Welcome back to A Creative Review with James Cooper. Today Coop brings us the best from SxSW

I ‘sort of’ went to SXSW this year. Since I skipped the interactive segment, I can’t really comment on whether there were any cool outdoor pieces introducing the latest start-up or tech — but I did attend the music part for about five hours. 

I was working on a Doritos project that was part of the new Bold campaign. We took a kid from Venice Beach, bundled him in a van, then a private jet to Austin, and took him backstage at the Doritos Boldstage. You can watch the film we made here:

From an outdoor point of view, the stage was pretty impressive. Firstly it was huge — sometimes size matters. It was basically a giant vending machine, but what made it interesting was that it was crowd powered. 

Photo credit: James Cooper

The crowd could choose who would open for LL Cool J - after a mini battle of the bands, they could choose LL’s encore but also control the lights and effects throughout the show. So if enough people tweeted ‘smoke #boldstage,’ then there was more smoke. Same for balloons and lights and lasers and all kinds of good stuff. 

Of course, this was a closed environment with it’s own soundstage. Making a billboard as interactive as this would currently be quite expensive, but it’s definitely a glimpse into what I hope we will see more of! 

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That’s all folks! Want to get involved? Send us shots of the best [or worst] outdoor advertising you’ve seen, and we’ll choose one every week. Just email coop@adstruc.com.