BRANDS: REAL TIME IS HERE This is the year that real time was the subject of a lot of talks and having attended a few I thought I would...

AVOIDING THE SHIT AND FINDING THE MAGIC @SXSW2017: DAY FOUR

BRANDS: REAL TIME IS HERE
This is the year that real time was the subject of a lot of talks and having attended a few I thought I would share some principles I have gleaned:

- Digital and physical space - feedback in shop space informs social.
- Make sure activity is authentic to the brand's DNA - consumers are too savvy and know when taking advantage e.g. Brand involved in the Women's march recently had to ensure their message is aligned to brand 
- Make it personal wherever possible - reference people or make it interactive 
- Make sure it adds value to go live - ask yourself why are you producing this and why should anyone care ?
- Make sure you are disciplined with content - use the lens of 'does it personify the brand?'
- Ensure balance of pre-planning and reaction to real time feedback ? Keep options open so can pivot - QVC was used as a great example of using live properly - real time updates in ear as selling - same principles 
- Remember that audiences don't expect to be polished so permission to test quickly and easily 
- People equate live as less expensive and this is not the case you are just spending the budget differently but think about where the spend is directed carefully 
- Learn from Hollywood space - learnt that it is all about trust in terms of who you use - how well do they know your brand to ensure authenticity

Who is doing it right ?
Buzzfeed – https://www.buzzfeed.com/tag/live_stream
Everlane https://www.everlane.com/ 
Refinery 29 http://www.refinery29.uk/

The final piece of advice was perhaps the best and applies to lots of other social channels and developments - avoid shiny toy syndrome -
think carefully about live - where is it helpful and where does it add value and unlock something?

 TECH: NEW TYPES OF DISCOVERY 
 The success of Pokémon GO appears to have spawned a whole raft of discovery apps that reward 'players' for various tasks whether that be based on finding boxes and keeping them hidden to being the first to find them to literally fighting for them with other players - it is the new gaming. This might sound like one of the many faddish apps that come and go but based on the data I have seen here and the numbers of people signing up and playing it could be a huge opportunity for brands. Unilever have recently invested heavily in Snatch http://www.snatchhq.com/ , a free to play, virtual treasure hunt. Using augmented reality, grab parcels hidden around you virtually, then protect them from others who are trying to Snatch from you. Prizes range from a free holiday, tickets to a gig, rewards and even hard cash. I met Jo the founder at a Tech event he talked of how he has raised a huge VC investment within a month for the app. There are others around including Seek http://www.seekadventureapp.com/. Whether it is a fad or not it is here right now and a great opportunity for brands to get involved. Anecdotally I heard that a woman spent 3 hours and walked the equivalent of a half marathon collecting enough rewards to get a $100 Amazon voucher - I guess the biggest challenge is to make it relevant and not just a compers paradise !

CULTURE - BE ORIGINAL
 Adam Grant is a fellow at Wharton and a hugely charismatic speaker, anyone who can get 3,000 people trying to clap their favorite song to their seated neighbor has the ability to inspire people !
His talk focused on how organisations can build a culture that encourages the originality that ultimately leads to success. He shared 6 great principles that we can all learn from (indeed I have already thought about how some can be applied to business and life)
1) Originals aren't risk seekers - some of the founders of most original recent ideas - Spanx, Google, Nike, eBay, Selma, Minecraft all carried on jobs whilst developing these companies. Adam shared that companies are 33% less likely to fail than those who quit and go all in.
2) Originals avoid false negatives - violate the expected and see things with different perspectives and don't judge it just yourself get others to judge. He suggested it is best to take leaders and managers out of the decision making process to get true objectivity.
3) Originals make the unfamiliar familiar. Adam asked everyone in the hall to clap their favourite song and their neighbor to guess the song – turns out it is almost impossible, why ? as you hear the tune in your head but you need to imagine if you can’t hear tune in your head. You need to adopt the same principle when you pitch a new idea - create a feeling of familiarity. He shared a story that Lion King was originally pitched as Bambi in Africa with lions and failed but when reframed to “Hamlet with lions” you immediately  get the plot and characters. He suggested that we should always know what is going on outside of industry / core field and ideas e.g. Warby Parker - the Netflix for glasses.
4) Originals admit their weaknesses – he shared a story of the founder of Babel who included a strange element in his pitch – he presented the 3 reasons why you shouldn't invest. The principles of called the availability heuristic if hard to think of something it has to be.
5) Originals hire differently - culture fit approach works best - 200 starts ups had 0% failure when used culture fit BUT as grow the odds of success go down as culture fit becomes proxy for group think. Solution - hire on cultural contribution.
6) Originals fight groupthink - leaders silence people without realizing it e.g. Don't bring me problems bring me solutions = culture of advocacy not enquiry . Companies should welcome problems, he suggested we start a Google doc with problem log and undertake a kill the company exercise twice a year as it makes people and organizations far more resilient  

WILD CARD: MR BALOO

We were invited to a huge agency party on Monday evening hosted by GSDM. With over 1k people in attendance, 6 food trucks, free cocktails and beer and a live band the party stretched across a huge lawn in front of their office. We got talking to a few locals and experienced true Texan character and hospitality in the form of Matt Balloo. Matt was an ex employee of the agency and his wife now works there – he shared some hilarious agency stories - within 30 minutes we were invited to play golf, go shooting and eat BBQ at Matt’s house – he even said we could stay at his ranch next year !

BRAND: PRESUASION IS NOW A THING   SXSW is always full of people pushing their new book with so called "new" ideas. For this re...

AVOIDING THE SHIT AND FINDING THE MAGIC @SXSW2017: DAY THREE

BRAND: PRESUASION IS NOW A THING
 SXSW is always full of people pushing their new book with so called "new" ideas. For this reason I went to a talk featuring Robert Cialdini being interviewed by Guy Kawasaki with a fair degree of healthy cynicism.
Robert wrote the seminal book 'The psychology of presuasion' which featured 6 universal principles of social influence: Persuasion 
1) Reciprocation - if you do something for someone they feel obligated to do something in return 
2) Liking - we say to people we like - like people who are like us - reduce negotiations that are deadlocked by sharing something they have in common 
3) Consistency - people want to say yes to things that are related to what they have already said or done e.g. In UK medical appointment - blank card and you write next appointment - commitment 
4) Authority - we say yes to people who are experts - channel the voice of expertise 
5) Social proof - popular options in restaurants e.g. Apple white pods 
6) Scarcity - people want stuff they can have less of e.g. Only 3 per customer 
Robert was however talking about his new idea - Presuasion - or rather "The process of arranging for recipients to be sympathetic to a message before they experience it".
He used the example of online furniture store sent half customers to a site that had fluffy clouds background - other half had small coins as background - cloud purchased more comfortable furniture - pennies bought cheaper items.
His idea is predicated that brands need to think about sending people down a psychological shoot this means presuasion accelerates the persuasion message.
The best recent example he shared Was how Trump has been presenting himself as a 'change' candidate - turned camera on the audience and showed himself surrounded by a sea of faces that looked like the people watching (carefully curated) and always showing big crowds and social proof. 
Snake oil or genuine neuroscience breakthrough ? To be honest I am not sure but like much you hear and see here it certainly gives food for thought when developing our net campaigns. 

TECHNOLOGY: SONY GO ALL IN
Sony have been at SXSW for the last 3 years and their presence has slowly increased as they have more to share. This year was no exception with a hangar like space for the "WOW Factory". The experience certainly lived up to the name with at last 10 different experiential sections to see the future of technology. These varied from items that will be available for retail in the next year to experiments and thought starters from their engineers. 
The best example of the former was a projector called the Xperia Touch that also works as a laptop and personal entertainment system - available in Summer 2017 it takes the concept of the World as your UI to a whole new level. With PS4 as their mainstay as you can imagine the gaming section was huge with haptic gaming suits, VR experience and complete surround sound experiences but perhaps the best was a life size box that projected interactive experiences from all round the World as if you really were there.
The future is certainly here and Sony are all over it !

WILDCARD: SAY HELLO TO BENICIO
Last year I went to a fantastic talk by Michael Nieling called "Fuck no, Shit yeh" where he espoused the benefits of a JFDI approach to creativity. This year he was far more reserved but equally as open and enthralling. In the talk "They're going to hate this and think I'm full of shit" he introduced us to Benicio. Benicio is the monkey on his shoulder that creates his Imposter complex that is based on the premise that we are our worst critic. His approach to life is based on the "Charm hustle: principle and that nothing comes from no - something else comes next. The downside of this is that panic doubt anxiety drives him as he does what many of us do which is to over practice, over work and over prepare.
For Michael this meant he ended up having a nervous breakdown and having to re-think his life, something which struck a chord with many in the room. The solution (or cure)? There isn't an easy one - look after yourself and control your own life more and above all have empathy. The key it seems is to know who you are - stick to it - comfortable in your own skin.

See you on Day 4.........

BRAND & MARKETING: BE AUTHENTIC Every year many brands invade Austin trying to borrow a piece of the tech. Gatorade are using Aus...

AVOIDING THE SHIT AND FINDING THE MAGIC @SXSW2017: DAY TWO

BRAND & MARKETING: BE AUTHENTIC
Every year many brands invade Austin trying to borrow a piece of the tech.
Gatorade are using Austin to show they are far more than a sports drinks company.
Their approach uses the integration of technology in a purposeful manner with technology they have developed to help sports teams be their best.
From a jump-plate to see not just how high you can jump but also it analyses your landing to highlight injuries. VR is used to show manual dexterity and speed of response to various situations and body tracking helps predict injury and highlights different methods of exercise.
Overall it is highly impressive and you can see how it is hugely additive to the sports teams that they work with and is a perfect brand fit however like many projects that are demo'd at SXSW they appear to have missed a trick in that they didn't directly connect the brand to the purpose of the work i.e. they don't show how Gatorade can help fix the problems or help the opportunities they are highlighting. Arguably as per the point from Day 1 - the commodity the brands are seeking is attention and maybe this is the best method to achieve it, they just need to complete circle.

TECHNOLOGY BOT - THE NEW APP ?
After VR and AR the next most popular subjects in tech appears to be the use of messaging bots. Messaging is on the rise hugely with over 2.6bn people having a messaging app installed and bots are natural extension of this.
It was for this reason that I broke one of my SXSW rules to attend a panel which featured Alison Swope from FB Messenger, Lauren Kunze from Pandorabots and Andrew Poon from Yahoo
Kunze's Pandorabots created the Mitsubishi chat bot Mitsuku which is widely thought to be one of the best in world for chat, indeed there is plenty of film footage on You Tube showing people interacting with it for hours it seems to have set the bar for all other bots.
Some principles that were discussed included the use of humour as a way to connect  e.g. Christian Gray chatbot and ensuring that the bot doesn't keep giving error messages and a loop of "don't understand" however the biggest discussion point was the use of bots to remove "friction" in dealings with customers whilst saving millions of pounds. 
One of the key benefits of bots is the opportunity to not only engage via chat but also engage ongoing with targeted info and perhaps more importantly the chance for to use messaging for hand offs e.g. I need to send flowers this does however demand links to email or other accounts, it seems the future is account linking and if this can be cracked then bots have the opportunity to be at the centre of all communications. 
So what about the future? Poon reckons it only a matter of time before a company is set up that communicates only via messaging - this would be a substitute for websites, call centres and even physical spaces.
So the future looks bright - with 250 bot platforms now available for developers and a huge demand from consumers companies just need to overcome one of the biggest barriers that is interestingly the same that social faced 5 years ago - persuading the CEO and CFO!

CULTURE - SMALL WORLD
One of the principles of SXSW that everyone is a potential connection and everyone has a story so lose all inhibitions and talk to everyone. With this in mind we attended an independent agency drink organized by The Network One and hosted by an agency based in Austin called McGarrah Jessie. After various conversations with different agency folk I met the owners of the host agency and we happened to share a new Client (who by coincidence  I am seeing on Tues) - connections made and future ongoing working relationships made over Texan cocktails. The lesson is a simple one - never stop looking to meet new people and always be curious - it should be the SXSW strap line ! 

WILD CARD  - BREAKING THE RULES BEAUTIFULLY 
"Learn the rules and break them beautifully" is one of the laws of Gravity featured on the walls of the agency. It is a principle that is well and truly lived by today's wild card Casey Neistat. 
He jumped on stage straight off his skateboard in his Nike trousers and spoke eloquently for an hour around his concept of 
The Tarzan method. This is the idea that there is never a clear trajectory from a to b but rather that you use use vines that takes you forward but somewhere you might not imagine being , in essence grab whatever is in front of you.
He spoke of his progression from filmmaking to a TV series on HBO to DVD's to embracing You Tube and how his Bike lane movie which he said he made as an act of complete stupidity ended up reaching Michael Bloomberg the then Mayor of New York and the New York Times.
The next vine took him to work with brands and become what he called reluctantly an "influencer". He talked of his work with Nike where Alex Lopez asked him to create 5 videos, he ran out of ideas by video 3 so decided to turn up at the airport an take the next flight and then do the same til he had completed a trip round the World - the result "Make it count" was arguably the most successful brand film ever , it currently has 25m views with over 10k comments.
As always with SXSW talks like this there is a fair amount of post rationalization however the principle that Casey follows is a very relevant one and that is about the principle of making stuff, he talked of starting with rusty lump of steel and creating a shiny excalibur sword. It is the way this is done that is key here, in the Make It Count film he uses the words of Martyn Monro
"If I had followed all the rules I would never had gotten anywhere" In short, having no idea is not an ignorance it is a strategy.
So what was the learning? That entrepreneurs should think about building their businesses in the Tarzan method - push stuff out and if liked do more if not then stop. Just watch the Do what you can't video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7dSXcfVqE it says it all.




Day one at SXSW is always hugely busy and chaotic as 30k people descend on a city  the size of Bristol and display the keenness of  A...

AVOIDING THE SHIT AND FINDING THE MAGIC @SXSW2017: DAY ONE

Day one at SXSW is always hugely busy and chaotic as 30k people descend on a city  the size of Bristol and display the keenness of 

As promised here are my 3 observations of the day:

Brands and marketing: ATTENTION IS THE CURRENCY

Increasingly across different talks and tracks there is a consistent theme. It isn't new and it isn't unsurprising it is that attention is the new currency 

Gary Vaynerchuck in his Q&A repeatedly impressed on people the importance of attention - he called it the currency of the 21st century and the lens all brands should be using right now.

The big question is how do you get this attention ?

Gary's answer is simple - use the most efficient and effective means and for him that is the most targeted, underrated and underpriced of all mediums: Facebook video and influencer marketing 

It is an approach that many brands ignore either through the challenge of creating the right content for the medium or through the perceived simplicity of the approach.

Be aware however that creativity is the differentiator in a World where 98% of brand don't have a real point of difference so use the creativity to make the difference.

Technology: VR ADOPTION IS FURTHER AWAY THAN YOU THINK

Interestingly Gary Vee applies the same principles to VR in that whilst it is clearly mainstream no one is using it very much (Other than those who work in the industry). As such he believes it is far further away in terms of adoption than people think - that said he did say it is v hot right now for B2B that will then unlock the uses for consumers in the future. 

This was very relevant as the lens through which we looked at a session focusing on 5 of the hottest start up in Austin. Whilst this is just Austin you have to remember that it is a hotbed of tech development and investment (good intersection) and those presenting came from all of over the World not just the US.

Many of the ideas were not new and often use cases were not relevant to the service itself from distraction of kids to help medical procedures (Axon) to VR without headset (Radix) to a physical place for experiencing VR without falling over (Omni) however perhaps the most interesting is Thrillbox which is essentially Nielsen for VR - it helps quantify ROI for VR in terms of focus and attention and exposure (how long people are exposed). I guess you can tell when industries are moving mainstream when measurement starts to get discussed.

CULTURE: ENCOURAGE MAKING

The maker culture has long been a track at SXSW however it seems that this has now moved from a focus on NPD and into a means by which employees can be more fulfilled.

There are many companies creating spaces for making in the workplace -
Airbnb, Nike, Pinterest and IBM spoke of just this in a panel.

Airbnb have created what they call the Common Studio - a place to get away from computers and experiment.

Nike have the Blue Ribbon studio - space for all designers including screen printing, foil stamping, a sewing studio and technology integration with VR and robotic arm work.

IBM have a make lab - 400 sq ft space intended for coffee / printers - including screen printing in an upstart space. Interestingly it has no official funding or sanctioning but has caught on hugely in the fi-orate giant to the point where this is being considered as an employee investment.

Why ?

Work is changing people want a different kind of work in the workspace, they need to live with errors and making appears to be great at keeping people happy and engaged.

It is great at helping cross functional teams work together at all levels, and not just designers, filmmakers etc. , in essence you don't have to be a creative  to be creative. All new people coming though the business have to spend time in the studio 

Workshops unlock skills that everyone has too and a few have even changed roles as a result.

The Challenges?

Were highlighted as finding space, funding, culturally getting used to people not being at their desks and perceived to not be working. In IBM it is not funded, the people who use it chip in $10. All the panel are working at proving business value 

So any business should consider by starting small and quickly, align your making with company activity.

Deck here: www.bit.ly/2m8t07T


WILDCARD: BE AUTHENTIC

I thought I would start strong on this by not usinga local but someone who has travelled to SXSW for a keynote Corey Richards - a true inspiration.

Corey opened his heart and his immense photo library to show us his personal and literal journey that resulted in his reaching the summit of Everest without supplemental oxygen via trips around southern Africa, Myanmar and Nepal.

His heart rendering story that includes alcoholism, homelessness and a marriage break up was based on the principles of honesty - honesty in yourself and honesty to other - achieving this not only creates empathy butt also connection 

The digital connection was about ignoring the distraction of social media - whilst they documented their last trip up Everest on Snapchat (that started with 30 views and ended with over 100k) he was keen to impress that social means people compare their views and life to the curated views of others and that is never going to be healthy.

The key to life according to Corey ? Be authentic !

See you on Day two.




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