The purpose of the South By Southwest (SXSW) Music Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas, is for musicians to woo new fans and industry insiders. The five-day festival, though, hasn't been about bands for a while — it's about brands.
Companies jockey for consumer attention via concerts featuring hyped-up acts with plenty of advertising opportunities. Sapporo Beer sponsored a party, Converse Sneakers hosted a Vitamin-Water-soaked fort and Doritos brought back the stage shaped like a snack-chip vending machine it debuted last year.
Branding isn't just for chips and sneakers anymore, though, it's about countries as well. This year's SXSW came just one week after the Japanese government announced plans to allocate ¥50 billion toward a "Cool Japan" fund, meant to promote Japanese soft power abroad. It also came at a time when South Korea is equally focused on spreading its culture overseas. Performers from both countries played SXSW, but were marketed in drastically different ways. Japanese artists, for the most part, followed the same path they always have when playing overseas. Korean acts, though, were more in-tune with the festival's hype-centric model. The results showed that Japanese acts still sound great and can draw a crowd, but in terms of spreading culture, the Koreans are doing a better job.
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