Much to the chagrin of the geeks, the ad industry has firmly latched onto SXSW and is doing its part to get a piece of the startup pie. One agency, JWT, has decided to launch a pop-up agency at SXSW that will last just five days from March 8 until March 12. Called Walter, the agency will meet with 25 startups and choose the candidates it feels have the best offering and, of course, the provide best return for the agency.
Partnering with startup accelerator TechStars, the agency launched a pop-up website, Call Us Walter, to attract potential clients.
Of the effort, JWT CEO David Eastman said, “Walter is meant to be a reciprocal thing – we’d learn from the startups, where technology is going culturally, and they’d learn from us and could be partners for our clients. It’s a value exchange. We get exposure to new tech and startups and those people would get exposed to the brands and the creative thinking that they wouldn’t necessarily have access to.”
Will it work? It actually sounds promising.
