2006 Sundance Film Festival

Corporate Freebies to Validate Sundance

By Lucia Stewart, 1-20-06

Sundance Tip: Don’t forget your duffel bag because there is no shortage of free swag inundating the streets. As Sundance Film Festival has grown, so too has the corporate sponsors and representatives with their branded knickknacks. Every Main Street storefront, office space or janitor closet willing to close-up shop for 10 days is substituted with lounges, cafés and product showrooms.

And we are not just talking about Sony, Entertainment Weekly and Hewlett-Packard. Chrysler is hosting a multi-media lounge with free coffee, drinks and chats with celebrities. Airborne Lounge (that’s right, the cold medicine) is quite the eye-catcher with giant germs parading the streets. And Virgin Records and Coors Light has teamed together as the Hollywood Life House located in the Park City Historic Museum and Jail.

With no need to have a ticket, press pass or celebrity face to enter, the corporations are thrilled to get the exposure to the masses that have descended upon Park City.

If you search Craigslist.com in the weeks leading up to the festival, you will find dozens of jobs for marketing products on the streets of Park City for up to $22 an hour. And it’s obvious. You can’t walk 15 feet without someone handing you a free Izzy drink or Advantage Atkins bars, not to mention all the handbills for movie promotions and screenings.

My favorite one today was Adobe’s Sundance Survival Kit. In a mini film reel tin was a CD with free trials of Adobe software, lip balm and sunscreen, a pocket notepad “for all the contacts you’ll be making�, mints for “your jam-packed networking sessions and a “snazzy, Adobe-branded, ski jacket lapel pin.� Thanks Adobe.

But I’m not one to fill my glove box with excess Altoids and my jacket with VW buttons due to visiting enough tradeshows. Yet many folks, such as my brother, will come home with bags full of glowing pens, martini shakers and scarves. Maybe it’s the swag that proves you were at the Sundance Film Festival if you didn’t make it home with a picture or autograph from the movie stars.

And this is just on the streets. Behind the red curtains, leather jackets, jeans and handbags embossed with logos are given to people who could be “seen� wearing their products. Private salons are set up with make-up artists, hair stylists and fashion designers to show you the latest and send you off looking right on par for the festival (not just for the ladies of course).

For a Friday afternoon, the Heineken Green Room, the Intel Digital Experience Zone and the Phillips Lounge were packed. But with a beautiful bluebird day in Park City and four new inches of snow, most locals didn’t bother with the traffic or publicity. They were all busy skiing because we all know that with all the accommodations booked, the lift lines are vacant.

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