SXSW: The Mecca of Awesome

**NOTE: This post doesn't really focus around the theme of marketing, as other posts in the past have. It's just about a rad time I had, that mildly incorporates some aspects of marketing into it. Enjoy!

Austin, TX—South by Southwest (SXSW), a magical experience of all things technological, interactive, cinematic and musical. I had the pleasure of attending the SXSW Music Festival this year (March 13-18) with a couple of friends, and let me tell you, it didn’t disappoint.

Despite living in Texas for 8 years, I had never experienced all the great things I had heard about Austin. Perhaps it was because the only times I visited were when I was 10 and 12 years old and were for a visit to the capitol and a tennis tournament, but I digress. When the opportunity to visit my friend Spencer, who had recently moved to Austin for work, to be able to experience SXSW and to see one of my favorite bands (Futurebirds) arose, I couldn’t pass it up.

Now I have been to my fair share of music festivals, events and concerts: ranging from Bonnaroo Music Festival to a monster Bruce Springsteen Concert to a listening session at the hallowed Bluebird Café in Nashville, but SXSW is a completely different animal. What makes SXSW so special is that it has the holy trinity, the trifecta, the triple threat, the…ok, I’ll stop…it has atmosphere, interaction and tons of FREE stuff.

The atmosphere is crazy unique; there is literally music pumping out of every door you walk by. No space is spared: bars and parks are converted into music venues, parking lots are transformed into food courts (courtesy of the plethora of delicious Austin food trucks) and your eardrums are filled with the eclectic stylings of bands from every genre. One of the better things about the atmosphere is each party/show usually has somewhere in the range of three to five bands playing. If you don’t like one of the artists, pop out to another show and come back. Literally there is always something going on somewhere.

I have never been to an event that was so interactive. While SXSW does have its own technology-based part of the festival, SXSW Interactive (SXSWi), the week before, the music portion continues that tradition. SXSW requires its attendees to be well-versed in the art of social media: RSVPing to parties and shows, checking Twitter feeds for secret shows or updates about the festival’s happenings and website URLs, Twitter handles and QR codes covering the city. For a social media nerd, like me, it was heaven.

Possibly the greatest thing about SXSW is the ungodly amounts of free stuff you get. For example, I was at SXSW for three days and two nights. I spent just under $60 that entire time on food and drinks. Why? Because SXSW has so many sponsors for each of the hundreds of events that they can give away stuff. Aside from every concert/party/show I went to being free, I got free food, booze and/or schwag (stuff/items) at four out of the six parties I attended. Thanks to SXSW, “free” has become my second favorite “f-word”.

Overall, would I say that SXSW has taught me anything? Would I say that it’s an experience I’ll cherish? Absolutely! So to all you music festivals and general event planners out there, remember that the key ingredients for a truly awesome event are atmosphere, interaction and free stuff.

The following is a list of the bands that I saw, or at least can remember seeing:

Paper Diamond

Futurebirds

The Living Kills

The Shins

Mystikal

(2 dubstep DJs)

Jonny Corndawg

J Roddy Walston and the Business

Yellow Ostrich

You’re Only as Good as THEY Say

We’ve all heard the saying that “You’re only as good as your reputation.” While we all know that to be true on an individual and corporate/company level, but how much do we truly pay attention to it? The answer: not nearly as much as we should. According to a study by Compete.com, the traffic to consumer and user reviews skyrocketed by 158% in 2010 and continues to grow. Additionally, posting and commenting on these sites also increased 91% in 2011 (Wall Street Journal). On top of that, around 70% of consumers consult reviews or ratings before purchasing (BusinessWeek 2008). (Stop, let it all sink in. Ok, proceed…) Not only are more people posting, but more are reading reviews and re-evaluating purchasing decisions. So what does this mean? Several things actually:  The power of consumer influence is shifting to the PEOPLE (instead of traditional advertising), consumers don’t trust what companies say (as you’ll see below), businesses reputations are up for grabs, and progressive steps will need to be taken by marketers to harness this new platform/power and protect those reps.

Wrap your head around these facts*:

-90% of online customers trust recommendations from people they know

-70% trust unknown users

-27% trust so-called “experts”

-14% trust ADVERTISING

-8% trust celebrities

*Erik Qualman, Econsultancy

Based on those numbers, it’s clear to see that companies and advertising are fighting an uphill battle for consumers’ trust. And as we hopefully learned from reading one of my previous articles/entries, TRUST IS KEY. According to another study done by consumer behavior firm Yankelovich, more than 75% of people don’t trust ads. Couple that with the numbers above and it’s pretty easy to see that consumers are no longer as inclined to trust what advertisers say. In a nutshell, when it comes to certain areas of marketing and advertising, what people say matters, not ads.

 The other aspect of frequent posting, viewing, and utilizing of user/consumer reviews is what I like to call the “Amplification Circle of Life and Death” (Copyright pending. Just kidding. But seriously…). Because the digital footprint in this world is nothing short of MASSIVE, consumer-generated information is able to travel much faster and to a far greater amount of people than traditional advertising. Referring to a case done by Deloitte and Touche, 7 out of 10 people who read reviews share them with peers. So think of it as a pyramid: one person reads it, shares it with two friends, who each share it with two friends, etc. etc. and you get the point. Through this amplification process, there is still a great reach (such as in traditional advertising), but it carries more weight due to the trusted source. The “Life and Death” part is determined by what is being said about the company, product, or service. Depending upon the comment/review and its content, it can spell life or death for said target’s reputation on an individual OR mass level.

With the ever-ready Amplification Circle of Life and Death just waiting to be unleashed, it is critical that companies and agencies field special staff to monitor review sites. While any positive opinion or rating is a victory, it’s a minor victory at best; it’s the negative opinions that will stick with the consumers reading the reviews. For those of you reading this that played sports, how easy is it for you to remember you or your teams’ greatest victories? How easy is it for you to remember your toughest defeats? Which are more vivid? Most of you, like me, probably said the defeats. According to Tim Hart, negatives are much easier to remember because they teach us a lesson of what to do or not. He also says, “Impressions and opinions take seconds to develop, but years to change.” This means that a few negative comments or reviews could be detrimental to a product or brand. So how can consumer reviews be utilized to turn negatives into positives? Through a dedicated monitoring staff, feedback loops can be generated to understand what is causing the negative feelings and proactive steps may be taken to correct them. Additionally, staff can post positive comments in order to balance out or outweigh the negative. While the latter option is a little bit shady, let’s be serious, the almighty dollar rules corporate America.

So what is the purpose of my consequent rants? What nuggets of information do I want you to take away from this? Simply that user reviews are increasingly becoming a more significant part of our social media world and, much like Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms, it too needs to be monitored thoroughly. Monitoring feedback loops regarding opinions and feelings about a product, service, or company is crucial. You know the saying, “Caring is sharing”? Well, “Monitoring is protecting”—ok, so it doesn’t have the same ring, but you get the point. Monitoring can help restore the balance to a brand and eliminate troublesome situations. The world of marketing, specifically digitally, is changing rapidly, friends. It’s our job to keep up…

Web 2.0: Cut the Clutter

It's kind of strange to think that the bulk of the internet has really only been around for just over fifteen years. During that time, the web has developed into something massive, both on a scale of seemingly endless cyber space and with the sheer magnitude of processed executed over it. By 2007, the average consumer was devoting 23% of his/her media consumption to online channels[i]. As one might expect, that number has since increased. While all of this is fantastic for both consumers and marketers, it does create a problem that has plagued marketers for years: clutter (cue ominous music).

Web 2.0, with all of its P2P, blogs, Wiki pages, Twitter, clouds, avatars, widgets, RSS feeds, video channels, MySpace and Facebook capabilities, has changed marketing and its processes drastically. However, all of these platforms have caused Web 2.0 to walk down a similar, cluttered path as its one-dimensional ancestors: print media, radio, and television. Let’s look at it this way, consumers are besieged with over 5000 advertising messages a day[ii]. Consumers either choose to block out these messages or are completely averse to them. Despite what some people may say (cough cough, the know-it-all kid in my International Marketing class in the 3^rd row), the consumer is smart and is constantly looking to avoid these messages. This means that marketers have to find creative and innovative ways to reach them with their messages. Gone are the days when you could expect people to pay attention to billboards, print ads, and TV commercials. Online, it’s becoming the exact same way: “Banner blindness” has caused the number of people who clicked on the ad to fall from its high of .75% in 2006 to below .18%[iii]. Additionally, users are becoming more and more frustrated with mandatory ads, such as pre-roll advertisements on YouTube. It doesn’t matter the size of your budget or the frequency with which you bombard the market with your messages; what matters is engaging the audience. Otherwise, all you’re doing is spending a lot of money to have messages fall on deaf ears and blind eyes.

Furthermore, consumers don’t care about what companies say about their product, they care about what their peers are saying about it. People pay much more attention to “Likes” and Tweets from friends than what’s in a commercial slot. With e-commerce, people look at ratings and recommendations instead taking the manufacturer’s word for it. The best organizations are the ones who have figured out effective ways to hone in on this data and measure it. Those are the companies that understand their consumer and what it takes to reach them. Domino’s (I know, this is like the 3^rd Domino’s reference in the last 4 blogs, sorry) has done a fantastic job of locking on to peer evaluations of their products and taking progressive steps from there. But how does a company or agency ensure that their ads are in the miniscule 1-3% of advertising messages that are actually remembered? [iv] Interaction and engagement. It sounds so simple, but that’s because it is. That’s what makes Web 2.0 so revolutionary, unlike other media, it provides the opportunity for marketers and companies to actually establish direct communication with the market on a mass scale. In order to be successful, companies need to take advantage of it.

 Let’s take a look at Nike and what they did with its soccer division. It created a campaign, known as The Chance, where Nike took submissions from amateur players all over the world and selected the best to receive a chance for trial periods with professional soccer clubs across the world. Nike bludgeoned its website, Facebook, and Twitter mediums, as any company would and should do, but then they went a little off the beaten path by developing a phone app, YouTube series, and got the consumers involved directly. Each of these facets allowed the masses to follow their favorite player and actually interact with them throughout the process. Additionally, Nike did a fantastic job of interacting with followers through social media regarding voting sessions about favorite players, drills the players would participate in, and other interactive applications. This allowed people to feel as if they were part of the process and had an influence on it. On a similar note, why is American Idol so successful? Because the people’s vote counts for something and people believe they have an influence on the outcome. Same principle here with The Chance. Nike was able to effectively break through media clutter and utilize different mediums to interact with the market, generate buzz, and get their message across.

How Nike "Writes the future"...

Media clutter has, and probably always will be a problem for marketers, no matter what format is used. What is important is determining ways to avoid that traffic and to be able to get the message through to consumers without getting lost in the muck. Some of the most effective ways to do that are: using mediums in an innovative fashion, engaging the market, and giving them a chance to participate. Things have been changing since the introduction of Web 2.0, and I couldn’t begin to tell you where we’ll be in the next fifteen years as marketers or consumers. But as Madonna so nearly sang 20+ years ago, “We are living in a digital world, and I am just a digital girl” (Get it? It’s a spin-off of her song “Material Girl”. Get it? Nevermind…)

[v] [vi]

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[i] Steenburgh, Thomas, and Jill Avery. "UnME Jeans: Branding Web 2.0." Harvard Business School 035th ser. 9.509 (2008): 1-13. Print.

[ii] Ingram, ByMathew. "Marketers Losing Amid Social Media Clutter - BusinessWeek." Businessweek - Business News, Stock Market & Financial Advice. Web. 05 Nov. 2011. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2010/tc2010105_764897.htm.

[iii] Steenburgh, Thomas, and Jill Avery. "UnME Jeans: Branding Web 2.0." Harvard Business School 035th ser. 9.509 (2008): 1-13. Print.

[iv] Steenburgh, Thomas, and Jill Avery. "UnME Jeans: Branding Web 2.0." Harvard Business School 035th ser. 9.509 (2008): 1-13. Print.

[v] Ingram, ByMathew. "Marketers Losing Amid Social Media Clutter - BusinessWeek." Businessweek - Business News, Stock Market & Financial Advice. Web. 05 Nov. 2011. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2010/tc2010105_764897.htm.

[vi] "About The Chance." Nike - Please Choose Your Nike Region. Nike. Web. 05 Nov. 2011. http://www.nike.com/nikefootball/write-the-future/about?locale=en_US.