Quote of the Day – Stacy Schwartz
Stacy comes to SXSW Music Festival from Minneapolis for the second year in a row. A photographer by trade, she is also an avid music fan. Here’s what Stacy had to say about branding at SXSW.
What are you excited about this year?
I am so excited for the Reveille Magazine party that’s this Saturday at Moltov. It’s a lot of local bands from Minneapolis playing. And really, I’m just excited for the rest of the music that’s playing this week.
What products have you seen so far?Well, I’ve only been here today, but I’ve spotted Fuze, Dell, Microsoft, and a lot of Spin and Paste Magazine stuff. It’s not as bad as last year though.
Do you think street marketing works?
For particular products, yes. By that I mean products that are less known and need the exposure. I’ve seen a lot of Dell marketing, but I don’t think they need the exposure nearly as bad, so I just pass on by it. The people that attend SXSW are the kind of people who are open to new brands and products, so I think they’re more prone to seeing less known brands and trying them out later.
If you attend a branded party, are you more likely to use the product?
Not at all. It depends on who’s playing. I’m only there for the music! If there’s free schwag, that’s cool, but I’m really there to see the live music.
Daily T-shirt
Jeff Tidwell’s shirt caught my eye immediately. The large, bright orange font drew me in, but, from the angle I stood at, I couldn’t see both words. I thought the shirt said ‘Slap me,’ which would be oddly funny. So when I moved in closer to take his photo, I discovered it was a promotional shirt for his friend’s magazine Slap, a skateboarding, art, and culture magazine based in the San Francisco area. Designed any other way, it might not be as noticeable or as surprising as I found it. Props to the designer.
Daily Namedrop: Chirp
As an aspiring art director, I was quite happy to run into Jeff Tidwell who is Creative Director of this fun little program called Chirp. For those who must know who’s messaging you on all of your online social networking profiles, this is what you’ll need and want to invest time in. Chirp is an interactive mega-networking screensaver (right now, it’s only available for Windows, which greatly surprised me). Download it to your computer, install, and voila! When Chirp opens, it displays your latest messages and photos from Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. It also allows you to interact with it, letting you manage your comments, message replies and friend requests. Combined with Utterz, all I can say is social networking capabilities have improved at the speed of light.
Daily Signage: Dell
Oh, here I go again—knocking on Dell. Two days ago, I said the Dell Lounge looked snobby and didn’t have nearly the charm of the Ikea Lounge. And today, I’ll take another pass at the giant computer corporation by saying that this poster really doesn’t cut it. I swear that I don’t despise the company (I don’t have an Apple at home, and I actually own a Dell monitor), but really, adding a model to your ad is too Bud Light. And I don’t like cheap beer ads for that reason –added to the fact that a lot of their print ads rely on lousy strategy. And this strategy is lousy, too. I don’t really understand the point of the monitor repetition. And I only guess that the monitor is comparable in beauty to the model at the right. What is nice, though, is how simple the design is. But other than that, I wouldn’t quite call this a beautiful strategy.
Advertising Anarchy 
Thanks for the mention…. Enjoyed the clip. A PDF of the March issue of INsite can be found on myspace at http://www.myspace.com/insiteaustin
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