Advent Blog

Consistently, the Sundance Film Festival plays host to some of the most inno­v­a­tive event mar­ket­ing cam­paigns on the planet. This year was no exception.

The fes­ti­val attracts more than 46,000 vis­i­tors every year and reaches more than 400 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide. The Sundance Institute, which runs the fes­ti­val, allows spon­sors to occupy des­ig­nated suites and either inter­act with guests or show­case prod­ucts. This year, no less than 10 “Official Venues” main­tained a pres­ence at the fes­ti­val. Below, are three that stood out among the rest:

This year, Ray Ban stepped up its spon­sor­ship activ­i­ties by not only spon­sor­ing the Visionary Award event (which went to Ewan McGregor) but also engag­ing con­sumers on the street. Street teams engaged festival-goers and Park City locals with post­card invi­ta­tions encour­ag­ing them to visit one of three branded “Confession Booths” where they could play Truth or Dare. At the booths, con­sumers could jump inside, put on a pair of Ray-Ban sun­glasses and answer Truth or Dare-style ques­tions in a 15– to 30-second video that would be uploaded to ray-ban.com. Booth vis­i­tors received a photo strip with six pho­tos and a code direct­ing them to the site to check out the video. Further, ten Ray Ban branded taxis patrolled the streets equipped with cam­eras and offered free rides, plus another shot at enter­ing the con­test to any­one will­ing to play truth or dare on camera.

Microsoft filled a house with cut­ting edge dig­i­tal video equip­ment and opened the venue to the pub­lic. Each day, The Microsoft House allowed vis­i­tors to see how HDi is trans­form­ing the way we watch and make movies. See for your­self the full capa­bil­ity of high def­i­n­i­tion video and audio, and the advanced view­ing fea­tures and inter­ac­tive capa­bil­i­ties of HDi.

Fred Segal stood out from all the other store­fronts offer­ing free gifts to the celebri­ties by pro­vid­ing their most sought after items (includ­ing Kerastase hair care prod­ucts) in abun­dance. Everyone from Tara Reid to Tom Anderson of Myspace stopped by the store’s loca­tion on Main Street to pick up the gifts and the ini­tia­tive was hailed as the best in recent memory.