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

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.