Westworld is a luxury theme park where guests go to live out their wildest fantasies. So, we decided to replicate that experience by recreating Westworld at a secret location outside of Austin, Texas during South by Southwest (SXSW). Our promotional campaign promoted the event not as an HBO activation but as a real-life trip to Westworld. Guests booked their reservations at DiscoverWestworld.com and completed a personality assessment to determine their character archetypes prior to visiting the park.

After a thirty minute drive from downtown Austin on luxury buses, guests were free to explore over 90,000 square feet of space and interact with the artificially intelligent hosts played by over 60 actors. A 444-page script drove the narrative of SXSWestworld and brought the park to life. No two guests had identical experiences, and fans of the show scoured the park to find hidden season two clues.

Recreating Westworld was no small feat. The three-day event ran at SXSW from March 9-11 between the hours of 2-10pm daily. It took four months of planning, five weeks of on-site construction, and nearly 60 vendors to bring SXSWestworld to life.

Guests entered the park through the actual train from the series and could explore 16 structures—including iconic establishments from the show—across 90,000 square feet of space.

Similar to the series, the technology worked behind the scenes to provide a personalized experience for each guest. Every individual arriving at the park had a personally-addressed letter awaiting them at the post office that leveraged the results of their personality assessment to direct them towards various unfolding storylines within the park. They also received a social share page via email with their letter, personalized “Wanted” poster, and an “Old West” photo GIF which glitched to reveal season two clues.

Along with being the most ambitious promotion in HBO’s history, SXSWestworld helped establish themselves as a force in experiential marketing and stand out from the clutter of over 600 scripted shows in the marketplace. In a conference filled with the latest technology meant to help us avoid human interactions, it was SXSWestworld’s emphasis on immersive, tangible experiences that made it the hottest ticket in town. Each day, tickets sold out in under two minutes and the standby line stretched over two city blocks. Westworld became the most discussed TV show on Twitter during the conference; social impressions reached 1.9 billion. Nearly 500 pieces of press were published from sources spanning the globe, with some touting SXSWestworld as "one of the best publicity stunts of the 21st century.” Elon Musk championed the experience as being “incredibly well done.” The activation ultimately won SXSW’s “Arrow” Award for Best Immersive Experience.