SXSW Interactive 2015 Recap SXSW
2015: Brands, Meerkat, Tech, Trends, and Meerkat David Berkowitz CMO, MRY @dberkowitz / @MRY David.Berkowitz@mry.com www.mry.com

What we’ll cover today •
Overview • Brands • Meerkat • Tech • Meerkat • Observations from MRY’s team • Further reading / contact info Source: National Geographic

Overview

Correlation implies causation

Meerkating Busta Rhymes with Gen
Z is IN! Source: Digiday (much longer list there)

Not everyone’s there for marketing
ideas and tech innovation Source: Beats by Dre on Twitter

Mazda, CBS, Capital One go
for the tried and true value-add: offering free rides Source: SXSW. CBS, Capital One on Twitter

The real value of SXSW:
“Collisions” “This remains the best part of SXSW. The collision of ideas and people make SXSW the closest thing to a “weekend of enlightenment” we have in this new digital age. People from all over the world, at all levels in their organizations, with all backgrounds, are getting together to share their perspectives, and are generally all accessible.” - Ian Schafer, Deep Focus Source: Ian Schafer on Medium

Brands

Brands come out of hibernation
for SXSW Source: Business Insider not meerkats

SXSW: Where transmedia meets trans
fats “We are not where we need to be when it comes to being seen as a digitally innovative company. Everyone expects two guys in a garage to come up with ideas. We want to be part of that flow of ideas,” McDonald’s senior vice president of digital, Atif Rafiq said. Source: TechCrunch

Simpsons Kiwk-E-Mart truck serves 2.6
Squishees per minute (>3,000 total) Source: Eater

When in doubt, offer free
donuts Source: Esurance on Twitter

Taco Bill launches a pop-up
shop made of shipping containers Source: Fast Company

Provide value: AT&T doubles cell
capacity with ‘giant eyeball’ Source: Fast Company

Mophie rescues the powerless with
Saint Bernards bearing batteries Source: Mashable / Chris Taylor

Pedicabs are coming Source: Business
Insider

Visa bolsters commitment to Austin
at its Everywhere Lounge “There’s something that’s in the well water of Austin that makes it a very kinetic environment, physically and culturally.” -Visa Chief Brand and Innovation Marketing Officer Chris Curtin in Forbes Source: Forbes

Tinder bot preying on Austin
dating scene actually a bot promoting movie “Ex Machina” Source: VentureBeat

3M gives SXSW’ers hands-on experience
designing bags, sterilizing phones, and posting notes Source: 3M / Engadget / Jenny Stoltenow al on Twitter

What is GE smoking? With
a 12-foot-tall smoker, it optimized ‘cue and got brainwave scans of eaters Source: Business Insider (left) / CraveOnline (right)

NASA’s SXSW universe included 11
sessions, a meetup, an IMAX screening, and an exhibit Source: NASA / Chris Gunn

Global showcase had Brazil doubling
presence to 59 companies exhibiting, hosted Casa Brasil venue Source: Variety / Gretel Perera on Twitter

Agencies (ahem) are among brands
taking over SXSW “SXSW… is about marketers marketing their marketing efforts to other marketers… And of course, agencies have their own branding to do. Take, for example, the agency MRY’s house in downtown Austin, where rapper Nas appeared Saturday night.” -The Wall Street Journal: “Brands, Web Video Creators Take over SXSW” Source: The Wall Street Journal

Hootsuite combines two essential needs
of SXSW: beer and transportation Source: Hootsuite on Twitter

Broken Windex theory: brand touts
“break the internet” meme but won’t allow use of word “gluteus” Source: @dberkowitz

Tech

Meerkat is everywhere – including
MRY Manor (it didn’t launch at SXSW but did capture all the buzz) Source: TechCrunch/ Anthony Quintano

Long-term success for Meerkat questionable,
but it’s a feat that a tiny, new startup dominated SXSW “I don’t really care about being a hit at South by Southwest. What was important for us coming here was to acknowledge the fact that we came from nothing just two weeks ago.” -Meerkat founder Ben Rubin in The New York Times Source: New York Times / Ben Rubin

Beacons, often invisible, power SXSW
meetups Source: Ad Age

Mobile shifts to integration focus
“Mobile marketing professionals on a panel discussing meaningful mobile experiences pleaded to remove ‘mobile’ from their titles, saying it’s about integrated marketing, of which mobile is a critical piece. Mobile can’t be thought of separately anymore, and brands must bring mobile, digital, traditional branding teams together to solve problems.” - Wunderman’s Alyse Craun, “Know for Sure” Source: Alyse Craun, Wunderman

Messaging app YikYak downplays cyberbullying
usage; founder notes “Kids are kind of stupid” Source: TechCrunch

Mint.com founder Aaron Patzer showed
off his new company, Fountain, sourcing experts for a small fee Source: Fountain

Transhumanist Martine Rothblatt envisions future
of human immortality thanks to “mind clones” “Transhumanism is a movement with the eventual goal extending human life past natural death through the use of technology. In Rothblatt’s case, her belief that we are close to cyber consciousness is represented by ’BINA48,’ the robot, cyber conscious version of her real-life wife, Bina Rothblatt. BINA48, is the first step in creating an artificial intelligent ’mind clone,’ expressing a real person’s mannerisms, personality, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and values. Rothblatt believes that BINA48 will likely reach full cyber consciousness in the future.” – SXSW.com Source: SXSW.com / LifeNaut on YouTube

Biggest protests at SXSW? Boycotting
robots “What did they have against robots you might ask? Well, they are (apparently, seriously) concerned that robots could one day surpass human intelligence and they were genuinely anxious about this.” - TechCrunch Source: TechCrunch

VR is bigger than Oculus:
Google Cardboard + Beyond Sports features soccer match simulations Source: USA Today

Did we mention Meerkat yet?
Just in case… Meerkat! Source: Meerkat

Does it count as a
wearable if you’re terrified to wear it? Source: USA Today

‘Launching Next Week’ is the
new ‘Launching at SXSW’ “Better to wait, according to Chris Heuer, CEO of Alynd, who believes ‘launching after SXSW is the new launching at SXSW.’ Why compete with the social crowds when you can use the week of SXSW to build buzz and then follow up after with a full fledged launch designed to work for your audience? He believes in the benefits of this cadence so strongly that he’s created a platform to support it: launchingnextweek.com. A simple mailing list that will keep all early adopters in the loop about what’s, well, launching next week.” - Sprinklr Source: Sprinklr

SXSW institutes “drone-free zone” Fly
a drone, risk arrest: “SXSW has a strict no drones policy due to the safety risks drones present to the public, and pursuant to City of Austin Ordinance, Chapter 13- 1. ” - SXSW Source: SXSW

Startup pitch contests trot out
wearables “There were around 80 Shark Tank-styled startup contests this year, and they produced a long parade of wearables pitches.” -Adweek Source: Adweek

Wearables to merge with fashion
“The next hot wearable might be the one no one knows you’re wearing. Experts predict a wave of smart fabrics and e- textiles that do what FitBits and Apple Watches now... “…I see technology and fashion becoming one,’ says Billie Whitehouse, co-founder of Wearable Experiments, a company integrating fashion and technology. ‘We're heading in the direction where everything becomes invisible.’” - Entrepreneur Source: Entrepreneur

“The Internet of Things Is
Becoming an Actual Thing” - Adweek Source: Adweek

The happiness scorecard for SXSW
Music vs Interactive

Observations collected from the MRY
team attending SXSW

Kate Bryan, Marketing People were
really into staying healthy. There were a lot of brands on the ground that were sponsoring workout classes or promoting health and wellness in some way – Reebok, Equinox, etc. I heard a lot of people taking it easier on the eating/drinking to make it to a class the next day. Source: Adrian Grenier on Twitter

Michelle Excell, Project Management (MRY
West) Wanelo founder Deena Varshavskaya [pictured at right] revealed she never finished college, but then went on to say she wished she’d left much earlier. When questioned about this, she explained that she thought there were two types of people, those who strove to make others happy – teachers, bosses – and those who strove to make themselves happy. She exclusively hires the latter.” Source: LinkedIn

Karen Flanagan, Client Service I
kept noticing Millennials’ and technology's impact on literally everything – the music we listen to, how we listen to it or find out about it, human interactions, live events of every sort, and the reality that it's the experience and sharing of said experience that matters most. It’s living for the share. As [MRY CEO] Matt Britton says, DIFTI – “Did It For The Instagram.” Absolutely perfect. Source: Youthnation on Facebook

Carrie Cervati, Talent Acquisition It
was interesting to hear at a panel I attended that freelancing is going to take over the creative world. Creatives are going to rely less on full-time jobs and more on freelance, based on the fact that they can make a lot more money , build their portfolios with different brands and have the opportunity to work on a multitude of clients and not get bored on one specific brand for an extended period of time. Source: TechZulu on Twitter

Andrew Udin, Legal This year,
more so than others, saw a melding of all three components of SXSW (music, film, and interactive) during the SXSWi portion. There were large music acts and high(ish) profile films being featured, all before the music and film portions of the festival even started. Source: MRY on Twitter, featuring Busta Rhymes

Nick Gauchat, Product The ability
to develop apps and other technologies quickly has changed the perception of prototyping and creative technology labs. Developers and marketers are interested in building things and getting them into market right away rather than creating a proof of concept. There is less of a gap between proving something can be done and actually doing it and that has now become the standard. Source: Jive Software on Twitter, featuring Cosmopolitan Style Lab

Eli Pakier, Strategy Given the
expanse of the web, there is literally an answer for everything, but there is a problem: we don’t always know the right question to ask. Search is great when we have an answer in mind. But what about when you don’t know what you’re looking for? How can we better anticipate what we don’t even know to ask for? Source: Sarah M. Vasquez on Twitter, featuring El Arroyo

Steven Cuartas Cano, Client Service
With new wearable technology and apps coming out, we’re actually able to add more details to the stories behind the photos we capture. For instance, you go on a hike while wearing a Suntoo Watch to capture how many steps you took on the way to that photo you took at the top of the mountain. Using the Suunto Movie, they create a 3D Mapped video of your hike using the photos you took on the trail. Combined with the Narrative Clip, you can capture moments leading up the hike without even having to think to take the photo.

Wrapping up

SXSW coverage highlights • Ad
Age / Unmetric: Watch Top Brands and Agencies Live-Tweet #SXSW • Adweek: 10 Intriguing Things That Helped SXSW Rock Again • AP: Trending at SXSW: Mind Cloning, Off-the-Grid Messaging • Business Insider: The Best Things Tech Companies Did to Get Attention at the World’s Wildest Tech Conference, SXSW • Digiday: What’s in and Whats’ out for SXSW • Fortune: What You Missed at SXSW This Year • Sprinklr: The 6 Hottest Trends and Insights from SXSWi 2015 • SXSW: Interactive Innovation Award winners • TechCrunch: At SXSW, Meerkat Beats McDonald’s at Cutting through the Noise • USA Today: Coolest Tech at SXSW (gallery) • International Business Times: SXSW 2015: TV Networks Spend Big in Austin to Attract ‘Influencers’

So long, and thanks for
all the meerkat David Berkowitz, CMO, MRY @dberkowitz / @MRY David.Berkowitz@mry.com www.mry.com www.marketersstudio.com Meerkat: Meerkatmry / Meerkatdberkowitz