It’s been a couple days now since the end of South By Southwest Interactive but it seems like digerati from across the nation are still recovering from the event known as the Burning Man for geeks. Although feedback from industry pundits on the vaunted tech gathering has ranged from it being the best thing since sliced bread to claims that it has “jumped the shark,” one thing is clear: South By Southwest is the must attend fest for all things digital.
From our end, BBDO sent a diverse team of digital, planning and account professionals from across the network to SXSWi. Some were supporting client activity, some were leading or participating on panels and some just went for intelligence gathering purposes. We thought it would be interesting to get individual takes from different BBDO representatives on their SXSWi experiences, so we asked them all the same following four questions to get their opinions on the event.
What was the most impressive panel or keynote you attended during SXSWi and why?
What theme seemed to be the most innovative or dominant at the show to you?
Was there anything that stood out to you at this show vs. any SXSWi’s you’ve attended in the past?
What was the most disruptive startup/ technology/ revelation affecting the marketing industry that you discovered at SXSWi?
The result is a mosaic of perspectives that, when taken together, make up a vivid picture of what SXSWi 2011 was all about. And while some answers corroborated each other, others provided diverse and divergent insights into different corners of the event.
Here then is the first installment of the SXSWi 2011 Q&A, BBDO style:
Jonathan Vu, Digital Strategist
BBDO, San Francisco
What was the most impressive panel or keynote you attended during SXSWi and why?
It’s always exciting to see Gary Vaynerchuck. He reminded us that with all the tools available to connect with consumers (and measure those connections), at the end of the day SM humanizes these interactions more than any medium before. While some of his thoughts are polarizing, like going away with content calendars, it’s good for the conversation of where SM marketing will go.
What theme seemed to be the most innovative or dominant at the show to you?
LBS, gamification, group texting, influence/authenticity in social media
Was there anything that stood out to you at this show vs. any SXSWi’s you’ve attended in the past?
Last year when LBS was emerging and barcode scanning was all the buzz, conversations were more philosophical and about innovation. You could go to a panel with Gowalla and Foursquare and they would talk about what they thought the future would be like. This year conversations were less about innovation and more about optimization of the current technologies; how do we measure or add-value to LBSs, how can group buying be scaled, leveraging existing technologies (like SMS) for new behaviors, how understanding influence or “Klout” can add context to SM marketing. Moving from innovation to optimization isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As technology passes the stage of innovation, I imagine this is when people will do interesting AND effective things with them, rather leveraging them just for the sake of buzz. Also, the more the technology is optimized and integrated into other matured technologies and experiences, we’ll see wider adoption amongst the mass market.
What was the most disruptive startup/ technology/ revelation affecting the marketing industry that you discovered at SXSWi?
I didn’t see anything as buzz driving amongst marketers as LBSs and Stickybits from last year. But, I did heavily use GroupMe.
The Austin Convention Center served as command central during SXSWi
Anar Joshi, Digital Strategist
BBDO, San Francisco
What was the most impressive panel or keynote you attended during SXSWi and why?
It’s a toss-up between two – one that’s more inspirational, Gary Vaynerchuk talk, and one that I found fascinating and directly relevant, Social Rank: Finding Interesting UGC.
I really enjoyed Gary’s talk because forced us, as marketers, to think about how to really care about consumers and engage with the community for some higher social good. He balanced inspiration with realistic expectations on how to make a business, which most “inspirational” talks fail to do.
The panel on Social Ranking gave me an understanding of how various companies are using predictive analysis/recommendation engines across categories, a capability all companies will probably use more and more. The conversation went a level beyond others I attended, offering holistic view of what consumer data can do today in this space, how different communities need and thrive on different types of recommendations, and what innovations/opportunities there are moving forward.
What theme seemed to be the most innovative or dominant at the show to you?
One of the most dominant themes at the show was consumers’ desire to be part of a community that enabled both online and offline connections in a more meaningful way. This ranges from the growth of group messaging services (GroupMe, Beluga) that easily enable you to connect to specific people within your network, to social sharing sites that make it easier to connect with people in your community for some sort of benefit/savings (NeighborGoods, PopVox), or even to location based applications that enable you to explore places that your friends are at.
Was there anything that stood out to you at this show vs. any SXSWi’s you’ve attended in the past?
This was my first SXSWi, but overall I was surprised at how mainstream the show was, which made some panels not as rich as they could have been which may have been driven by the type of audience.
What was the most disruptive startup/ technology/ revelation affecting the marketing industry that you discovered at SXSWi?
Marketers need to engage with their consumers in an authentic way by balancing how and when they push content with providing a real benefit to consumers. Some of the ways marketers can achieve this that was all the buzz at SXSWi include tapping into niche influencers to become brand advocates (both within consumer’s social groups and within categories), listening and responding to consumers in a way to impact business decisions (crowdsourcing to drive meaningful change), and curating brand experiences (products, media) for some sort of personalized utility for the consumer.
Gary Vaynerchuck's SXSWi's talk on the Thank You Economy won rave reviews
