We decided to bring to life the brand’s ethos of creating real, more meaningful connections with an experience called, “Analog by American Greetings.”

The idea embraced our analog roots and proved that sometimes, people just need simple, non-digital interactions to relate to one another.

Oh, we forgot to mention the most important thing: where we held the event.

It was SxSW Interactive in Austin, Texas, the largest digital festival in the world, and definitely the last place anyone would expect to find anything analog.

It was also the perfect location to find our young, digitally-obsessed target audience, but more importantly, a great way to create an attention-grabbing tension between our idea and its very own environment.

The event space was open to the public for three days, just a few blocks from the SxSW Interactive convention center.

All of the activites within the space were analog versions of everyday digital behaviors. There were stitched “selfies” by an on-site textile artist, making handmade animated GIFs, vinyl listening stations, digital photo to polaroid conversions, making personalized cards with the help of American Greetings artists, an interactive coloring wall, and an on-site artist created a wall mural that visitors could actually take a piece of in the form of a paper card.

We also invited world-renowned guest speakers to discuss how analog thinking and behavior can impact creativity and the world. Speakers included: designers Stefan Sagmeister and Aaron Draplin, artists Sougwen Chung and Shantell Martin, journalists Rob Walker (NY Times) and David Sax (The New Yorker), TV host and humorist David Rees, and independent record store owner John Kunz.

The client spent $600,000 U.S. on the event. About the same price as a TV commercial.

For that same sum of money, they received an inordinate amount of media attention, including feature articles in Forbes, The Guardian, USA Today, Fast Co., DigiDay, CampaignLive UK, AdWeek, BrandChannel, PRWeek, and Trendhunter.

“Analog by American Greetings” was also named to the “Top 5 Brand Events at SxSW” by Forbes, AdWeek and CNBC.

In total, there were over 138 million media impressions.

In three days, we received over 4000 visitors (about 200 per hour), who spent over 25 minutes (avg.) in our space interacting with the brand. They also sent over 1200 greeting cards domestically and internationally from Analog.

Most importantly, people made connections with other people from all over the world and no virtual reality goggles were required.