The South by Southwest (SXSW) interactive conference takes place in Austin, Texas each year. Austin is the home of BBQ, and "Salt Lick" is known as the best BBQ in Texas. The problem is people can’t find the time to make the hour-long journey to the restaurant during the conference. Enter our BBQ trucks. People simply tweeted, and one of two trucks would come to them with delicious salty meat.

To promote the trucks, which appeared during the two busiest nights, four "projection men" ambushed the streets, projecting eye-catching animation on walls, buildings and sidewalks.

A Web site housed BBQ Films (the animations), The Feed Trough (our tweet stream), the Truck Finder Map and a Meat-O-Meter that let people know when we were running low. It also included daily news items blogged live from SXSW.Challenges included avoiding the police, keeping the meat hot, not running out of food too quickly and attempting to communicate with drunk people.

The results were thousands of media impressions (Creativity, AdFreak, Cartoon Brew, TWiT.tv and others). A flurry of resumes from people who want to work for us. And a lot of satisfied SXSWers who saw us doing something innovative and cool, rather than throwing another drinks party.

The plans were altered on the fly nightly. We followed the tweets, the crowds and the flow of the event. The trucks were mobile, so we made sure to park outside of the parties with the biggest lines, like the Tumblr party. The projection men were mobile, so we sent them where we knew people were finishing up their drinks. For example, they came marching down a backstreet where people were hailing cabs after leaving a competing agency’s party. We also added more food due to demand. Plus we had a camera crew scurrying about to film it all.

In a very niche—yet busy—market, our presence at SXSW was indeed felt. We had a flurry of press hits and social media mentions, dozens of attendees, two panels and uniquely two Salt Lick BBQ trucks.• At the event, literally thousands of influential people saw our animations.

• Close to 1,000 people attended our panels.

• We handed out 1,200 sandwiches to satisfied customers.

• Our Web site received thousands of unique visits, including 2,500 on our best day.• We received dozens of new-hire inquiries.

• Our animation was viewed more than 7,000 times on YouTube.• Our efforts were covered in Ad Age, Creativity, AdFreak, AgencySpy, Cartoon Brew, TWiT.tv, and many other blogs and publications.• The amount of social media mentions were well in the thousands, with one tweet summing it up. They said we “killed it at SXSW this year.”