To Inspire Creativity and Create a Positive Future for Everyone

The final day of SXSW is usually when it all catches up with me. The days spent moving from session to session, taking notes at blazing speed. The nights exploring SXSW events and vendor experiences (and enjoying Austin cuisine…and P. F. Chang’s…we don’t have one (yet) so I’ve got to take advantage when I can). The late nights spent compiling these reflections for my own sanity and (hopefully) for your enrichment. The experience is good, but it is a marathon.

SXSW Interactive 2018 played out per usual and Day Five found me worn, but I finished strong with a day of helpful sessions.

I kicked the day off with two sessions on content marketing. User-generated content can be a great way to inspire and harness the creative energies of advocates for your brand or cause. Great user-generated content campaigns start with a clear objective that engages and motivates your target audience, generally for a social cause or brand advocacy. Successful campaigns operate within an established platform that is easy to use and has clear content guidelines. Finally, the best user-generated content campaigns empower people to share their stories. Causes and brands can leverage these powerful, personal stories by connecting with the storyteller and diving deeper into the narrative. Participating in the humanity of those who advocate for your cause or brand is the right thing to do and also extends the reach of your cause or brand concept. User-generated content campaigns like the famous ALS Bucket Challenge or National Geographic’s Dear Earth initiative can harness the creativity of your audience to extend the reach of your cause or brand. However, if these campaigns are gimmicky, have no connection with your mission, do not engage your audience, fail to draw out authentic stories, or have no boundaries, they will not likely be successful.

The second content session waxed Fukuyamian with its consideration of the “End of Content.” Whereas Fukuyama proposed that history has come to an end because the cultural frameworks that constructed “history” were breaking down, Alex Chung, the founder of Giphy, suggested that there really is no end to content. Even with Millennials consuming 18 hours of online content per day (!!!), the amount of content being generated outpaces anyone’s ability to keep up with it all. As a result of the sheer volume of content, attention spans continue to shrink and what counts for content continues to morph to try to anticipate the expectations of people. On average, human attention span has now decreased to about 6 seconds when viewing content online. The most engaged content is that which has a strong emotional appeal. These parameters give hope to people who create and curate lightweight content, like animated GIFs. Designed to encapsulate emotions, GIFs have incredible online currency. The emotional engagement and the narrative quality they embody in just a few seconds along with their extreme portability make GIFs an incredible content platform going forward. This is particularly true in an era when longer form video rarely captivates people’s attention. Brief 6-second snippets of emotionally engaging video content seem to be the current “sweet spot” for online content. If brands and others work within this frame successfully, they can draw an audience of people who will become stronger brand advocates.

For my third session of the day, I heard a panel on “concierge marketing.” This is a new term that describes a marketing approach that works carefully to anticipate and exceed the expectations of potential cause or brand advocates. Basically, having the right message, for the right person at the right moment. The concept is based on a hotel concierge, who anticipates patron needs before they are voiced and who is helpful and responsive to requests. This highly catered experience is what people crave and, once experienced, love. By understanding our target audiences, engaging their stories, and creatively anticipating how our brand or cause enhances their lives, we can serve people well and potentially create brand advocates. The causes and brands that can create this level of positive brand engagement have an opportunity to develop their market and, even better, enhance the lives of the people they serve.

SXSW Interactive always closes with a ritual chastening from cyberpunk novelist, tech enthusiast, and futurist Bruce Sterling. I look forward to the prophetic witness Sterling brings to the SXSW Interactive crowd. His incisive insights regularly cut to the core and call us all to a better way of being. Sterling was under the weather, so he moved gracefully through his comments as opposed to driving his message home as in past years.

His Word to the SX crowd was subtle but clear. As someone who has been centrally engaged with the Interactive festival since its inception, Sterling observed that the tech crowd that flocked to Austin this year looks less like creative innovators and more like wealthy, self-satisfied, established Elites who have arrived. SX feels, he suggested, more corporate, more normed, less hungry…and what has been lost lies at the feet of the festival organizers. In an extended comparison to curating an excellent art festival, Sterling encouraged those who plan SXSW to be more discerning about what is truly innovative, imaginative, captivating and good in the way of sessions, keynote speakers, events, activities and features. As a great art festival puts the best of the best on display to extend the conversation in the art world, so SXSW can reclaim what he clearly feels it has lost if genuine innovation and creativity rather than established brands and tech platforms are at the heart of the conversation. Sterling also played within the art festival motif to challenge tech innovators and creatives not to simply solve pragmatic problems but to embrace art. The dimensions of beauty and human good are worthwhile considerations in the course of innovating in the realms of technology, social engagement, integrated marketing, media or other creative endeavors. Sterling left us with a Word that we all know deep down: The creative work we do must not only change the game but also improve the lives of those impacted by the things we do.

Day Five rounded out another incredible year at SXSW Interactive. Creativity in content, marketing strategy, tech innovation, design and essentially every human endeavor is critical for moving industry and society forward. However, the results of our creativity must produce value for real people in order to make the right and best impact on the world. If innovators can remember the value of art and trend creativity toward beauty, the pragmatics of creating and aesthetic experience can converge and we can do some pretty amazing things together!