Twenty-four cabs for National Geographic, for the whole of SXSW
In March 2015 we wrapped twenty-four pedicabs for National Geographic and circulated them for the entire run of SXSW. The campaign was for Life Below Zero, tied to an activation called "Escape the Cold" on East 2nd Street. It's still the clearest example we have of why this format works.
The problem with a booth during SXSW
An activation at a fixed address has exactly one job: get people to walk to it. That's harder than brands expect. During SXSW the downtown core is a maze of closed streets, badge queues and competing invitations, and the average attendee is deciding where to go next roughly every twenty minutes, on foot, while somebody hands them a flyer.
The flyer goes in the next bin. A wrapped pedicab carrying the address past you six times in an evening does not.
Why twenty-four and not six
This is the number people push back on, and it's the one that mattered most. With six cabs you get impressions. With twenty-four you get frequency — the same person seeing the campaign repeatedly across the week, in different parts of downtown, until the name and the address stick together in their head.
Saturation is also what makes a fleet read as an event rather than an ad. Once enough of them are moving, people start pointing them out to each other, which is the moment a paid campaign begins generating attention nobody paid for.
The detail that did the work
Both the artwork and the practical information were on the carriage: what the show was, and where and when to go. Plenty of campaigns spend the whole panel on a logo and leave the audience with nothing to act on. If your ad is moving through a crowd of people deciding what to do next, tell them what to do next.
What we'd do differently now
Two things. We'd put a scannable code on the back panel — we've since run exactly that for SXSW Sydney's scan-to-win campaign, and it turns a glance into a measurable action. And we'd brief the drivers harder. A driver who can answer "what is that?" in one good sentence is a salesperson you're already paying for; in 2015 we under-used that badly.
If you're weighing a SXSW campaign, the advertising page has the formats and our honest guidance on which Austin events suit which size of budget.
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