If you’ve never been to South by Southwest, the annual social media and interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, it’s tough to describe the combination of laid-back-high-tech energy that makes the Festival standout.
Austin, a charming college town, may not the easiest place to get to, but once you arrive and get your bearings, you’re swept up in the swirl of the event.
It’s been a few weeks since it ended so I thought I’d reflect on five highlights from my third SXSW:
1. Real-time marketing
In a roundtable featuring several large brands, McDonald’s social media leader talked about how they’ve managed to reach an arrangement with their legal department and can now respond to rumours in minutes, not days. Having worked with legal from other brands, that’s a big, positive shift. On the same panel, Whole Foods spoke about how it’s training and empowering each of its stores to have its own local social media flavour and personality. Not every organization can do that, but the company believes each store knows its own community best.
2. Don’t be human spam
Austin Kleon, a self-described “writer who draws”, presented a keynote to promote his new book, Show Your Work. Kleon believes the genius model of creativity based on the talented, egotistical lone artist is outdated. He described those people as human spam because all they want to talk about is themselves. Instead, he encouraged us to embrace the ‘Scenius’ concept, a model that acknowledges creative work is not created in a vacuum, but is a collaborative process and closely involves the community around you. “Don’t be a hoarder,” he advised. “When you find work you love, share it.”
3. In praise of the power pose
Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist and prof in the Harvard Business School conducts research on what our body language says about us and how changing it can alter our self-perceptions. Cuddy encourages us to adopt a power pose like Wonder Woman’s signature stance or the arms up in the air victory pose we often associate with winning athletes. She found that our bodies change our minds, our minds change our behaviours and our behaviours change our outcomes. She suggested that before any high stakes interaction, we take two minutes in private to adopt a power pose. But she cautioned that it’s risky to express power when you don’t have it. If you want to hear more, check out her engaging Ted Talk on the subject.
4. Humour is a benign violation
Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker, is the person in charge of crowdsourcing humour for the magazine’s weekly caption contest. With over 5,000 entries each week, it’s not easy to win. So what does it take to stand out and make the master laugh?
- Humour thrives on antipathy, not empathy
- You need to aim for theory of mind (that is imagining what the reader might think)
- Brevity counts—fewer words have a better chance of making the shortlist
- Avoid excessive use of punctuation (especially exclamation points and question marks)
- Use unusual-sounding words
- If there are similar ideas, the one that is best phrased wins
5. Tweet what you believe
Lena Dunham, the talented creator, writer, director and star of the hit series Girls gave a heartfelt, humble and humorous valedictory of a speech about her career and life. One thing she said that really stood out for me was, “Tweet what you believe and then the @ comments will never bother you.” Another thing you can do is unfollow or block the trolls.
Will I go back? Absolutely. SXSW is a confluence of content, creativity and craziness – high-flying digital ideas, Hollywood and tech stars, and an eclectic group of 65,000+ smart and friendly people. And if that sounds too overwhelming, you may want to try with the more intimate SXSWV2V conference that’s held in Las Vegas in July.
Oh, and did I mention the barbecue?
Did you attend SXSW? What did you learn?
A version of this was first published in Marketing Magazine and the Thornley Fallis blog. Graphic recording in photo created by Image Think.
