wesmile at Slush, Helsinki
A founder-focused AI experience that turns visitors into playable art
The Brief
Slush is one of the world’s most founder-focused startup events in Helsinki, gathering a curated crowd of founders, operators, investors, media, and partners. Recent editions hosted about 13,000 attendees, with 5,500 startups and 3,300 investors reported around 2024.
Goal
Convert high intent foot traffic into qualified conversations and meetings
Showcase how AI can personalize a brand experience at scale
Give every visitor a memorable artifact they want to share and talk about
The wesmile Experience
wesmile built a compact AI capture booth that transformed visitors into game-style characters and concept-art portraits in seconds. Outputs were framed with event branding and a partner logo or call to action, then delivered instantly by QR and email.
Style presets designed for founders, product leaders, and investors
Concept art hero portrait with painterly finish
Retro pixel avatar with sprite-sheet pose
Neon arcade fighter with poster-grade contrast
Indie ink and sketch with halftone grain
Clean professional avatar for LinkedIn and press
Results over 2 Days
From the moment doors opened until closing time each day, the booth sustained a continuous queue of visitors. For two days straight the foot traffic did not stop, creating a visible hotspot on the show floor.
- Non-stop demand: a steady line from morning until evening, both days
- Extended dwell time: visitors spent more time at the booth compared to neighboring activations, engaging with both the AI experience and follow-up conversations
- Amplified brand awareness: visibility peaked both offline through constant physical presence and online through mass sharing of branded portraits across LinkedIn, X, and Discord groups
- Conversation starter: the experience itself became a talking point at after-hours networking, with attendees asking peers if they had “done the AI booth yet”
The result was maximum brand awareness, combining high-floor visibility with digital reach, and turning the booth into one of the most remembered experiences of Slush.
KPIs We Can Track
Unique leads captured
Form completion rate to unlock assets
Meeting intent clicks and meetings booked
Average dwell time and queue abandon rate
Social reach measured through tracked shares
Surveys, event sentiment
