC sponsored:

"AND I want to encourage companies thinking of creative ways to get involved with conferences to think about throwing a Rock Band party. For the dollars spent, I promise you that it was one of the most memorable nights ever. I think that bringing an experience to an event far trumps a simple branding effort these days. Agree?

I enjoyed the heck out of the experience, and as a result, it gave me positive feelings about WashingtonVC, Harmonix and several other companies. Cheap trick? Great idea? You decide."

A great example of how marketing doesn't have to be 'in your face', and instead can be all about simply having fun and creating a fun experience for others.  So many of these parties were so much fun because the sponsors weren't trying to promote themselves, they were trying to promote a fun environment for everyone.  That's why people like Chris (and myself) are now going and promoting these events, and the sponsors.

What can you do to make your marketing worth talking about?

Pic of Rock Band party via Chris Brogan