Festivals are always full of promotional products. Festivalgoers wear promotional sunglasses and T-shirts, drink from branded water bottles, and keep everything else in logoed tote bags. For some, all of that stuff might be too much to handle, so they have to pick and choose what they want. To help out, Hershey’s teamed up with a creative shop called Barkley to launch its Take 5 Swag Exchange at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, where people could trade in their promotional products for other items.
It sounds like Hershey’s would take a branded can cooler and give back something branded with the Take 5 logo, but, according to Adweek, that wasn’t the case. Consumers could swap out items for other items, like ponchos, flasks, portable iPhone projectors and gift cards. The operation even had its own economic platform, where items were valued based on supply and demand.
According to Media Post, the algorithm valued products based on the most commonly traded items each day. One consumer reportedly traded in a cardboard coaster for a Bose speaker.
Hershey’s explained the process in the recap video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daXMPgxlv9g
“We knew we weren’t going to launch anything tech-related at SXSW, so the way we approached it was, ‘What is a consumer problem we can solve in order to be relevant in that space?'” Katy Hornady, vice president and creative director for Barkley, told Adweek. “When we looked at the problems at SXSW, swag was really one of the juiciest ones. And, based on the foot traffic and the amount of buzz we’ve had since we’ve been here, it’s proven that we were right about that.”
Hershey’s and Barkley received 5,661 branded items during the festival, and sent them to charities in Austin, Texas.
