A brief summary of my key takeaways from the 2012 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival

1. 20
How do you connect? 12
South By Southwest Interactive
Imagination Summary
March 2012

2. 2012 South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive
Festival
Key Takeaways
 People before Tech – Good content, cool
technology, great connections
 Connect or Perish – Brands must build and
enable ongoing relationships
 Digital and Social are only part of the portfolio –
Offline still essential

3. SXSW: Where is Social going?
 Mobile
 More people are accessing content on mobile
 Mobile first, web second?
 We all have “Mary Poppins bags” in our pockets
 Social Business
 Social is moving beyond marketing
 Customer Service
 Crowdsourcing creative
 Shift from selling to building relationships
 Niche Networks
 Interest Graph vs. Social Graph
 Social media fatigue – Dunbar’s number
The Opportunities:
• Content has to be mobile friendly
• Integrate social customer service – be responsive
• Create relevant, quality content that builds the
community

4. SXSW: Where are Brands going?
 Purpose
 Moving beyond a product – purpose
 Meaning over utility – customers want a mission
 Relationships
 Social has enabled two-way communication with brands
 Consumers want to deal with a human, not an organization
 Trust, reliable, honest, empathetic
 Decentralized
 Brand lives out there – Food Truck
 Brand as API
 Tribal
 Make sure you’re talking with the Core
The Opportunities:
• Lean into a purpose – give people a mission
• Scale ongoing relationships with the Core
• Explore outreach – bring the brand to the people

5. SXSW: Where is Marketing going?
 Real-time
 Agile – no sessions on Pinterest
 Moving from campaign to always-on
 Lean
 Build, Measure, Learn
 Minimum Viable Product – smallest experiment to success
 Pivot = a change in strategy without a change in vision
 Storytelling
 Brands as publishers – Red Bull, AP, BMW
The Opportunities:
• Iterate, small experiments
• Portfolio approach – think like an investment
manager
• What about original content?

6. SXSW: What are other brands doing?
 Dell
 Crowdsourcing video content for commercials
 RadioShack
 Using Pinterest to connect with loyal fans
 Chevy
 Meeting people at the point of need – solving problems and making people
happy
 Patterson Dental
 Sharing the social media love – giving away knowledge, gaining loyalty

7. SXSW: Other Trends and Ideas
 Location-based tech is still very young
 Check-ins and discovery apps are interesting, but not widely adopted
 Challenges – Privacy and Power
 IRL is still huge
 Oversold SXSW sessions
 Box Tops University
 People want to connect
 Calm Technology
 Watch for more apps/tools to run in the background
 Helping you live your life

8. For more information contact:
Tim Bursch
Sr Social Media Strategist
612.770.9573
tbursch@imaginepub.com