Pedigree Appeals To Animal Lovers With ‘Every Pup’s Superpower’ Campaign

Pedigree is celebrating all the brave canines who help their owners in a new campaign called ‘Every Pup’s Superpower.’ The promotion is a tie-in to Mars Petcare’s sponsorship of IMAX film Superhero Dogs and includes donations to local shelters.

Pet food brand Pedigree is appealing to animal lovers with its latest cause campaign. To celebrate the launch of Superhero Dogs in IMAX theatres, the company is asking social media users to share what makes their dog special. (Spoiler alert: everything, because they’re dogs.)

Superhero Dogs is an original film that tells the story of dogs from around the world that work as rescue, training, emotional support and security. The film is running at select IMAX theaters in the US through January 1, 2020.

Beginning March 11, Pedigree will donate one bowl of food to shelter dogs waiting to be adopted, up to 500,000 bowls, every time that someone shares their dog’s story with the hashtag #EveryPupsSuperpower or engages with a like, etc.

In addition, the Pedigree brand will donate $250,000 to the Pedigree Foundation to support shelters around the country.

‘Every Pup’s Superpower’ uses influencer marketing to increase the campaign’s exposure. Pedigree partnered with best-selling author and animal activist Kathryn Schwarzenegger to highlight the campaign and encourage followers to use the hashtag.

Schwarzenegger has nearly 800,000 followers on Instagram and Twitter alone. Her post has garnered over 11,000 Instagram likes in the first six hours.

The partnership is timely for both Pedigree and Schwarzenegger, as she who recently released her book, Maverick and Me. The book introduces children to the concept of animal rescue. Schwarzenegger also found herself in the spotlight through her engagement to actor Chris Pratt. The timing of this new campaign allows Pedigree to reach users who are just starting to get to know Schwarzenegger as well as her loyal fans.

“The ‘Every Pup’s Superpower’ program is a demonstration of our commitment to finding loving homes for all dogs,” said Elizabeth Barrett, Pedigree brand manager in a statement. “We hope this program inspires people to share stories of their own dogs’ amazing abilities and to spread awareness about the need for pet adoption so that more animals end up in forever homes.”

Pedigree launched ‘Every Pup’s Superpower’ as an extension of its global ‘Feed the Good’ campaign, highlighting how dogs and human benefit from each other. The Mars-owned brand highlights pet adoption and uses real-life stories of dog heroes to drive its positive message home.

In a time when Americans, especially millennials, treat their pets as family, animal-centric cause marketing campaigns stand to reach consumers on a uniquely emotional level.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu4BBGNh3kl/

SXSW 2019: Should Brands Use Memes? It’s Debatable

Should brands enter into the increasingly weird space of internet and meme culture for marketing purposes? Panelists offered differing opinions at ‘Wacko World and the Rise of Memelord Brands,’ but agreed that unless those brands are willing to use alternative metrics for success while giving up creative control to the content creators they employ, it’s likely to be an ineffective marketing tool.

Sarah Rabia, global director of cultural strategy at TBWA Backslash, was joined by Snap’s camera platform brand manager Amelia Hall, Brad Zeff, chief strategy officer and general counsel at GIPHY as well as meme creator and media personality, Ka5sh.

Hall suggested that brands can have a meaningful role as patrons of content-creators in weird meme communities, but it comes with inherent risk.

“There’s risk involved. You’re kind of putting your brand in the hands of a 20-something-year-old…but I think that brands need to realize that if they [want to be] embedded into these communities that they kind of need to give the reins up a little bit,” said Hall.

“As communication becomes increasingly more 1:1 and people become skeptical about the ‘influencer industrial complex,’ and sponsored content and broadcasting Facebook… all this kind of broadcast-oriented social platforms vs. narrowcasting, which is what’s happening in DMs and Snapchat and iMessage…how do brands even determine the amount of share of voice you’re commanding when it’s happening in those behind-the-scenes spaces? That’s going to be a big question that lots of platforms will need to solve.”

“How do we guarantee that a brand will have their content seen or used in a conversational context when measurement is increasingly difficult?” Hall asked, rhetorically. 

Brad Zeff of GIPHY shared similar thoughts on measurement.

“You might not be able to measure it in terms of a specific, ‘you spent x amount of dollars and got 2x back.’ I think there needs to be a commitment from brands that, there’s a place for direct-response and there’s a place where, if you want to exist and be let into people’s bedrooms then you need to create cool content that doesn’t have ‘tune in’ all over it and huge logos.”

“Let the creators be the creators for the sake of creating interesting things and do it in a way that dissociates somewhat from traditional ROI. If that really is the path. If in the end, it’s ‘click here to buy this,’ that actually doesn’t work. That will ruin it, and so, there’s an opportunity for brands but they actually have to know who they are and subsidize creativity,” said Zeff.

“Brands are going to be around, so why don’t we just push that a new direction,” said Zeff. “As a practical matter, brands are everywhere where ‘Wacko World’ exists…it is inevitable, and brands are part of our culture,” Zeff continued, “What we don’t want is brands who just think that they’re part of our tribe when they’re really not. I see a huge opportunity for brands right now…there’s a blurry line between what a brand is and what a person is; brands are becoming more like people and people are becoming more like brands.”

“The fundamental challenge… and this is a tricky one: If I’m a brand and we know that the momentum is going toward more privacy and more 1:1 communication, how can brands be a part of that?”

Zeff’s advice to brands who want to tap into memes and internet humor is to “not treat every interaction like a transaction. You actually have to have an identity outside of trying to sell shit.”

Ka5sh provided a different perspective as a content creator and firm fixture within these meme communities.

“Brands will never be a part of meme culture or internet culture, they’ll always be outliers. Most of the time it sounds like, ‘Hey fellow millennials, how do you do?’”

“I think for 99 percent of the time when a brand gets ahold of a meme it ends it,” said Ka5sh. “Anytime Wendy’s or Burger King or Target, Walmart, Netflix… any brand, gets ahold of a meme format that was sort of popular…they cut the shelf-life of it in half. No one wants to participate with it, it’s like your dad just got in on the joke.”

SXSW 2019: These Brands Aren’t Political: They’re Doing What Their Consumers Expect

There’s no doubt that consumers are asking more and more from brands. But it’s not accurate to say that the response from companies like Patagonia, Lyft and Airbnb are politically motivated: in fact, they’re motivated by each company’s core founding vision and the consumer expectations related to that.

That was the key takeaway from Saturday’s ‘Brand: The New Political Reality,’ panel which included panelists Joy Howard, CMO of Lyft, Corley Kenna, senior director, global communications & PR at Patagonia and Nancy King, director of global guest marketing at Airbnb.

“In many ways, it’s not about politics. This is about the 40+ years of advocacy that this company has, and standing up behind it. I think that’s what allows us to, no matter where we are in the world [. . .] to take the positions that we do and to challenge governments to do better to protect the environment,” said Kenna.

For Patagonia, initiatives such as securing Bear’s Ears national monument, or preventing the construction of dams in the Balkans are existential to their business.

“We’re still in business today because we fight to protect those places.”

“It’s not [a] political statement. Amid a world that is becoming more polarized: What are our values? How do those manifest in the world, and how do we make decisions based on those beliefs?” said Kenna.

Nancy King of Airbnb echoed the sentiment.

“Our CEO talks about, what does it mean to be a 21st-century company? It’s that we have to support all of our stakeholders—and so those are shareholders and communities. Without our community, without our hosts, without our guests, I don’t know where Airbnb would be.”

King also had choice words for so-called corporate social responsibility or CSR and whether it’s sufficient for brands.

“Now that I work at a company where the language is values and purpose, the idea of CSR is kind of like eating your peas: something that you have to do. I really hope that it changes [. . .] a lot of companies see it as a marketing lever instead of something that’s baked into the DNA of the company and actually shapes the way they behave, and the decisions that they make. My hope is that more companies will start to embed that thinking into their decision-making process.”

Why is embedding values into a company’s mission statement so important? It all goes back to what consumers expect of brands in the current political climate. Or, as King explained: “Making decisions now becomes marketing.”

“I think being a CMO is getting harder and harder,” said King, noting the obligation to drive culture through brands. “Especially at tech companies, there’s an appetite for marketing to move closer and closer to the product development process […] At Airbnb marketers sit on product teams, which is amazing because we finally have the opportunity to share what’s being built and not just how to talk about what’s being built. ”

Lyft’s Joy Howard stressed the point further: “You’re not just a marketer anymore, you’re not just a communications person anymore. There’s an appreciation for [. . .] the mission we’re going towards. I love it when someone from accounting is like, ‘did you see what’s going on here? Shouldn’t we be talking about this?’”

What does this mean for the bottom line and shareholder value?

“I don’t think you can be a great brand and not be close to your customers,” noted Howard.

Kenna put it bluntly. “Patagonia’s revenues, profits have quadrupled in the last 10 years […] for us, it’s absolutely benefited business.”

King agreed: “We see that as a key driver of our growth.”

According to a report from Sprout Social, “Sixty-six percent of consumers say it’s important for brands to take public stands on social and political issues.”

 

SXSW 2019: Brands Discuss The Importance Of Sound In An Age Of Voice Search

With comScore predicting that voice search on the web will be 50 percent of all searches in the next few years, brands are discussing how to carve out a sonic niche in an increasingly noisy environment.

That was the core of the conversation at Saturday’s SXSW panel, ‘The Invisible Brand in an Audio-First World,’ moderated by Man Made Music’s Joel Beckerman and including chief marketing officer for NPR Meg Goldthwaite, Citi’s managing director of global branding, media and marketing Mark Ingall and Matthew Benson, advanced innovation lead at Faurecia.

According to Beckerman, “audio-first media is exploding: devices, immersive spaces, smart speakers like Alexa, while traditional media like television and radio is in decline.”

“As technology becomes more and more intertwined in our lives, the winners will be the brands that humanize technology while getting credit for every aspect of their role in experiences and products humans love,” said Beckerman.

But it’s not that sonic logos and audio branding are necessarily new; you can hear it in the soft hum of HBO’s opening to the satisfying ‘swoosh’ of an email being sent. However, there’s a renewed focus for brands to lay the groundwork for a future where most consumers interact solely through voice technology and to do so in a way that’s sensible for the consumer interaction in question.

For NPR, sound is part and parcel of its storytelling and brand identity. CMO Meg Goldthwaite put it like this: “It’s the play on sound that is what we want to do as marketers because that’s what we’re trying to elicit: emotions that are affiliated with the brand.” “We’re sort of tied to this old-timey device of a radio,” said Goldthwaite. “Radio has been purported to be dead for quite a long time. It’s my job as the chief marketing officer to that people know that NPR isn’t just radio.”

“My challenge is that as our content gets disaggregated, and you’re not just hearing [. . .] “This is NPR,” before every bit of audio, it’s trying to find a way to brand our audio and make certain that people understand that what they’re about to hear is good, quality sound: that sound that has made NPR the most loved and most trusted for over 50 years.”

Mark Ingall of Citi has a different challenge: how do you sonically translate feelings of security and trust while providing consumer touchpoints that are sensible for a banking company?

“Sometimes the best sound for a customer is no sound,” said Ingall. “There’s a fascinating thing where people would rather interact with machines than they would persons [. . .] It’s only when you’ve got a problem and you want someone to scream at.”

“What you don’t want to hear is when people make a mistake [. . .] that ‘BZZZ’ sound.” That audio cue can make the difference between punishing or rewarding a consumer for their transaction.

Whatever the touchpoint, Ingall’s priority remains the same: “How can we make people feel comfortable about their money [. . .] how can we make sure we’re present in that transaction?”

“If you’ve signed up to get stuff from us, that email push sound feels like us as well. It doesn’t sound like Apple, it doesn’t sound like Chase, it doesn’t sound like anyone else. You know that it’s Citi that’s actually giving you something.”

“When you transact on our app, what we’re looking for is that you’re reassured that that action has gone through and what you intended to happen has happened.”

Beckerman concluded with a few statistics: “If you like the sound in association with a particular experience, you’re 86 percent more likely to actually want to have that experience again with that brand [. . .] If you’re doing a step-by-step process to fix something, scored experiences actually help people. It’s 20 percent more likely that you’ll find that experience fast or easy and it’s 32 percent more likely you’ll want to have that experience again. These things actually have data-points which can monetize across experience.”

 

SXSW 2019: Brands Discuss The Importance Of Marketing To Women

At ‘Women are Building the Brands We’ve Always Wanted,’ panelists gave their perspectives on why consumer connection is critical and why women should be leading marketing efforts behind consumer brands.

The panel was moderated by Jamie Gilpin, chief marketing officer at Sprout Social Inc. who shared statistics to support why consumer connection is essential, especially the relationship that brands have with women.

“We look to the trends. It’s more than a feeling. Seventy-to-eighty percent of consumer goods are purchased by women [while] 50 percent of traditional male products are purchased, or driven by women. It’s not just about filling a functional need, and that’s what a lot of brands have done in the past. It’s about [the] connection [. . .] 68 percent of female consumers say they want to connect with a brand.”

Gilpin put it bluntly: “The stakes are high for us marketers. To feel connected to a brand, female consumers, over half of them say, ‘we feel connected to a brand when they understand us and our desires.’”

Also included in the panel were Amanda Clark, head of NA development/senior vice president of Taco Bell, Rachel Blumenthal, founder & CEO of Rockets of Awesome and AJ Hassan, VP, executive creative director at R/GA.

“Time’s are a-changing,” said Amanda Clark, reflecting on brand evolution over the past few years. “I think brands are embracing a lot of the qualities that we as a society label as traditionally female [. . .] those characteristics, we talk about them as transparency, connectedness, honesty, emotion.”

In the case of Taco Bell, this comes through in their brand voice across social and the transformation of retail spaces into places where people want to stay.

“We never try to talk down to people,” she said. “If you look at Super Bowl ads, and I look at my own industry [. . .] maybe we had some busty women selling burgers, tacos. That’s not a good thing. We’ve got to progress.”

But, there’s a wrong way to progress.

“You have to stay true to you are [. . .] OK, Gilette. I think they took a hard left [but] you still have to be authentic to your brand voice.”

AJ Hassan, who led the Always campaign “Like A Girl” for R/GA, tied its success to the team that created itand a divergence from the brand communication of confidence as the ability “to wear white pants.”

“Because it was rooted in something that’s so visceral for these girls, we needed to create a work that was truly representative of a woman’s point of view, and really bring in partners to do that in the most authentic way, and also to manifest a piece of work that [. . .] let the girls use their own voices to share those experiences.”

Hassan also elaborated on the need for connection through a physical brand space, brick-and-mortar.

“I think as much as people love the convenience of Amazon Prime there’s still a craving to touch materials, to see things in person, and I think the brands that we’re going to see succeed are thinking about creating those experiences.”

“We’ve seen the whole generation of millennials, 80 percent of them being belief-driven buyers, because of technology [. . .] they’ve grown up living in their phones. And there’s a power in the ability to keep up with everyone you’ve ever known on Facebook, but there’s also a degree of anonymity that’s ironic in that it does get to this lack of connection. That’s what brands are really looking at with technology: to create more meaningful connections, to bring more purpose, to understand my audience,” said Hassan.

“Who do you make friends with? You make friends with someone who gets you, who can have a conversation with you, who understands you.”

While the panelists agreed that there has been some progress in terms of representation, the statistics are startling, as Gilpin points out.

“Only 28 percent of CMO’s are females, and only 30 percent are leaders in the agency world.”

Donut Fries: How Influencers Impacted Both Dunkin And McDonald’s Launches

McDonald’s recently launched Donut Sticks to its breakfast menu, eliciting some Twitter sass from Dunkin. Talkwalker measured social engagement with both brands and determined that influencer marketing had a significant role in the conversation.

In 2017, McDonald’s placed a higher priority on long-term growth which included the retention of existing customers. Part of this strategy, the company said in its annual report, was to focus on breakfast.

Lo and behold, the quick-service restaurant giant introduced donut fries in February—fried strips of dough packaged similarly to French fries. But as Dunkin pointed out, the new product was eerily similar to its own, limited-edition donut fries last summer.

Dunkin fired back with an illustration of Dunkin-branded packages made to look like the cardboard boxes used for a Big Mac.

“What a coincidence,” the Dunkin Twitter account joked, “McDonald’s just released donut fries and we just released blueprints to our new donut packaging.”

Talkwalker took a look at the buzz surrounding each donut fries launch to determine which brand was leading the conversation.

Dunkin’s Donut Fries launched its donut fries after a pre-run in Boston last year. The topic generated cumulated 25,900 mentions and a strong 708,000 engagements in the last 13 months, Talkwalker observed.

Despite only having launched a month ago, McDonald’s Donut Fries grossed 9,900 mentions but 306,200 engagements, “thus still staying behind’s Dunkin’s social media storm.”

A comparison of the two launch strategies found that Dunkin relied heavily on influencer marketing to gain social traction on National Fry Day (July 13). A sponsored post by food and fashion influencer Rebecca Azamolo garnered 104,778 shares/likes. Social influencer Nia Sioux, meanwhile, earned 74,138 likes posing with the fries and Miranda Sings made a music video calling donut fries one of the best pregnancy cravings. The post has earned 93,478 likes to date.

Talkwalker attributes part of Dunkin’s social success to its photogenic pink packaging. McDonald’s is serving its donut sticks in relatively plain white bags.

That’s not to say that McDonald’s isn’t getting any traction on the new menu item. Influencer Trysha Paytas filmed herself trying the donut fries and garnered over 1.1 million views. Make-up artist Jeffree Star posted a photo of the treat on Twitter, earning over 43,000 likes.

Since their launch, however, McDonald’s has slowed its promotional efforts. As of this writing, the brand has not replied to Dunkin’s joke tweet, either.

“There are many takeaways, one of them being the importance of timing: these products are relatively similar, but the #NationalFryDay boost might have given Dunkin the winning advantage,” Talkwalker CEO Todd Grossman told AList. “Dunkin also managed to transform this new McDonald’s launch into one more opportunity to get their name out there through clever tweets, and ultimately remind their audience that they ‘own the Donut Castle’.”

 

Ad Council, Square Enix Fight Bullying With ‘Kingdom Hearts’ PSA

The Ad Council and Square Enix have released a new campaign that uses Kingdom Hearts to promote kindness and inclusion in the video game community. This partnership marks the first time that The Ad Council has worked with a game publisher.

Characters from Square Enix and Disney/Pixar’s video game Kingdom Hearts III star in a new spot for The Ad Council’s “Because of You” anti-bullying campaign. The campaign includes 30-second TV and digital videos, out-of-home (OOH) billboards and bus shelter placements around the US.

“Our hearts are made stronger by how we treat others,” says a video called “Light.” “The light you share can impact those around you, but so can the darkness.”

The campaign is aimed at US teens. The Ad Council says that according to research, two-thirds of teens say they’ve experienced bullying, but most of them don’t think they contribute to the problem. “Light,” as well as the entire “Because of You” initiative, encourages teens to look at their own behavior as well as others to make sure they’re not contributing to the problem.

The Center for Disease Control warns that students who are both targets of bullying and engage in bullying behavior are at greater risk for both mental health and behavior problems, compared to students who only bullied or are only bullied.

The Kingdom Hearts franchise is a mash-up of Disney, Pixar and Square Enix characters, who team up on an action RPG adventure. The series places a strong emphasis on friendship, making it a natural fit for The Ad Council’s initiative.

“The Kingdom Hearts story is filled with characters overcoming trials and tribulations through friends helping and supporting each other in tough times,” said Brendan Docherty, senior manager of product marketing at Square Enix in a statement. “We thought these themes matched very well with the valuable life lesson of the Because of You campaign.”

Kingdom Hearts III launched on January 29 and according to Square Enix, has shipped over five million copies. The newest installment includes a variety of worlds ad stages based on franchises such as Tangled, Rapunzel, Hercules, Monsters, Inc., Toy Story and Big Hero 6.

Kingdom Hearts III is one of the year’s biggest game releases, and we’re excited to see the game’s message of support and friendship reach millions of teens,” Anastasia Goodstein, SVP of digital product management at the Ad Council said. It’s a great fit with our campaign’s idea that everyone should reflect on the power of their actions.”

https://youtu.be/hJbeRUWToGs

Women’s Day: Brands Take To Social To Show Support

Brands celebrated International Women’s Day 2019 with tributes, videos and events designed to inspire and empower. Here are some of our favorites.

The woman’s role in society is very different now than it was even just a few decades ago. For Women’s Day, Budweiser revamped some of its print ads from the 1950s and 1960s to reflect modern values. The activation was created in partnership with #SeeHer, a non-profit organization devoted to the equal representation of men and women in media and advertising.

Each of the ads has been reimagined by female illustrators to more accurately reflect modern sensibilities. One ad, for example, showed a woman pouring her husband a beer while he was hard at work. The new ad shows the same couple taking a break from working on the project together. Another ad originally put a bride front and focuses on the role of homemaker. The new version shows the same woman, but she is surrounded by friends.

Budweiser’s campaign will appear online and in print ads featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune

Uber released a three-part video series in the UK that celebrates pioneering women from London. Over the years, British Heritage has honored notable pioneers with a blue plaque. Uber is calling attention to the fact that only 14 percent of them are for women and asking its passengers to nominate more women to British Heritage. Three women—GRL PWR Gang founders Kirsti Hadley and Naysap, as well as director and dancer Kelechi Okafor take viewers through London to point out inspiring women that either received a plaque or should have.

An app takeover March 8 alerts riders when they pass one of these blue plaques or “celebratory” destinations that Uber designates on the map, such as where a pioneering woman lived or worked.

Visa introduced its Visa Everywhere Initiative in 2015 and introduced its first Women’s Global Edition on Friday. The global program invites women entrepreneurs to tackle problems such as how they could transform consumer payments and/or commercial experiences. Those with the winning solutions in each category will receive $100,000.

The program will culminate with a finals event to be held during the kick-off of the FIFA Women’s World Cup France 2019.

HBO shared a video tribute called #BecauseOfHer that encourages women to start a little trouble and make their voices heard, as told through a quote by filmmaker Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle). The video features several characters from HBO shows such as Game of Thrones, Veep and Westworld, but also films like Norma Rae.

 

SXSW 2019: Macy’s Plan To Compete With Amazon Is To Treat Their Employees Like Influencers

Shoppable content is driving sales and innovation for Macy’s, with the legacy brand leveraging their own employees—and the model may work for others, too.

The biggest eCommerce challenge for Marc Mastronardi, EVP of business development at Macy’s Inc., is the “connection of bringing an experience into the shopping world.”

For the company, this meant rewarding their employees for sharing fashion items from the store through a proprietary editorial tool that provides employees insight into what items to shift based on season, store location and internal initiatives.

At Friday’s SXSW panel, ‘Why Storytelling Sells: Platform Purchasing Power,’ including James DeJulio, president and co-founder of Tongal, who built the platform, alongside Marc Mastronardi and Lauren Wilner from Macy’s Inc. spoke about how their Macy’s Style Crew program is an iterative and scalable solution to a problem many enterprise brands face.

At 18 months into the program, Macy’s Style Crew is a way for the 160-year-old brand to differentiate.

It’s open to anyone within the Macy’s organization, from sales associates to programmers to execs. So far, the program has 1,000 ambassadors from 40 states leading to an average order value of $175, with a single post netting up to $22k in sales.

“For us, our consumer is constantly changing,” said Lauren Wilner, Macy’s VP of business development, fashion. And what does that consumer expect? “It’s giving [the consumer] a voice, and speaking in an authentic voice.”

“The ability to transact simply is where everyone has to be, but the differentiator is: can you create an experience?” said Mastronardi.

Mastronardi summed up their presence as a healthy eCommerce entity while restating the challenge:

“We’re the 8th largest seller of anything on the internet. Making sure we maintain that momentum [. . .] is how you bring the editorial side, the experiential side, the moment that makes you stop and pause and want to be engaged in shopping with us.”

The paradigm shift, as Macy’s puts it, is to transform “from a company selling to people to people selling to people.”

 

Amazon Promotes ‘Good Omens’ With A Veritable “Garden Of Earthly Delights”

To promote the Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett-created mini-series Good Omens, Amazon pulled all the stops with an activation appropriately titled ‘Garden of Earthly Delights” that takes over an entire block on Driskill and Rainey Street in downtown Austin.

The activation serves as a welcome respite for beleaguered SXSW attendees with manicure stations with butterLONDON and Cosmedix, a salon for hair braiding in partnership with SexyHair, and a pen of adorable (and adoptable) “Hellhounds” courtesy of Austin’s Animal Center.

Along with the usual beer and wine stations, the main feature of the activation was a 20-foot free with pickable “prophetic apples” and a replica of Crowley’s 1926 Bentley.

“Protesters” walk tirelessly around the perimeter of the event warning attendees of the impending end of the world, lightly discouraging people from entering and accusing those in line at the activation of witchcraft.

“With the end of the world imminent, we figured what better place than SXSW to celebrate a few of the good things our world has to offer?” said Mike Benson, head of marketing at Amazon Studios in a press release. “We’ve created an immersive experience that Good Omens book fans will love, but also anyone who might like to celebrate Armageddon. You never know what type of apocalyptic creatures may be inhabiting Austin during the SXSW festival, so we are happy to provide an escape for all to enjoy the end-of-times with us.”

Benson is referring to actors who are roving around the festival, portraying “bickering angels,” nuns, demons and Witch Finders, all of whom are prophetically foretelling the end of the world.

The activation is holding a variety of events throughout the festival, including parties in partnership with Entertainment Weekly and Buzzfeed and a portrait studio.

Amazon, which released the trailer for Good Omens only earlier this week, is clearly putting significant efforts into the promotion of the series which stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen and comes out May 31.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJoR4vlIIs