I'm Josh Dilworth from Porter Novelli. This is my colleague Lauren Sell, and we're doing a segment with Michael Coté of Red Monk on the best and the worst swag at South by Southwest. We're here with Jamie Schwotkin of Film Baby, and Jamie has some really amazing, innovative swag that we want to show you. Hot, fresh, delicious cookie. We make 20 pounds of cookies a day here at South by Southwest. That's pretty impressive. Yes. And so if you could tell us maybe, you got this from Otis Bunkmeyer obviously. Hey, nothing but the best cookies for our fans here at South by Southwest. And do you rent it? We rent with an option to buy, and then we do buy all the cookies. We can't return the cookies. So in addition to this being like a conference thing, this could also be something that you have in your office next to your fancy espresso machine. Well, I'll tell you, you got free sodas, free coffee, and now you can have free cookies. Yeah, I really like that. I think Lauren wants to try a cookie. Thoughts? Good as Tiff's treats or not as good as Tiff's treats? I think I met Jamie three years ago because of these, or two years ago because of these Otis Bunkmeyer cookies. You've been doing this more than, you've been doing this every year? Yeah, this is our third annual Otis Bunkmeyer Cookfest. That's awesome. So it's not just interactive and film, but also culinary arts. Everyone knows it when they come into the exhibition hall. They're looking for Jamie. That is genius. That is honest. Now we're here with the Yahoo Careers people, and officially this doesn't count as swag because they're not giving it out. But you can play with it here. It feels really good. So I know those of you watching at home can't touch this, but it feels soft and nice. And it lights up. It lights up too. It lights up. It has blue, green, and red. That's awesome. I think it's just mine. That's not the big one. You know, I was asking them, yeah this one doesn't light up. I was asking them before how much these cost, and he said they were about ten bucks. So for those of you contemplating buying American Apparel t-shirts, I think that this sort of fuzzy Sesame Street type touchy-feely anemony thing might definitely be better than a t-shirt.
2:08Guy, how does this feel to you? Awesome. What do you think? It's creepy. It's a little creepy, right? But it feels nice. It's kind of like, I kind of want to take one home. But they won't let you, because they only have a limited amount. Where did you get these? From Walgreens. From Walgreens? Are you serious? They're from Walgreens. That's awesome. How much were they? Ten. Ten dollars from Walgreens. You can get these for ten dollars at Walgreens. But there's always one I would. Yeah. I love this world, and I love this. Beer nuts phenomenon. When you go to the bar and you stick your hand in the jar, whose hand's been in there? There's all these different tables with Skittles, or there's some candy hearts over there. But do you reach in the bowl or not? That's the question. Josh, where would you stick it? I'm not sure where I would stick it if I stuck it somewhere. I think it's just Kleenex, so I don't really get where you would stick it. Are they selling Kleenex? They're not selling Kleenex. They're giving Kleenex swag, I think. No, I mean, it's Kleenex in here. Really? So why would it be where would you stick it? Where would you stick Kleenex? That's a question for the ages. Lots of places have the rock band or the car here, so the question is, it's a philosophical question. There's a video game that you can play counter-shwag. I mean, you take the experience with you. What do you mean? But you can't really take it. I mean, swag has to be a physical thing you can take with you, right? I don't know. Well, we did have the cookies. The cookies you ingest, and it is with you, but eventually it leaves you. Right, right. In some form, you don't need a swag, you have to be able to leave the booth premise. Oh, that's a great idea. What if you take your pride from winning the video game? Hello, we're from the Canadian Film Center, and we hope this is not nominated as the worst swag possible. Right. So, what is it that you have? People, a lot of kids love it, I'm telling you right now. Right. It's a wristband. It's a wristband. You want to model it? It's actually very soft on the inside. It's very felt-like. That's right. Very leather-pleather. And it's sort of fake leather embossed on the outside with a gold lame sort of thing on the top. The size? It says, yeah, latefragment.com. It doesn't really actually fit me, though, unfortunately. We've got different sizes. Oh, they've got different sizes. Thank goodness. There you go. Oh, look at that. Look, look.
4:08We do accommodate. We can observe that. It's latefragment, and how does this relate to what latefragment is? That's the real judgment of whether it's good swag or bad swag. What's the meaning of the swag? The meaning of the swag is when you look at this, you see latefragment, and you'll think, what is it? What am I going to do with this? I see. And you look it up, and then you'll see it's an actual film. You can actually buy the DVD and actually interact with it. I see. Yeah, it's a way of just bringing people to the site. This is driving traffic to the website right here. That's right. And the idea is that these bracelets will catch on virally, and that people will want to wear them in their everyday lives, pass it on to their friends, or maybe they'll just wear it at the conference. I think we've discovered a new category, page view swag. Yeah, this is page view swag right here. Speaking of discovering new categories, there's a phenomenon that is going on particularly in South by Southwest that doesn't happen at all conferences, which is the swag trash table. And as you can see, one of the bouncy balls that we actually have from Yahoo HR, that's already here. And we'll go downstairs later and we'll see the large piles of swag that people, for some reason, take with them and then leave behind with them because they don't want it. I don't think my cat likes that. I don't know. I have a crude cow. My cat's crude. Oh, here we go. You wanted a Miller Lite? Yeah. You wanted a Foster. Yeah, yeah. All right, I was going to give that to her because she wanted it. Thank you. I want a Miller Lite too. Oh. What about one for the cameraman? So, how did you guys know that it was going to rain today so you should have these raincoats? Well, we did the rain dance right before coming here. That's right. We actually had to order these several months in advance. Yeah. We were here last year and I remember going to parties at night and getting drenched there. Very nice. I'm going to get in on those, yeah. Now, are these... Shot glasses and ponchos. Here's Catherine Zeta-Jones in the Zappos poncho swag.
6:08Oh, yeah. He's proudly double fisting it. This is what analysts do. Have you ever had a Snowball? I think I have. Like the literal ones, yeah. Do you want to have one right now? Yeah, let's do that. Okay, we're going to have a Snowball offered by the Austin Chronicle who have a sort of hip and retro chic booth. They've got newspapers and other things. And my grandmother's leftover furniture. But, oh, I don't know if we want to eat this. It's going to be good. Touch it, it's not good. It's kind of like that Yahoo ball. It is like the... What kind of food filling is peach? This isn't the Yahoo ball in perhaps more or less edible form. Snowballs from Austin Chronicle. Thank you. Oh, yo. I have chocolate and chime. These are not good. Dude, you kind of like it. I like the way it smells. I love the coconut. But then once I start eating it, I'm not so hot on it. I need to wash that down with some beers, man. So, this is definitely creative. And this is definitely, I've not seen this before. But I think we would conclude it's probably a bad idea. I don't know. I've got to go on the side of good ideas. But you would take this with you maybe out of intrigue? Exactly. Or maybe it's micro-targeting. There's a small portion of Chronicle readers who really like Snowballs and they know that. Maybe there's some irony since the Chronicle used to run or still run South by Southwest. And who makes that? Hostesses. Or Hostess. They're the hosts. And they're the hosts. That's actually, you know, that's pretty smart. I think I revise my previous verdict. I think I'm going to need another cup of beer for that. You've got these buttons. Very multiple colors. You've got the red, the blue, the green, I guess. Are you in charge of buying the buttons? I'm not in charge of buying them. How have people been getting the buttons? What do you think? Do they like them? People love the buttons. Everyone loves the colors. Even if they don't know who we are, they come up and they see the buttons and they say "Great colors." It's kind of the conversation starts. Right, right. And do you think the people with a lot of buttons come up and get the buttons? Or are there buttonless people who come up? There are buttonless people. The last person that got a button was a buttonless.
8:09Do you raise the buttons as far as swag that you can give out or get yourself? No. A 10 out of 10. So, the connection. So, I'm really glad this candy is wrapped. Because, you know, it's a little bit higher on the sanitary meter. But, at the same time, you know this is the cheapest candy at Sam's. You know, you've at least got to go for the sneakers, the Milky Way, the, I don't know, Hershey's bars. Anything other than the Tootsie Roll and the Dots. It comes in that mixed package that's like $4.99 at Sam's and nobody likes it. You take it and it ends up at home. Yeah, and it's always stale. So, yeah. I'm not a big fan of this candy. I'm going to go put it back in the bowl now. I don't know about you guys, but my brothers and I, all three of us, we love vanilla Tootsie Rolls. I don't know if you've ever had vanilla Tootsie Rolls. They're really, really good. I really like them a lot. In fact, I'm probably going to take a few more before we leave. And they come in kind of like the same kind of crap candy mix. If you look over here, it's the same stuff. It's like, oh yeah, I mean Tootsie Roll pops are okay. Those are good. Dots totally suck. Some people like Getz's creme caramels. Those suck. You know, and they have lime ones too. Like that was a bad idea. But the vanilla ones are really, really good. And I'm really happy that they're here. So this is some of the best swag that is available. It's Grande that is providing these totally awesome vanilla Tootsie Rolls. She's totally digging out all the extras for me. This is awesome. So this is a, I want to pose a philosophical question. So an iPhone is really a lot better than a vanilla Tootsie Roll, arguably. But only one person in the whole conference gets that swag. That's really what a contest is. It's a drawing for one piece of swag that's cooler than the rest of it. I just wanted to pose a question to anyone watching. Does the iPhone contest count as swag? And would you rather see a lot more drawings for cool stuff? And instead of the money spent on all the dumb stuff,
10:09would you rather aggregate it up into one sort of big awesome swag prize? Or are we content to sort of each get our small piece of the pie? There's a lot of stickers that you see here at South by Southwest. And I have a sticker guy. I was saying, why doesn't South by Southwest have stickers? You would think, but they don't. So instead they have those cream puff pie fans. What can you come up with them? There are buttons on our site. Two logo, two icon for those. But we also got these ones too. Oh, nice. The first thing about the, I use stickers for laptops. These are good. These are good size. A lot of people want to make bumper stickers. Who's going to like put like, why would you go up to your car? I mean, no insult, but like you're not going to put a Sosa thing on your car. That's very true. You might. You might. You guys might, right? That's true. Yeah, yeah. And these are good size stickers because other people want to have a sticker that's probably about this big, right? Yeah. Okay. Now, if you've got a bunch of stickers on your laptop, that's not going to work. We even got the mini ones. Oh jeez. Oh jeez. These guys have it figured. Did you order the thing that's got like the vinyl on top of it so it doesn't wear off? No. We kind of outsourced the stickers and I don't know if we did that. These feel like the right kind. Okay. Because the stickers are kind of like paper-y feeling. Yeah, exactly. And like about a month of, you know, frequently bringing your laptop in. I would just say based on personal experience, I've been experimenting it on my laptop. Oh, there you go. They do look good. They do look good. A couple others have fallen off. Yep. They're looking good, man. We got one more hair. Very nice. You know, see, did the cutout for the square sticker. You went with the white background. Yes. Why not clear? And maybe, you know, 400% more expensive. Really? Four times the cost for Claire. Yeah. Well, the answer to that question. So, Mike, I asked you if y'all had any cool schwag at your booth. Right. And you said you have a little bit of the generic stuff, like some t-shirts, some buttons. We have t-shirts. Yeah. But it turns out you have a very strong opinion about why you don't like schwags. Who needs another foam ball that has a company logo on it? I don't think many people do. I have one of those here, I think. Yeah, we have a few of those balls. Yeah, check it out. See, there you go. There it is.
12:09One of our favorite partners, actually. This is a great ball. I love it. What's some of the worst schwags that you've seen? What's the most useless schwags? I'd say anything foam and squishy, unless you have a kid to bring it home to. Or a cat. Yeah. It's going to sit on your desk and you're going to be that guy who has all that crap on your desk. I actually really like stickers. So, last night at the Moo Party, I don't know if you guys were there, but the Moo Party last night, they gave out stickers. That's a good kind of showing. If we had stickers, I'd be all over it. Because stickers that are fun, everybody puts them on, I think they work. Then a little bit of branding, but not in your face. What about fake tattoos? Fake tattoos, or I don't like fake tattoos. That's possibly fine. The guys who put those things on their foreheads last night, nobody likes them. I don't see that. Non-branded items. Just entirely non-branded. Unbranded. Anti-branded. I'm a big fan of non-branded items. Like the cookies are non-branded. Me too. Cookies are a great idea. Where'd you get those cookies? Exactly. And then you totally remember the name of that company more. Maybe from filming. We're here with Obi Fernandez and Mark. I forget Mark's last name. Mark Smith. And they are, it seems like, avid swag collectors. In fact, Obi just told me that in some cases they've even paid for swag. So, Obi, what gives, man? Uh, donation to Creative Commons, good cause. It just seems like the right thing to do. Yeah. Support Creative Commons. I think you have to go to Nevada to pay for swag. I like that. I love to share. There you go. He does love to share. If there's one piece of swag someone's giving out, what would you like to? Free beer? Free beer's good. Free beer's good. Honey vodka was good. Honey vodka was the best swag. Yeah, honey vodka? Yeah. Honey vodka. I've never heard of this before. Yeah, it's home-brewed honey vodka. It's Atlas Tonic, the cure for the music business. It's a little taste of success here. Vodka, honey, vanilla bean, orange, little anise. Why do you do this? Why do we do this? Because friends, fans, and customers like it and you got sent over here, right? Guys tend to chug it and you can do whatever you want. Wow, it actually smells pretty good. It smells like some of those after-dinner mints kind of.
14:11Yeah. That's what it smells like. It's kind of minty but floral and there's definitely kind of herbal too. It's like your grandmother if she was a hippie. I thought it was like viscous. That is definitely 60 proof though. I'll put that out there. There's no alcohol in here. It's a lot smoother than you think it's going to be. You don't need a chaser. Nope. I'm actually pretty impressed with this. Yeah. It tastes a little bit like medicine. More vanilla and a little more honey. Because that's what singers like. What do you think? It's good. It tastes like tech. First of all you need to find utilitarian swag. Because nobody needs another flipping magnet or button or sticker. They need something they can do something with. That's right. So the first swag we did were mints. Only cinnamon because everyone has too much peppermint. But then we decided to really up level swag purchase and try to bust into new utilitarian areas like matches. Not just for smokers but anyone with a candle and anyone with a candle. And anyone with a candle. That's right. It's good. It's good. It's good. It's good. It tastes like tech. First of all you need to find utilitarian swag. Because nobody needs another flipping magnet or button or sticker. They need something they can do something with. That's right. So the first swag we did were mints. But anyone with a candle and anyone who uses a restroom. The nail file is an important piece of swag for ladies and gentlemen. Not that many will admit that they use them. The neat story with this. You may know because everyone does that Porter Novelli has a very distinctive blue and green. Like the world. Water and earth. But when we ordered this swag in either the blue or green it came in in hot pink. We got it for free. And you know what? Really in the end of the day the ladies like the hot pink better anyway. So that's a good swag story. I know you haven't gotten much swag at South by Southwest. But tell us about your past experiences of swag. I think you have a little bit of a unique situation in your position. Well yeah I read for crunchgear.com and sometimes you get good swag. I'm generally in the opinion that I don't care for swag. I don't want it. A lot of it is junk. However, that said, sometimes you do get some gems. Like this camera I have. This Nikon camera. I don't know the model number. But this was given to me at a party. Some Nikon party where they played house music. And it was great. This phone I suppose was also given to me. It could be considered swag. This is my main phone. This was at an LG party at the Wax Museum in New York City.
16:11Do you know what the word swag is in Portuguese? I do not. It's probably just swag. This is Bruno. I think you're from Northeastern. I am from Northeastern. He's from Northeastern University. And this is a lot like sort of some of the philosophical questions we explored about swag earlier in the day. Relating to say for instance rock bands. Or a contest giveaway for an iPhone. Does that really count as swag? I mean how many people were entered right? That's the real question. What we'll do is we'll pan over and we'll look at this potential type of swag. First of all have you had a massage? You've been hanging out here in the press office. No. Sadly I haven't really indulged in awkward strangers touching me in a perfect place. I see. Well put. Best swag that I've gotten so far and by far the most useful. Stickam is giving away tissues. We actually made fun of that earlier this evening. So the tissues I think in and of themselves useful. Well it says where do you stick it. It says where do you stick it. Which is kind of dirty but then what does it have to do with tissues? Like where do you stick your tissues? It seems kind of dirty. The tissues in and of themselves I think absolutely useful. Yeah it does. Particularly because it's been really cold out and people are probably getting sick and not feeling that great. But yeah Bruno where would you stick it? Is this a G-rated conference?