- Are you attending SXSW in Austin this weekend?
- Are you somehow both a powerful marketing executive and a cheap bastard?
- Do you really need a place to stay, but also don’t want to pay any money and can’t get your employer to expense it?
If you answered “yes” to all of these questions, then VITRO has a sweeeet fucking Airbnb deal for you.
The MDC Partners agency, which announced plans to open in Austin just over a year ago, would love to give a depressingly empty room in said office to a “CMO or higher level executive from a nationally known brand with an annual marketing budget of at least one million dollars” for a few days for the low low price of FREE. Or $10 per night, depending on which section of the listing you’re referencing.*
The listing claims to include “a real bed” and a bathroom, but there’s an important disclaimer:
Enjoy a truly immersive and elusive “millennial experience” sleeping in an empty room just to be part of the buzz of a city lavishing itself in hedonistic celebrations of creative commerce. There are actually currently no beds, but you can drag a couch in from the lobby, or we’re always happy to provide an extra IKEA desk to shelter under.
The whole thing is kind of amusing, and it could theoretically eliminate the universal complaint from everyone who visits Austin for SXSW or any other event: the awful, interminable traffic.
Is VITRO simply desperate for new business?? Of course they are! They’re an ad agency.
“SXSW has grown so much, it seems like each year is a new exercise in what agency or publication or brand can out do everybody else with something bigger, newer or even more outlandish,” said CEO Tom Sullivan. “We wanted to take the opposite approach. To go scrappy rather than big. So rather than reinventing something, we used an existing, highly popularized platform to make a point around an undeniable SXSW truth—that it’s impossible to find a place to stay. Plus, it never hurts to have a little fun with the (admittedly awesome) ridiculousness that is Austin during South By.”
A key question remains: what should one do at SXSW? Joe Biden or Ke$ha? Mastodon or Special Agent Dale Cooper? Whatever, just make sure you go to the GSD&M party. We hear Matthew McConaughey will definitely not show up.
Finally, check out that logo.
*VITRO promises to totally refund the lame $10 minimum fee required by the corporate suits at Airbnb.