SXSW is smitten with start-ups, so for a multinational marque like Sony, it’s strategy at the conference this year is to show that it’s not the legacy brand most consumers likely grew up with.
The company took over a cavernous space in downtown Austin at SXSW to show its latest prototypes with playful and interactive experiences.
The “Wow Studio” is designed to be the brand’s innovation and experimentation lab. It’s centered around delivering on kando, a philosophy that the company bills as building experiences that resonate on an emotional level by combining their line of products and technologies with interactive content.
Some of the activations from the exhibit included: a tabletop projector; an AR air hockey game that displays how Sony is shaping the space of high-speed vision sensors and haptics technology; an interactive VR soccer experience with sensors that reproduce the ball’s direction and speed; and a hero generator that creates avatars for guests to star as a protagonist for their own short film and renders a file that can be viewed later on a smartphone.
The company is pairing their experiential marketing efforts during the Music portion of the festival this year with “Lost In Music” to showcase its spatial audio technology and roster of artists with a PlayStation VR music video from star singer Khalid.
The brand also partnered with DJ Skee and built an enormous see-through speaker with a DJ booth in the middle and lyric projections matching the music.
As the Japanese conglomerate continues to reinvent its image, SXSW served as a worthwhile destination for the brand to reestablish consumer affection.
Just leaving this here. See you in Austin. #LostInMusic #SXSW
(@thegreatkhalid @Tinashe @AlejandroChal @iamolivianoelle @noahcyrus @camcountry @caitlynsmith @lomoon @morgansaint @moreaccidentals) pic.twitter.com/vUxzjTS01C— Sony (@Sony) March 9, 2018