Here's How Brands and Marketers Are Navigating the All-Virtual SXSW 2021

When South by Southwest (SXSW) was canceled last year—just days before the event was slated to begin—100,000 cases of Covid-19 had been reported worldwide, and none had been identified in Austin, Texas. Instead of experiencing an influx of more than 400,000 people, the city sat relatively empty on March 13, 2020, reeling at the lost income for local venues, bars and restaurants. Now, the city’s facing a second year without an in-person SXSW as the event goes virtual. Normally held over 10 days in March, the event is a conglomeration of conferences and festivals that cover the music, film and tech industries. It attracts top talent, celebrities, brands and marketers to the Texas capital. This year, the event is hosting keynotes from political leader and entrepreneur Stacey Abrams, U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, best-selling author Charles Yu and Austin-based country music legend Willie Nelson. While moving SXSW online makes it easier for international participants and has allowed the organizers to land some of the big names they’ve been trying to woo for more than three decades, it’s going to feel a lot different this year. Virtual reality tech will attempt to take the place of in-person networking, experiential marketing, concerts and film screenings, and most of the prerecorded keynotes and panels will be available on demand throughout the week. What Austin Looks Like Today as the All-Virtual SXSW 2021 Gets Underway “It's very different than everything we've done for the last 30 years,” Hugh Forrest, chief programming officer at SXSW, told Adweek. But despite the virtual format, the spirit of SXSW remains the same, Forrest said. “The focus on creativity, the focus on innovation, the focus on inspiration—which obviously is extremely important in 2021—is completely in line with everything we've done since the event started in 1987.” Leveraging VR to recreate the in-person experience In a normal year, SXSW takes over the city of Austin in a truly profound way. Bars and venues throughout the city are turned over to brands for events or hospitality suites for festival-goers, and every empty parking lot or street corner is transformed into a brand activation or pop-up. To give attendees the experience of being in Austin without requiring them to physically gather, SXSW worked with social extended reality (XR) events studio VRrOOm to build fantastical versions of Congress Avenue and the Red River Cultural District, two of the locations that serve as hubs for the festival events. Using a VR headset, guests will be able to attend panels, shows and screenings at virtual renditions of venues like Mohawk Austin, Empire Control Room and Garage and The Paramount Theatre, places that would usually be booked solid for weeks around SXSW. The venues aren’t being paid for the use of their likenesses or logos, but they’re viewing it as a trial run for this kind of experience, according to James Moody, who owns Mohawk. It’s also an opportunity to work with SXSW to build momentum toward the return of live music and in-person events, he said. After all, SXSW has been a huge partner to music venues in Austin for more than three decades. “Whatever weight our name has, we wanted to contribute that to [SXSW] trying to figure this out and get going again,” Moody said. “If they get going again, so does our community.” SXSW Will Build a Virtual Downtown Austin for Attendees to Experience in VR Bringing brand activations home HBO, a brand that has done previous buzzy experiential marketing stunts at SXSW that were a highlight for festival-goers, is using motion detecting tech to bring its 2021 activation to life. Rather than hosting it in a warehouse or ghost town in Austin, though, HBO Max Orbit is accessible through desktop web browsers, iOS or Android devices. The immersive, gamified experience tracks facial movements and verbal cues to offer ultra-personalized recommendations for shows available on streaming service HBO Max, including an unreleased clip of Godzilla vs. Kong. Instead of taking over a bar on Rainey Street as it has for the last several years at SXSW, CNN has also found a way to bring the festival home. The network is sending gift boxes to around 100 influencers, partners and press that would usually drop by the in-person activation during the festival. Each box contains a bunch of local Austin goodies and includes cocktail recipes from the Bungalow and Parlor Room, which hosted CNN’s SXSW house in previous years. “Just because we can't meet in real life doesn't mean I want to sit it out," Matt Dornic, head of strategic communications for CNN Worldwide, said. "It's important, more now than ever, to stay in front of these people who you've built a relationship with.” Wisconsin Cheese, the promotional arm of the Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin and another SXSW regular, is also curating gift boxes for the online festival. The first 2,021 attendees to register for its #SXSWisconsin event will receive a box of—you guessed it!—cheese in time for Thursday's event. Actor Nick Offerman is participating in the event, which Wisconsin Cheese is hosting in lieu of its usual Cheeselandia exhibit. “While the event may be virtual, the sights, sounds, tastes and scents of Wisconsin will be very real,” Suzanne Fanning, Wisconsin Cheese CMO, promised. “Our SXSW experiences have been magical in the past, so we didn’t want to settle for anything less than spectacular this year.” An all-work, no-play SXSW for marketers One of the best parts of SXSW for marketers—and all attendees—is the opportunity to step away from work to take in music, film or other cultural events around Austin. But when the event’s happening on a virtual platform the same way every other meeting is these days, it all starts to feel like one endless Zoom meeting. R/GA, an international agency with an office in Austin, would’ve sent around 50 people to SXSW last year. This year, only around a dozen will be tuning into the virtual event. “We're all just trying to navigate what that platform experience will be, knowing that people are suffering from Zoom fatigue, video fatigue, all those things,” Melanie Mahaffey, senior director of marketing and communications for R/GA, told Adweek. Like many agencies, R/GA uses SXSW as a platform to showcase the talent within its organization by participating in panels and events, as well as recruiting talent from the scores that attend. “It also gives R/GA a unique opportunity to be the ambassadors of Austin to our agency friends, to our clients, etc.,” Megan Trinidad, executive creative director at R/GA Austin, said. In addition to being “this big global agency, we actually have hometown roots in the very place that this is happening.” Still, the all-virtual event might offer the opportunity for something of a “reset,” according to R/GA Austin’s executive strategy director Elizabeth Thompson. Rather than big, flashy brand activations dominating conversations, this year could allow attendees to have deeper conversations stemming from the expertise on display during the conference. “It gives people the chance to get back into some of the depth of content that I think is what always made South by so interesting,” Thompson said. The virtual event offers the opportunity to “remove a little bit of distraction of some of those brand activations that maybe weren't as informative and inspirational as the content itself was.” While R/GA is looking forward to opportunities for knowledge sharing and networking at the virtual event, there’s a real longing for things to return to normal in the city—such as with an in-person SXSW. “There's some hype around the XR stuff, there are great speakers, [they’re] bringing Willie in, a lot of that South by soul is coming through even in a virtual way,” Thompson said. “I think it’ll just make us much more excited to do it in real life again next year.” Exclusive: Cannes Lions Says It Will Move Forward With an In-Person Festival in 2021