Are brands being intentional about how they're showing up at SXSW?

Every March, the creative industry descends on Austin with the best of intentions and a whole lot of branded tote bags. The panels get booked. The parties are planned. The Instagram grids get curated. And then, somewhere between the breakfast tacos and the badge-scanning, a familiar question resurfaces in the group chats and Slack threads: Was it worth it?

I've been asking myself a version of that question since building a company. But somewhere along the way, I started asking it differently. Not "Was it worth the spend?" but "What did we actually contribute?"

For other company owners heading to Austin — or any industry gathering — it might be worth asking the same question. Not just where you'll show up, but what you'll contribute while you're there. It can change how you approach a huge festival like SXSW, and how you define whether it was “worth it.”

For me, the shift came from building Spark & Riot around something I already believed: that doing good isn't a reward you unlock after you've made it. It's something you practice from day one, even when no one's watching. Over time, that mindset shaped the kinds of moments we chose to create at SXSW and beyond.

We eventually gave it a name: Do Good. It’s not a CSR initiative or something we wrote into a values deck. It’s just something we started doing, long before anyone had heard of Spark & Riot. So this year, when we started planning for SXSW, the question wasn't just “Where are we going to be?” It was, "What are we going to do while we're there?"

This sounds earnest for a festival that runs on networking and novelty. I get it. SXSW is genuinely fun. The music is loud, the energy is real and some of the best conversations I've had in this industry happened at 11 p.m. with no agenda and a cold drink. I'm not here to argue against any of that. Some of the most valuable relationships I've built came from a chance encounter at a party I almost didn't go to. Presence matters. Serendipity is real.

But I've noticed something that's held across regions and in building a company from scratch: the moments that have moved our business forward weren't the ones when we were most visible. They were the ones where we were most ourselves.

There's something to that beyond the feel-good version of the story. According to the 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, 73% of decision-makers say an organization's thought leadership is a more trustworthy source for assessing capabilities than its marketing materials. People aren't evaluating us based on our decks or party invite lists. They're watching what organizations actually do when we show up somewhere.

For us, that means SXSW looks a little different. Panels and conversations, yes — but also an afternoon with some shelter dogs in East Austin. We're spending time at Austin Animal Services, building toys and playing with dogs in the shelter's care. It's a small thing. It keeps us honest. And after a few days of badge-scanning and buzzword bingo, it's the part many of us look forward to most.

I also know that the question "What did we leave behind?" has been a better compass than "How many people saw us?" It keeps the trip from feeling like a performance. And it gives the team something to be proud of that lives outside the content calendar.

If you're in Austin, find us and say hello. We'll be the ones covered in dog hair, heading into a party.