Many people attend conferences to grow their business and at SXSW it seems folks try REALLY hard to get noticed. Everyone references Twitter’s explosion in 2007, but I also remember Colin and Rob from Viddler as a 2007 memorable company. Their approach was pretty simple… they both wore Viddler t-shirts every day (I assume it wasn’t the same shirt) as they did interviews and grabbed video footage. After the second day, everyone knew they were with Viddler and it had something to do with video. Smart.
Here are five companies that were out pimping their ideas to the SXSW crowd.
1 – WebbChange.com – They dressed this guy up as Elvis and handed out Webbchange t-shirts. Not super creative, but humorous and the t-shirt’s quality was pretty good. Sadly, I never learned what they did.
Update: I received an email a few hours after publishing this post from Bill Clanton, CEO of WebbChange offering me a personal demo of their site. That personal touch far outweighs any promotion I saw.
2 – JungleDisk.com- This group easily stood out with their two costumes and I heard a few people chattering about their shtick, so it must have had some level of success.
3 – Other Inbox- The creative folks at OIB had a large booth in the Expo and dressed this guy up as Mr. Spam. I took this picture right before he pitched their concept to Kevin and I. The best part was Mr. Spam offered to take off his mask after I obviously couldn’t stop laughing at a guy talking about MX records with his mask. You can also see his cape here.
4 – Smule.com- By far the most memorable as “The Mule” (his card said it) wore an all-white outfit with the company flag on his back. He also demonstrated their product (see video here and here). There’s no question he will not be forgotten, but it takes a special person to wear that outfit.
5 – LostZombies.com- These guys weren’t the best at promoting their product (mainly b/c I couldn’t remember what their site was), but their stickers seemed to be strategically placed at parties. The warning message definitely caught my attention and the last line “DO NOT REMOVE THIS STICKER” made me laugh.
