I’ve gone downtown for SXSW Interactive for several years now. Not to attend any of the sessions but just to shoot photos. It’s always a good opportunity for street photography. It’s also interesting for me to see how much of a marketing budget a company “invests” for their presence at this event.

In the past years, there’s been mini-carnivals setup in downtown, complete with a ferris wheel. This year, I heard that HBO recreated the town of Sweetwater from their Westworld series. I have not seen the series since I’m not a HBO subscriber. Though I’m old enough to remember the original Westworld movie with Yul Brynner. Yeah, the one back from 1973. I didn’t get to see the Sweetwater recreation, either — not having any kind of connections to the “In” people at SXSW or HBO.

But, I did walk around downtown, to taking in the marketing festivities.

One of the simple and effective, for me, promotions was this colorful wall with artists painting a mural. Dropbox, the cloud based file sharing people, where promoting #CreativeEnergy, which makes sense, I guess. The marketing people were also creative and didn’t have to pay the big bucks, I imagine, to get some SXSW eyeballs. At least it worked for me.