Gadgetory

hi I'm Emily Yoshida I'm the entertainment editor at the verge and I am at South by Southwest most people think of South by Southwest as a three-tiered festival you've got film we've got music you got interactive but the glue the special sauce that pulls it all together nobody quite gives enough credit is brand so while as entertainment editor I'm mostly out here to check out the best film and music the universe has to offer I also can't help but be curious about these brand activations I want to see how detailed they are I want to see how they're engaging with us socially I wanna see what kind of stuff they're giving out and you know I just want to see what a brand activation is and how I myself can get activated into the den of brands when I walked into South by Southwest row so it was pretty much in what you might call an event space or an art space just sort of an empty hall that maybe one might have a bottom it's fun for the most part it looked a little bit slapped together I wasn't too impressed by the optics at this activation but considering that there was a vending machine that basically forced me to tweet hashtag Game of Thrones so that I could get a prize I mean they did a pretty good job of making sure that some kind of social action came out of this activation the prize ended up being a pretty crappy iPhone 6 case which I just pawned off on Brian Bishop and he promptly lost so to wrap up Game of Thrones South by Southwest rows not my favorite activation here didn't get to activated except when I was actually forced to tweet something in order to get not the best prize in the world it was sort of hard to explain a little abstract with the interactive sword game I'm gonna give this my pass I'm gonna get out of here get out of here can you tell me what a brand activation is if brand activation we should get it started get it going let me go now turn out introducing a new friend into the market by giving it to consumers I don't know so I walked into this booth and it wasn't really clear exactly what I was supposed to be doing I got a few prompts with some vague questions about what I would like to see in the future of music festivals and then suddenly my picture came up on it and I was supposed to record a message a message about what I'm not really sure wait what am I supposed to do yo music festivals if you're supposed to confess let's be real I'm not even gonna bother to Tkaczyk this one it was a disaster I did not know what I was supposed to be doing there this is a massive fail I have no idea what just happened that's it can you tell me what a brand activation what do you think it is something so can you tell me about brand activation so that to say I've been a little bit disappointed by the brand activations at South by so far this year has been felt very activated to be honest but I got an invitation tonight to stay at the Bates Motel which of course is famous from the A&E television show Bates Motel and this is my hotel for the night what the this is the most activated I have felt the entire time of Anna South by Southwest this is the gold standard of brand activation here at South by Southwest okay it's a frigging motel room okay there's like an actual bed a crappy fan in the corner aren't work everything that you would find in a real motel is here look at all this stuff they gave me I got an ileus presto I got a brownie of some sort I got hot sauce I've got so much so we've seen a lot of brands here at South by Southwest try and fail to get activated seeing a lot of different methodologies different philosophies of activation and I think if there's one thing that we can learn from the Bates Motel activation provided by Annie is that it's really not that hard all you have to do is give people a place to sleep let people sleep in your brand people wants to sleep speaking of it's been a long day I need to get some shut-eye catch up on some work so other brands take note I'm about to get activated right