SXSW in Austin is one of the biggest conferences in the world for startups, technology, and marketing. We had to solve a simple problem: how do you get strangers to stop at your booth?

The hardest part wasn’t explaining what we did. It was giving people a reason to stop in the first place.

So we built a branded beer pong table and put it at the center of our booth.

It gave people something to do. Someone would wander over and start shooting by themselves, and one of us would jump in. Or two strangers would start a game together, and suddenly they were hanging around our booth instead of walking past it.

The table did its real work even when we didn’t.

We weren’t pulling people into conversations anymore. We were already standing there together, playing a game. Before long, someone would ask, “So what do you guys do?”

The conversation started itself.