HP’s Digital Artistry House Was Only at SXSW for a Day, but It Drew Over 5,000 Visitors

If you’ve got a festival full of creative professionals in industries like entertainment and tech all in one place, you might as well try to get them to give your products a try. At least, that’s the thinking behind HP’s Digital Artistry House, which was at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, Tuesday for just one day.

“We believe that the right people are here at SXSW,” said Emily Ketchen, regional head of Americas marketing at HP. “This week, it’s all about immersive and digital, and we think the intersection of art, technology, film and music is the right place for us to be. We’re looking to connect with creative professionals. We know they are here, and we want them to come in and experience our technology.”

The house, which was built in just 12 hours, is the first activation HP has brought to SXSW, and it was worth the effort. The house drew 5,237 attendees, according to Infinity Marketing, the shop behind the activation.

The point, according to Ketchen, was to get the creatives at SXSW to see what HP’s ZBook has to offer, as it was “designed with creative professionals in mind.”

“We have a pretty well developed experiential strategy,” Ketchen said. “We’re here. We’re at Panorama. We’re at Coachella. The idea is to connect with our audiences in a really credible and authentic way where they are.”

Inside the house, HP set up four stations where people could experience different aspects of the tech, from having their digital portraits drawn to seeing how a professional editor uses the computer.

While Ketchen declined to say how much the activation cost, she did note that “what we have found through deep analytics [is that] the investments [in experiential marketing] so far are serving us well.”

Kristina Monllos

@KristinaMonllos

Kristina Monllos is a senior editor for Adweek.