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Stand Together × SXSW: Integrated Brand Activation·March 2022
- Integrated Marketing
- Brand Content & Production
Six panels, scripted and shot to outlive the room.
Stand Together’s SXSW presence brought education and criminal-justice reform leaders together through six live panels, public relations, dedicated campaign destinations and original creative production, with social media as one of the channels that carried the conversations further. I owned the content activation strategy and budget, wrote the scripts for the education and women’s programming, built the capture approach and filmed on site alongside production partners, so the content could reach audiences beyond Austin.
The challenge
Stand Together Trust brought six panels to Austin in March 2022: three at SXSW EDU, on schooling after the pandemic, equity and philanthropy; three at SXSW, on criminal-justice reform.
A panel reaches the room for an hour. The Trust’s own account had 133 followers; the wider Stand Together channels had 121,832. If the week was going to matter, the content had to be made to travel.
Beyond the stage
The panels were the live core of a wider program.
Stand Together Trust announced the programming publicly, SXSW EDU carried it in the official 2022 program, and a dedicated site gathered the criminal-justice sessions. The content activation connected them: what we captured on stage, and how it would keep reaching people after the festival.
- Public relationsStand Together Trust announces its SXSW programmingPR Newswire · March 2022
- SXSW EDU programApplying the Lessons Learned of Pandemic EducationOfficial SXSW EDU 2022 schedule · presented by Stand Together Trust
- Campaign destinationStand Together Trust’s SXSW criminal-justice programming siteThe three March 12 panels and speakers
Independent sources for the wider initiative. Stand Together’s events and communications teams owned the programming, PR and sites; my role was the content activation.
The insight
Each panel was a set: speakers, a story and a one-hour window. Planned like a shoot, it could feed live coverage during the festival, the wider Stand Together channels, and paid media afterward. So I started from what we needed to leave Austin with, and worked back to the scripts, the shot lists and who would capture what.
Treat the stage as a production, not a posting calendar.
What I did
Owned the content activation and its budget
I set the content strategy for the activation and managed its budget: what to capture, which formats to make, and where to put money behind them. The goal I set in the plan was a template for the organization’s tentpole events.
Wrote the words
I wrote the scripts for the education and women’s programming, and the copy that carried each panel live: announcements, speaker introductions, day-of reminders and real-time updates written to go out while the panel was still on stage.
Planned the capture
I built the on-site capture plan and the shot list for each panel: which moments, which speakers, which formats. I co-wrote the media brief with two communications colleagues, including a content room planned beside the criminal-justice green room for direct-to-camera pieces.
Shot it, with a crew
I filmed stage video and took stills from the floor, and coordinated an external production crew that captured from the same shot list.
Worked through partners
With Edelman, I owned the content calendar, the posts, the measurement framework and monthly reporting; Edelman led the messaging framework. I was the campaign contact for i360’s paid-media plan.
Built assets to outlast the festival
Stage stills were finished as branded Stand Together Trust creative and filed with the ad assets. The i360 plan spent $6,990 behind festival content in Austin, and booked $11,188 for a proposed national post-event phase on Twitter, Facebook/Instagram and LinkedIn, timed to the delivery of the creative. That media plan was one documented line of the activation, not the whole content budget.
From stage to finished creative: stills with the Stand Together Trust lockup, filed with the ad assets for the post-event plan. SXSW EDU and SXSW, March 2022.
In the end
Six live sessions, turned into content built to travel.
Scripted, filmed and finished: stage video, stills and branded creative, made with three production and media partners and ready for owned and paid channels after the festival.
A repeatable approach.
A capture plan written as a template for the organization’s future tentpole events: script the moments, shoot to a list, and plan the distribution before the panel starts.
Paid figures from the i360 media plan ($11,187.84 booked); the national phase is shown as booked, and paid-campaign results belong to the organization and aren’t published here. The media plan is one line of the activation, not the full content budget. Audience baselines from the March 2022 media brief.
Social, as one channel
The activation also launched the organization’s first Snapchat presence: three geofilters fenced to the panel venues, downtown Austin and the airport. Downtown use ran an order of magnitude above the airport, the kind of learning a first test exists to produce.
- 124.6K views of filtered snaps
- 34.9K swipes
- 1,568 uses
- 6.8% use rate on the best filter (4.5% across all six placements)
My role
Deputy Director, Content Marketing (Dec 2021–May 2022): the content activation strategy and budget; scripts and live copy; the capture plan and shot lists; on-site filming and stills; content workstreams with Edelman; paid-media coordination with i360; the Snapchat launch.
Built with
Stand Together’s events and communications teams, who produced the panels, PR and sites · Edelman · i360 · the external production crew · Snapchat