SXSW: 10 Trends in 2015

THE COLLECTIVE / HAVAS MEDIA +
CAKE / HAVAS WORLDWIDE
SXSW 10 TRENDS IN 2015
There was a time when SXSW set the agenda, but now it seems to reﬂect it.
Once a focal point of the digital design industry, the event has grown in size and
ambition to become a forum for a wide variety of contemporary issues, seemingly
random in nature and curated around no clear principles.
Havas has summarized some of the common key themes on display at SXSW, which were
reﬂected more generally as societal trends.
INTRODUCTION

1 SXSW 10 TRENDS IN 2015
THE ME’CONOMY

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1THE ME’CONOMY
Have we reached peak narcissism?
Let’s be honest. The rise of the visual web from
Instagram to Vine and the obsession with up votes and
shares has led to people not just living life, but
broadcasting it.
No longer is it enough to do something; now unless we
snapped it, uploaded it, shared it and commented on it,
it’s like it never happened. I tweet, therefore I am.
From gif-taking photo booths, to portraits in
cappuccinos, to endless selﬁe sticks and step & repeats,
SXSW was a festival for all things me. Now our curated
social feeds reﬂect our personal brands more than our
handbags ever could.
The star of the show, of course being Meerkat, our
chance to broadcast live to the world what we’re doing,
regardless of whether anyone cares.
Meerkat, a breakthrough app at SXSW that promotes personal life broadcasting.

ADVENTURE CAPITALISM

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2ADVENTURE
CAPITALISM
This year, SXSW doubled the size of its startup village—
and to be fair it wasn’t small before.
We’re in a golden age for entrepreneurs; the ample
funding from VC’s, endless and encouraging coverage
of unicorn startups, funding sites like Kickstarter and
Indiegogo, a whole ecosystem of support from
incubators to accelerators, and most of all, the lowest
company start up costs the world has ever known.
In these heady, euphoric times, it seems launching a
startup is the new year out. Millennials are leaving
formal education to fail fast and learn from their
mistakes.
Brands look to become increasingly involved. From
McDonald’s replication of Dragon’s Den, and
MasterCard’s Priceless Elevator Pitch - ample money
and support were on display.
Mastercard gives $15,000 to startup winners after successful 60 second pitches.

HUMAN TECHNOLOGY

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Technology is enveloping us.
For years we’ve had an uncomfortable relationship with
technology. We’ve tried to keep it away from us, but now
we’re pulling it closer.
Our screens from the late 19th century to today have
evolved from cinema, TV, desktop, laptop, mobile phones
and now wearables. We’re getting closer, to ever smaller
screens that are increasingly personal and intimate. We no
longer own single devices, and soon we’ll host our own
personal ecosystems of connecting devices.
Our relationship with technology is changing, from tech we
wear to more intimate data we share. From smartwatches to
smart shoes, from Google Now to Microsoft’s Cortana,
technology is engulﬁng us.
The next step will be technology that uses anticipatory
computing to make suggestions. Just imagine what this
means for marketers.
HUMAN
TECHNOLOGY
Wearables are taking over our bodies & aiding our decisions.
Welcome to an era of personal device systems.

YOUR MOBILE HOME

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Our phones have become our gateway to everything.
Since 2003 it has been “the era of mobile,” but what
took longer to arrive than expected has transformed
our lives more than anyone predicted.
Our phones are no longer just devices helping us to
consume media or shop, they have become our
primary interface with everything around us.
From operating our smart homes and booking travel, to
paying for merchandise and monitoring our health
activity, a number of companies at SXSW have shown
that our phone can be our personal hub.
We may soon live in a world of personal device
ecosystems, with ﬁtbits, VR headsets, Myo armbands
and smartwatches, but it seems our phones are
destined to be the access point for everything around
our bodies, in the world and on the internet.
YOUR MOBILE
HOME
Our phones become the key to access everything around us, in the internet & on our person.

DIGITAL REIMAGINATION

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Slowly it’s dawning on all companies that to be
successful in the long term, they must embrace digital
at the foundation, and stop making it a “thing.”
It’s commonly believed that there are two types of
companies; those that ignore technology, who bury their
head’s in the sand and hope for the best, and those that
welcome the new, who have adapted to the modern age,
and have a head for digital, a great website and an app.
A third type is developing; a digital-ﬁrst company. These
are companies rebuilt for the modern age, that see digital
at the center of everything they do.
With this mindset, fast food joints, such as McDonald’s,
think about how they can act as charging stations and
places to share digital images, gyms like Equinox
transition from being places to workout to health
management companies, car ownership turns into car
access, Sonos transcends its origins from being a speaker
maker, to become a gateway to music and more.
DIGITAL
REIMAGINATION
Lyft & McDonalds at SXSW, two big brands thinking with digital at the heart.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

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When big data meets with hyper-connectivity and
incredibly powerful processing, we’re on the verge of
something new and amazing: artificial intelligence.
From Chef Watson, IBM’s cognitive cooking machine, to
Bina48, Martine Rothblatt’s android-robot-wife, SXSW
became a microcosm of what a future AI-fueled world
would look like. We’ve been talking about robots taking
over the world for years but this year the threat seemed
real enough for protestors to march with painted signs
and poorly worded chants.
We subsequently discovered that this was a publicity
stunt, but the attention the protests got still reflects the
degree to which artificial intelligence became a core
theme at SXSW.
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
IBM’s Chef Watson, don’t blame the chef or he’ll electrocute you.

CREATING THE HUMAN MACHINE

CAKE
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7Technology can make us healthier… and I don’t mean Shake
Weights.
From apps that track your sleep cycles to contact lenses that
gauge your glucose levels, human beings are getting more
data from their bodies than ever before.
Traditionally, this robust, metrics-driven approach was reserved
for machines on an assembly line, but modern technology
allows us to gather information about ourselves down to the
millisecond. And the more granular these data points become,
the more sophisticated become the tools and processes we
use to optimize ourselves. We are effectively becoming human
machines.
At this year's festival, “The Pursuit of Equinox”included classes
of 40 people on spin bikes that each measured half a million
data points, which were then displayed on a screen and made
available via a mobile app. We also saw the growth of
telehealth, communicating with healthcare providers through
text messages, emails or video instead of seeing them in
person, and the rise of predictive analytics, which uses data like
blood pressure and skin temperature to predict health
problems.
CREATING THE
HUMAN MACHINE
The “Pursuit of Equinox,” where ﬁtness meets digital health

DEMOCRATIZATION OF CREATIVITY

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Thanks to better and more widely available tools, anyone
can now be part the creative class.
For the ﬁrst time in history, the regulars can compete
with creative professionals in a variety of ways. The new
iPhone 6 ad campaign demonstrates how anyone with
an idea can take world class pictures. 3D printing now
turns our dreams into creations. From 3D scanners, to 3D
pens, to pro-quality 4K video cameras and a plethora of
cheap apps, it seems anyone can make anything.
Distribution and funding are changing things too.
YouTube can launch careers and make celebrities of
music or makeup artists, while Kickstarter can propel any
idea to business fame. We once relied on a range of
professionals to decide what we could wear, buy, watch
and listen to. Now we just use our own judgement.
DEMOCRATIZATION
OF CREATIVITY
3D Printed Clothes, one of a variety of developing use cases on show at SXSW.

SIMPLICITY SEEKING

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9
What does mindfulness look like in the digital age?
Many of the most successful talks at SXSW addressed humanity’s
reaction to new technology and how the constant demands of
the modern age are changing the way people behave.
Some say the next generation should be called Generation Moth,
as they’ll endlessly stare at the light on their screens. However,
SXSW saw the development of apps and hardware to free us
from our screens.
Wearables’ best hope of a use case is turning media into glance-
able screens, so people can live with less focus on the phone.
Software developments in the notiﬁcation layer, and smart
invisible apps like Dark Sky and Foursquare’s Swarm, run in the
background.
We have apps like Pocket Points reward students for not checking
their phones and in theory things around us are getting smarter
to alleviate the cognitive burden of thinking.
It’s time for us to take back control of our attention spans.
SIMPLICITY
SEEKING
For every action there is a reaction, a drive to turn away from the fascination of digital screen.

THE BIG FOUR

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10
Four technologies could either change everything about the world or
disappear with little effect.
Trends decks have been dominated by drones, virtual reality, 3D
printing and self-driving cars for some time. While progress is fast, it’s
still not possible to gauge what will come of it.
Will 3D printers undermine and disrupt the entire construction
industry, global logistics systems and the very foundations of
manufacturing? Or will they just sit in home depot looking out of
place?
Will drones change healthcare, emergency response, and delivery
systems to allow underdeveloped nations to leapfrog with efﬁciency,
or will they remain “man toys”?
Will self-driving cars change everything about human settlement and
revolutionize transportation, or fail due to incredible computing
requirements?
Will virtual reality create an alternative universe that parallels real life
and literally turn life on its head? Or is “real” reality good enough?
These are some of the most exciting questions in the world right now.
THE BIG FOUR
SXSW, another showcase of four technologies that could change everything or nothing.

Questions or Comments? Reach out to Greg James at greg.james@havasmedia.com

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SXSW: 10 Trends in 2015

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SXSW: 10 Trends in 2015