• by Aaron Baar , August 9, 2010

Sony Ericsson will use San Francisco's food, wine and music festival, "Outside Lands," to promote the launch of its new X10 and Vivaz phones.

"Outside Lands is a big part of the fabric of the S.F. community," says Chad Issaq, vice president of business development for festival organizer Superfly Marketing Group. "It's not just music. It's food, it's wine, it's technology. They're going to get a lot of attention."

The promotion will include on-site testing of the devices (including devices attached to Segways at the event's entrance) as well other on-site activation. Over the summer, Sony Ericsson and Outside Lands also held a contest to award a guest blogger with a Vivaz phone (which has an 8.1 megapixel camera and an HD video camera) to document the festival. Armed with a press pass and VIP access, the blogger's musings will be housed on the Aug. 14-15 event's home page.

"The home page will be a live blogger page. We've brought on different bloggers, press and audience," Issaq says. "We had hundreds of people enter for the opportunity. A student from Berkeley won. He basically will capture content; it will have a description of what it is and that it was captured with the Vivaz phone."

The festival's Bay Area/Silicon Valley location is an important part of Sony Ericsson's launch plans for the phone, says Stacy Doster, head of public relations and sponsorship for Sony Ericsson. "There's such a heavy tech audience out there," she says. "[The promotion] really speaks to this audience."

Plus, the coverage from local, national and blog media for festivals, thanks to the Internet and fan databases, is much wider than just the attendees at any given event, Issaq says.

"The event is national in scope and a big portion of attendees are coming from out of state, about half," Issaq says. "They know they're only affecting 100,000 people on the ground for a few days. But the [press] coverage allows them to tell a much bigger story."