T-shirts, buttons, pens, refreshment stands...yes, promotional marketing is everywhere at SXSW! A lot of it is well, banal - the fliers, postcard marketing (the amount of PAPER handed out at an interactive conference is rather shocking) and sponsored venues, don't win any prizes or creative awards in my mind.

So if it's not new, innovative or creative, then the marketing should at least be useful.

EVERYONE is online at SXSWi - not only carrying around an iPhone or Blackberry but lugging around a laptop. Step in AT&T with a recharge station - secure safety deposit type slots to recharge your iPhone, Blackberry or mobile phone and Chevy with the Chevy Volt Recharge Station.

I've been spending my SXSWi mornings in The Chevy Recharge Lounge so let's put my bias aside - and take a read of what Todd Watson of IBM has to say about the Chevy Recharge Lounge:

Best Marketing Idea of SXSW Interactive 2010…So Far

Chevy Volt wins for best marketing idea at SouthBy Interactive 2010 so far. They identified a need, and then they delivered.

If you’ve been to SouthBy for more than a couple of years, you know that everybody and their grandmother brings their laptop computer. And after a few hours blog posts, Tweets, and so on, their battery doesn’t have any juice left.

Enter the Volt in 2010. Chevy placed these cool looking little branded power bars throughout several places in the Austin Convention Center so we could get juiced up during the day….before we go get juiced up in the evening (there were other sponsors for that!).

Hats off to Chevy Volt, where the medium and the message came together in a way that would have made Marshall McLuhan proud.

Over and out for now…

http://turbotodd.wordpress.com/2010/03/13/best-marketing-idea-of-sxsw-interactive-2010-so-far/