(Looking at the second of 3 SXSW Gift Bags – One for each festival.)
When it came to free schwag from the Film festival, it was an unequivocal bomb. I’ve mentioned already that all the bags seemed a little lighter than last year, and my guess is that it has something to do with SXSW positioning itself as green.But the film bag is just ridiculous- a handful of postcards, maybe one or two trade publications and a random CD. I don’t know if the film industry is just on hard times the last year or so (the writer’s strike?), but clearly their heart wasn’t just in it.What stuck out to me the most wasn’t something with a “wow” factor, but more of an oddity factor. A bright orange brochure about the boutique hotels in Miami. Also a postcard for Friendster, with my first thought being “they’re still around?” Another postcard, from Jaman.com stuck out from the rest of the stack mainly because of its extreme pandering. A photo of 4 people with nooses around their necks (one of them being in a mechanized wheel chair). I suppose that’s “extreme.”
Finally, just because I wanted to have at least four things to talk about, a CD sampler from A21m. What with the 3,000 bands at the festival, I don’t know if this is quite the time to want to be thinking about “independent music for licensing,” but you never know.
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