Bad Weather Marketing - Zappos.com's Opportunistic Raingear at SXSW

Apparently when it rains in Austin, it pours Zappos.com ads.

The online shoe retailing giants made their presence very prominent at SXSW in Austin in this week. Not exactly what I expected from the weather in Texas in mid-March, but apparently Zappos was prepared. Promoters stood at every entrance today armed with wearable plastic sheets with arm holes and hoods.

People were so grateful to get the little white packages for free and, despite them being totally hideous and environmentally very unfriendly, hundreds of people pulled the white garbage bags over their heads to shelter themselves and mainly, their laptops. Austin turned into one big ad for zappos.com.

Brilliant! I admit I wore one, despite dueling with guilt over what all that wasted plastic would do to the environment. Maybe I shouldn’t have though. As I was walking out of a Mexican cantina after lunch, one of the cooks grabbed my make-shift rain jacket, looked up at me and said, “Don’t wear that. It’s ugly.”

But in the end, it kept me dry, and kept my laptop sheltered from the storm so I could write this post right now!