With each passing year, Austin’s own version of March madness surges in size, strength and credibility.

South By Southwest is unique because it combines the latest hotness in several different types of media over the course of a ten-day extravaganza. With its increasing national status as a prominent arts and media scene, Austin has truly overcome its initial reputation as a “college town.”  The whole place is one giant demo/networking event where everyone’s eager to show off new innovations. With the world’s most prominent journalists and business leaders in town, there are literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of startups waiting to be discovered.

ParkMe arrived at SXSW Interactive recognizing that with just the right amount of focused energy, it could be one of the few startups to leave a lasting impact. A few years ago, Twitter famously caught fire with the crowd at the convention center atop its highly successful marketing campaign. Established as well as upstart companies vie for the masses’ attention by spending money to be seen and heard. So how does a smaller startup get recognized amidst the loud clutter of expensive stunts and ever-present company logos? As ParkMe would soon discover, even the best advice from PR gurus doesn’t guarantee a formula for achieving marketing success.

The first couple days of pounding rain proved to be a challenge to businesses and their campaigns. Marketing efforts all over the place had become hampered by people taking shelter from the downpour. The ParkMe team came to town on a shoestring budget, with high hopes of creating a spark of interest in its own cool new product. While SXSW provides a wide variety of seminars and showcases, the event is most notably a place where people gather to socialize (eat and drink) and gab about hot new products and ideas. Our product had to truly rise above the rest in order to turn some heads.

As the rain subsided, it was time to make our moves and hopefully gain the recognition we’d been looking for. We’re no experts, but ParkMe quickly learned that it takes a lot hustle, a bit of luck, and just the right amount of creativity. After our arrival in Austin, our first intention was to demo at a few different showcases to show off our nifty new real time parking app to the tech community. We knew that we had something cool to share (Austin real time parking information), but that getting serious attention would be tricky considering limited resources. After a successful showcase for the folks at app.net, we turned our efforts towards the greater SXSW population.

ParkMe’s initial approach was to bypass the usual marketing gimmicks/flyer handouts and going directly to the source of what the app does. We find people the best possible parking place in a given area, and help drivers to avoid racking up expensive parking tickets in the process. So we decided to have a little fun with downtown Austin by leaving “fake” parking tickets on cars, hopefully offsetting their initial puzzlement with a quarter to help pay their meters. This went over surprisingly well with people and was even picked up by All Things D, a major source for technology news.

As the clouds finally passed over to make way for sunshine (and many more street strollers), ParkMe decided to implement its next highly risky, but potentially powerful marketing stunt. Essentially, we tested these cars with the parking tickets to gauge the reactions, and people were mostly humorous about being “had.” Now was the time to really engage the public with a dicey plan to install fake cardboard parking boots onto every downtown vehicle. No risk no reward.

Almost immediately, there was a flood of reactions from the community in and around the city. Every car in the downtown area had been booted, linking back to our website as well as a Twitter hashtag “booted in Austin.” People all over the place were agog, many even asking us for boots to prank their friends. After measuring reactions in the streets along with the constant flow of curious Twitterers, it became evident that our stunt had worked. The realism of people thinking that Austin parking enforcement had gone “boot happy” is what struck a chord with these SXSW revelers.

ParkMe came to town, and by all accounts had accomplished exactly what it set out to do. Our tactics may have been risky, but at the end of the day it was the positive nature of this particular festival that allowed our stunts to go over so well. The hard work and creative thinking put forth by the team were instrumental in landing some great TV news and tech media coverage. Not bad for a smaller, limited-resourced startup from Santa Monica.

ParkMe SXSW Links: Fox 7 Austin, All Things D, AdRants, SF Gate, Moosylvania, Mobile Apps News

Photo Courtesy of Techland

Photo Courtesy of All Things D