The annual South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) is the global destination where music, innovation and emerging technology converge in Austin, Texas, USA.

In 2016, Anheuser-Busch became the exclusive beer sponsor of SXSW, an event that has become a major showcase for brands. With Bud Light’s current objective of enhancing the collective experience of music, we decided to build a unique activation that would allow fans to get inside the music and to create their own.

We created an interactive music wall made of traditional posters and covered with conductive ink. The posters have a tiny battery, circuit board and software on the back side, and thousands of electrons embedded across the paper. When the paper is touched, it plays music or sounds, and every visitor could create a unique mix of songs written and scored by performers who played on the Bud Light Factory stage.

Just like the music that was created by touching the Wall, the conception and construction of the experience was collaborative. We worked with an experiential agency, musicians, visual artists and a technology partner to bring the activation to life.

After three months of planning, it took us four days to mount the posters. There were over 20,000 square feet of posters, about half the size of an American football field.

The posters were coated with conductive ink and had a battery and tiny computer on the other side. Each was specifically designed to deliver visual touch points represented by Bud Light’s custom SXSW art.

When multiple people simultaneously touched different areas of the poster, the song elements played in rhythm allowing people to live-remix a song together. Fans wore Bluetooth headphones in order to change songs and remix different samples without interfering with the Wall’s overall audio effect.

Fans were blown away by the experience of remixing music from their favorite artists on the posters. The artwork and headphones made the Bud Light Factory the perfect place for selfies, and the instant ability to be a DJ meant fans created and shared videos which boosted our social presence.

With no paid media support behind the Sound Wall, we generated 14.6 million impressions in one week from fans’ social posts and shares, along with both local and national media (including a photo on the home page of USAToday.com the day the Wall was available to the public).