SXSW 2018: A Millennial's Perspective
A first-timer's take on SXSW
Would overwhelming be the right word to use to describe my first SXSW? Of course, I mean the good kind of overwhelming, one that leaves you wanting more and thoroughly inspired. Let’s just say that my first SXSW was all I hoped for, and more!
When they tell you to do your research before attending, I now understand why. With so many sessions going on at once and many of them in buildings scattered around town, it’s hard to nail down a strict schedule and stick to it.
So my plan of attack was to dive right in without a rigid agenda and leave room for serendipitous discoveries! Refusing to let the “fear of missing out” cloud my experience, I’m happy to report that my first SXSW was chock full of lots of amazing ideas, technologies and activations that will inspire my own work. I can’t wait to get back there next year!
While the overall themes of this year’s festival revolved around the power of VR, AR and AI, the underlying theme was the rise of authenticity. As technology begins to work its way into every aspect of our life, brands realize that they need to draw boundaries and make our experiences feel more real and authentic.
Here are the events that really stood out for our Mirum team:
ACTIVATIONS
An agricultural brand at SXSW? I was surprised to see Land O’Lakes invest in an activation at a festival like SXSW, but when I took a step into their experience, I understood why.
Land O'Lakes' "The Food Effect" installation featured an interactive presentation of the journey food takes from food to fork, providing a fascinating look at the transparency necessary to come up with better solutions for food security. Their overall experience left me in awe at how much they invest in better technologies to “help feed human progress.” Agriculture is a much more in-depth process than I was aware of!
Sony “WoW”s us. As a millennial, this is a brand that I’ve not paid much attention to lately, but they definitely wowed me with how much they’re doing. Sony’s WoW Studio was an innovation lab that immersed visitors in Sony’s latest creative technology. We got to hang out with Aibo the robot dog, so amazingly cute and charming that we all wanted to take him home! The lifelike behavior of Aibo was remarkable. How could this loveable creature be a robot?
We also played some VR soccer, where us “strikers” got to face off against a world-class goalie (albeit in VR) in a penalty kick shootout. The technology here was awesome, and required some strategy to outsmart the goalie. Soccer is my favorite sport, and this experience got me fired up for the upcoming World Cup!
Google Fun House. As someone who has never seen a “smart house” in person, it was quite an eye-opener to experience the Google Fun House in vivid reality.
With Google now selling millions of Home speakers, the Fun House was a great opportunity for Google to show how they can take over your house in the same way that Amazon wants to – and AI will definitely be a part of it.
The quirky and connected Google Fun House featured 12 rooms of “voice-activated insanity” that showcased Google Assistant-powered devices and Google products. With Google Assistant, you could adjust lights, blinds, appliances and more. Their Nest Cam IQ works in tandem with a Home Max smart speaker, and one setup showed how your Home device can control media displayed on your TV.
Outside the Fun House, a Google-branded lowrider car with Google Assistant installed in the speakers helps you find parking and bounces around to War’s song “Low Rider.”
Now if only something in that house could’ve whipped up my dinner for me? I need a robot chef!
SESSIONS
How influencers add authenticity to a brand. At the session Fountain of Youth: How Brands Can Drink From It, we explored how Universal Studios used influencers to attract new visitors. To connect with the irreverent conversations happening with younger generations, particularly teens, a group that “communicates in hand gestures, emojis and acronyms on a multitude of apps,” brands need to reach kids in authentic ways. Today, that means influencers who have the necessary credibility to break through.
“The youth would rather see our money put to work with people they love, rather than paid actors in a commercial,” said panelist Donna Mirus Bates of Universal Orlando Resort.
Facebook’s Andrew Keller on ideas that bring people together. Creative use of technology allows brands to build communities that connect people in ways that have meaning and purpose. At How to create at the speed of feed with Facebook’s Andrew Keller, Keller shared great ideas on how technology can bring people closer together and how purpose-driven marketing is good for business.
Here’s how Facebook learns from communities:
- From Stories, we learn: People crave more authenticity
- From Groups, we learn: people are seeking meaning and shared values
- From Messenger, we learn: people want productive relationships with brands
“Brands astound communities when they inspire, celebrate, empower and entertain,” said Keller. “Connection isn’t enough, it’s what people do with the connection is that matters.”
“We have free stuff…and baby goats”
At the Viceland Party Lot, we tasted some boxed water and got to pet baby goats!
What do people really want? For the first time in history, machines can understand what humans want. For the panel Accounting for Human Tastes: Marketing and A.I., representatives from Home Depot, Cheddar, Pinterest and L’Oréal USA were on hand to explore how brands can use insights and machine learning to inspire people to take action and what role marketers can play.
Elon Musk answers questions. Elon Musk is changing the world, so as you can imagine, the audience had lots of questions for him. The CEO of Space X, the man behind Hyperloop and Tesla, Musk was interviewed by Interstellar co-writer and Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan.
Musk was quite serious about the topics everyone wanted to hear about.
“I’m very close to the cutting edge in AI,” he said. “It’s capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows, and the rate of improvement is exponential,” he said, using AlphaGo as an example.
“AI is more dangerous than nukes…and there should be regulatory oversight.”
“I think it’s the single, biggest existential crisis that we face — and the most pressing one.”
Musk believes that self-driving cars will make roads safer. “At least, a hundred to two hundred percent safer than a person by the end of next year,” he said.
His biggest inspiration? Kanye West. Biggest failure? Early launches of the Falcon Rocket.
Facebook’s 2020. With access to massive amounts of user data, if anyone has the inside track on predicting what we can expect in 2020, it’s Facebook. At Facebook IQ: The 5 Consumer Shifts Shaping 2020, Facebook’s Director of Insights Marketing, Ann Mack (formerly Director of Trendspotting at J. Walter Thompson Worldwide & JWTIntelligence), and Toma Beczak, Global Content Strategist, Facebook IQ shared what we can expect by 2020:
- More people will have mobile devices than running water or electricity at home
- Mobile will generate half of US ecommerce
- 85% of customer interactions will be handled without a human
- Millennials will make up half the global workforce
Westworld. For those not familiar with the show, it’s an exploration of the beginnings of artificial intelligence. The panel for Westworld: Establishing a Transmedia Franchise featured HBO and Westworld teams discussing their unique integrated campaign that leveraged cutting-edge technologies, multiple delivery channels and user data to drive awareness and build a “rabid fanbase” – an innovative approach they called “transmedia.”
It was interesting to hear how the producers took on the overall social media strategy provided by HBO, and how this transmedia idea allowed for the show to feel real in the real world!
Empowering women. As a woman who has lived in New York for as long as I have, of course I’d heard about The Wing, a community space for women “dedicated to providing members with a place to advance their pursuits and build community.”
For Women + The Power of Community, Audrey Gelman, Founder and CEO of The Wing, was interviewed by bestselling author Alyssa Mastromonaco, sharing insights on how important it is for women to build communities in times of political struggle. That time is now, and Audrey highlighted the role that community spaces play in personal and professional growth and how they help fight alienation and loneliness. I had hoped maybe my waitlisted application for The Wing would be bumped up (over 10,000 applications) to attend this session, but, spoiler alert, I had no luck…
As I mentioned at the start, SXSW is so vast that it’s hard to do everything, unfortunately. But the panels here were the most influential for me. In terms of themes from SXSW, AR and VR were dominant, as expected, and the Westworld panel and interactive installations showed that we can certainly expect to see more Virtual and Augmented experiences in the marketplace.
SXSW sets the bar high for what consumers expect from marketers, and has increasingly become the litmus test for what pushes the industry forward. Building what’s next takes a culture of inspired makers, so having access to the educational and inspirational experiences in Austin is essential.
What else did I love about SXSW? Shopping for new cowboy boots!
- Sally Abbas is Mirum’s Global Marketing Manager
