Emily Reeves and Kyle Floyd of Stone Ward Advertising provide a recap of their learnings and key takeaways from the 2013 SXSW Interactive Festival.

1. What We Learned

2. What Is SXSW?
5 Days Crammed Full of Learning What
You Need to Learn More About
• Over 30,000 attendees for the Interactive Festival this year.
• Entrepreneurs, digital marketers, designers, developers,
journalists, publishers, rocket scientists, engineers, bloggers,
film makers, musicians, and basically anyone else curious
about technology.
• 20 miles of walking to attend 25, one-hour long sessions.
• The place you go to live in the future for five days then go
home to live back in the present.
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3. What Is SXSW?
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4. The Sessions We Attended
Kyle Floyd Emily Reeves
Opening Remarks from Bre Pettis Opening Remarks from Bre Pettis
The Mechanics of Magic: 7 Game Design Insights Marketing Implications of Facebook’s Graph Search
Awe-Inspiring Web Typography You Can Do Now How to Rank Better in Bing and Google
Mobile Saturday: Re-Imagine Everything How Twitter Has Changed the Way We Watch TV
Show&Smell 2: Marketing Experiences Beyond Visual Brainstorming Technology First
Make Me Care: Digital Storytelling to Affect Change Elon Musk Keynote
Elon Musk Keynote Beyond Squishy: The Principles of Adaptive Design
Beyond Squishy: The Principles of Adaptive Design Designing for User-Generated Chaos
Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now Shooting, Producing, Selling: Secrets of Web TV
Introduction to Adobe Edge Tools & Services Mythbusting: Engineering a Viral Video
Concept to Reality: Creating Adobe Edge Reflow Swiss Miss Keynote
Behavior Change as Value Proposition How Will Art, Copy & Code Re-imagine Advertising?
How Will Art, Copy & Code Re-imagine Advertising? The End of the Coach Potato: Future of Social TV
The Content Shaped Elephant in the Room Death by Demographics
The Sports Tightrope: Balancing Your Content Moving From Story to Narrative
Do Good Work & Everything Else Happens The Future of Location: From Social to Utility
Julie Uhrman & Josh Topolsky Keynote Julie Uhrman & Josh Topolsky Keynote
The Art of Making Fun of Yourself Content for Slow Experiences
Designing Habits: From Big Data to Small Changes Building New Experiences with Google Glass
Pandora and TechCrunch Dissect Music & Tech Pandora and TechCrunch Dissect Music & Tech
Hype vs. Reality: Takeaways from SXSWi 2013 Chaotic Good: The Right Alignment for Your Company
Google[x]: Building a Moonshot Factory The Big Power Shift in Media
Matthew Inman Keynote Matthew Inman Keynote
Breaking the Mold with Meaningful Design Change the Ratio: Conversations with Rachel Sklar
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5. Do You See Any Themes?
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6. Top 6 Trends
1 Hardware vs. Software
2 Going Viral
3 Data
4 Message Consistency
5 Digital Advertising Shifts
6 Mobile / Responsive / Content
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7. Hardware
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8. Hardware
MakerBot Replicator
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9. Hardware
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10. Hardware
MakerBot Digitizer - $2200
• Make 3d digital
model of an object
around 8" tall.
• Takes less than 3
minutes,
transferred to
MakerWare with
USB.
• Use Replicator to
make another one!
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11. Hardware
Near-Field Communication
• Communicate/share with other devices
• Pay for products
• Pull energy from your environment
• generate power/data using customer traffic
• Wireless charging surfaces, vehicle consoles,
Power kiss cards, restaurant and retail
applications. No more hunting plugs in the
airport?
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13. Hardware
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15. Hardware
People are willing to merge their digital and physical worlds
People are willing to give you data in return for useful tools
Logging data greatly increases behavior change
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16. Hardware
Google Glass
• Think about how content will
be delivered to the Glass
screen.
• Glass is about short, quick
interactions.
• It should be there when users
want it and out of the way
when they don’t.
• It is a very “right now” device.
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17. Going Viral
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19. Going viral
Humor is the Modus Operandi of the web
Real life On the web
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20. Going viral
Can all brands be funny?
If you aren’t utilizing humor as
part of your overall brand
personality, you aren’t eating a
balanced breakfast.
People will make fun if you
online, and a good sense of
humor helps you manage genuine
consumer interactions.
– Ben Huh, CEO, Cheezburger
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21. Going viral
• Humor removes friction and stress
• To be funny on the web requires honesty and a willingness
to make fun of yourself
• Humor posts with images get 20x the virality, because
images are the quickest route to the content
• The best humor involves a shared kernel of truth between
teller and hearer
• Brands shouldn't try to be funny all the time, (nobody likes
that guy). White space works in design AND social media.
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22. Going viral
Brands fail when they:
• Have an insufficient testing infrastructure
• Don't learn from mistakes
• Try too hard / try too hard to be first
• Lack clear objectives with humor
• Mistake 10 angry people with 10,000 mildly annoyed people
If you are trying too hard......
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24. Going viral
Viral Videos
• Create good content that works. It doesn’t have to be sexy
or a high production value. With good content, it doesn’t
matter.
• The ribs are the social outreach and sharing. It is about
connecting to your real audience.
• Track how you are doing in YouTube search and replicate
what you are doing well.
• Think of your YouTube channel as your own cable network.
• Content, content, content.
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25. Going viral
Viral Videos
• Too much control can rob the personality out of a video.
• However, having a plan can ensure you have a storyline that
is followable. So having a storyboard, a script and knowing
camera angles are good things.
• Shoot with whatever you have, even an iPhone. People
watching web videos crave humanness. They are not looking
for or wanting something that is super polished.
• Never underestimate the power of good audio. It is 50% of
the experience.
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26. Going viral
Viral Videos
• Keep it short: at least one minute. Under three minutes is
ideal. But definitely under five minutes if you want to keep
people through to the end.
• Create static content to complement your video: photos
and text. The photos can be shared to other channels--like
Pinterest--that link back to the site where your video can
be found. Text aids in SEO.
• Keep it simple.
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27. Going viral
Viral Videos
• The viral distribution strategy is as important as the idea
itself.
• Twitter has a half life of an hour.
• Facebook has a half life of a day.
• Pinterest has a half life of a week.
• What spreads depends on the platform. We behave
differently depending on the context and what platform we
are interacting on.
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28. Data
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29. Using Data to Increase Relevancy
What kind of data?
• Personal preferences you’ve selected when you fill out
profiles on social networks.
• Your search engine history.
• Key words in your gmail.
• Sites you’ve visited and products you’ve looked at.
• Content you engage with (like, share or comment on).
• Content your friends have shared.
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30. Using Data to Increase Relevancy
The result?
HIGHLY
TARGETED
ADVERTISING
(that works)
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31. Message Consistency
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32. We're all on the same spaceship,
and it seems to be speeding up.
— Ben Malbon, Google

33. Message Consistency
• Narrative collapse: Users can interrupt
your narrative at any point and go
somewhere else
• Digiphrenia:You cannot manage too
many "multiple-instances" of yourself
across several channels
• Overwinding: Putting too much weight
on a single moment or a single event.
• Fractal-Noia: Hectically make
connections that are not there in an
attempt to make sense of things
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34. Message Consistency
How to deal with it:
Re-activate the human parts of what you
do. Use intuition, unfocused your eyes to
recognize patterns instead of finding false
connections, adapt a "sustainable" model
instead of a "winning" model.
But most importantly.....
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35. Message Consistency
Know who you are.
A well-defined and honest brand
personality and system of values will
enable you to surf the digital space,
instead of drowning in it.
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36. Message Consistency
Richard Clarke,
Arsenal Media Group
Arsenal Media Group's
online persona:
The authoritative
voice of club
management.
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37. Arsenal Media Group's
online persona:
An optimistic,
but realistic fan
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38. Message Consistency
• Important to show that you feel what your fans feel. It's false to
speak with an emotionless tone, fans WANT to share their
triumphs and their grief, make them want to share it with you.
• Act as a funnel, bring in content from other sources, (give
bloggers a stage) encourage others to share your content, make
it easy to do so
• Initiate the definitive hashtag for current news, the one others
want to use
• You don't have to be first, be foremost. Be the final word.
• Reply to fans!!!! Make it a 2-way conversation.
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39. Digital Advertising Shifts
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41. Digital Advertising Shifts
A Time of Change
Today, we are in the midst of a second creative revolution, Code is
being added to the core creative process (Art+Copy), enabling new
forms of brand expression and engagement. This is the creative
team for the connected world.
The Idea Is Still King
What hasn’t changed is the need for human insights, breakthrough
ideas and emotional stories. Code facilitates new kinds of
experiences and adds dimensions, but it doesn’t replace the
storytelling skills the advertising industry has honed over the past
fifty years.
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42. Digital Advertising Shifts
How will the modern web shape the future of advertising?
Google is partnering with the innovative brands, storytellers
and makers who are defining it to find out.
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43. Digital Advertising Shifts
Native or Branded Content
• May eventually replace banner advertising on content sites.
• Publishers are working with brands to write the content
that their site visitors want and that ties to the brand in
some way.
• Results showing huge lift in social sharing of this branded
content because it is RELEVANT to the viewers.
• On BuzzFeed, story units have a 1-2% click through rate.
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44. Digital Advertising Shifts
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45. Digital Advertising Shifts
Native or Branded Content: Sociability
Social can make ads great again.You can tell stories again. Not
cram a message into a banner ad.
• Social is a way of thinking. Not a trick.
• Have a heart. EQ as important as IQ.
• Content is about identity. Like the challenges of being tall
means giving awkward hugs.
• Capture the moment. Brands have trouble doing this
because they can't move that rapidly.
• Cute animals deserve respect. If you don't love animals, you
are a serial killer or an android.
• Nostalgia is very social.
• Human rights is social and connects us.
• Don't post things that people are embarrassed to share.
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46. Mobile First / Responsive Design / Content
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47. Mobile First / Responsive Design / Content
1. Mobile is exploding
• Heavy mobile data users are projected to triple to one billion by the end of 2013.
• Mobile internet adoption has outpaced desktop internet adoption 8x.
• Over half of Android and iPhone users spend +30 minutes/day using mobile apps.
2. Mobile forces you to focus
Mobile devices require software development teams to focus on only the most
important data and actions. There simply isn't room on a 320 by 480 pixel screen for
unnecessary elements.
So when a team designs mobile first, the result is an experience focused on the key
tasks users want to accomplish without extraneous detours and interface debris.
3. Mobile extends your capabilities
New mobile application platforms offer more: precise location information from GPS;
user orientation from a digital compass; multi-touch input from one or more
simultaneous gestures; device positioning from an accelerometer; and many more.
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48. 76%
ACCESS MOBILE WHILE WAITING IN LINE
http://blog.compete.com/2010/03/12/smartphone-owners-a-ready-and-willing-audience

49. 86%
ACCESS MOBILE DEVICES WHILE WATCHING TV
http://blog.compete.com/2010/03/12/smartphone-owners-a-ready-and-willing-audience
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50. 80%
ACCESS MOBILE DURING GENERAL DOWNTIME
http://blog.compete.com/2010/03/12/smartphone-owners-a-ready-and-willing-audience
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51. 69%
ACCESS MOBILE IN RETAIL STORES
http://blog.compete.com/2010/03/12/smartphone-owners-a-ready-and-willing-audience
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52. 39%
WHILE #POOPIN
http://blog.compete.com/2010/03/12/smartphone-owners-a-ready-and-willing-audience
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54. WEB
WEB
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55. QUANTITATIVE QUALITATIVE
๏ Screen size ๏ User goals
๏ Connectivity ๏ User environment
๏ Device capabilities ๏ User attention
๏ Processing power ๏ User capabilities
๏ Input methods
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56. Mobile First / Responsive Design / Content
RESPONSIVE CONTENT
IS AS IMPORTANT
IF NOT MORE
IMPORTANT THAN
RESPONSIVE DESIGN
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57. GET YOUR CONTENT READY TO GO
ANYWHERE
BECAUSE IT’S GOING TO GO
EVERYWHERE
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58. Mobile First / Responsive Design / Content
Consider Multi-Platform storytelling
(Instead of the same story sliced different ways)
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59. Mobile First / Responsive Design / Content
Smile!
People like your
photos more than
your words
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60. Mobile First / Responsive Design / Content
10% of all photos taken by humankind
were taken in the past 12 months
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61. Mobile First / Responsive Design / Content
It’s time to use
photos as more than
accessories
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62. Mobile First / Responsive Design / Content
1. Boost social traffic
Pinterest went from obscurity to
10M monthly users in 6 months
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63. Mobile First / Responsive Design / Content
2. Intuitive Navigation
Pictures are the quickest route to understanding.
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64. Mobile First / Responsive Design / Content
3. Natural Engagement
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65. Mobile First / Responsive Design / Content
4. Integrated Shopping
63% of shoppers place more value on
the image than the product description
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66. Mobile First / Responsive Design / Content
5. Smarter contextual advertising
(Ads that don’t suck)
Garnier saw 116% lift in favorable brand sentiment
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67. Sharing The Experience
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68. How We Shared
It was important to us to share the experience
as we were learning. Why?
• The information is timely and we wanted to make sure we
were processing the information as we gathered it to not
be overwhelmed at the end.
• Search engine optimization for Stone Ward.
• “Practicing what we preach” to clients about content
generation and sharing.
• Recognition that we are not attending for our personal
growth; we are attending for the agency’s growth.
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69. How We Shared
What did we do?
• Two written blog posts per day on a topic or topics that we
thought most relevant to our business.
• Daily video summaries with both of us recapping our top
takeaways (five videos total), each under five minutes.
• Tweeting throughout the day from the @stoneward
account and Emily’s personal account, @reeves501,
including photos and Vine videos throughout.
• Google Hangout invitation to the staff on the fourth day for
a Q&A session.
• This presentation.
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70. How We Shared
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71. How We Shared
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72. How We Shared
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73. How We Shared
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74. How We Shared
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75. How We Shared
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76. How We Shared
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77. How We Shared
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78. How We Shared
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79. How We Shared
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80. How We Shared
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81. How We Shared
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82. How We Shared
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83. Thank you.
Kyle Floyd Emily Reeves
Director of Design/Associate Creative Director Director of Digital Innovation & Insight Planning
kfloyd@stoneward.com ereeves@stoneward.com
@KyleFloydDesign @reeves501