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March 31 2022

Q+A: Key trends from South by Southwest Festival 2022

Perspectives

South by Southwest (SXSW) is a key festival date in the advertising calendar, bringing together the best of the tech, film, and music industries. But what were the significant trends to emerge from this year’s event?

In this Q+A, Chris Stephenson, PHD Worldwide’s Chief Marketing Officer, gets the low-down from PHD US’s Clara Flikstein, Comms Planning Lead, and Stacy Chan, Head of Digital Investment.

Chris Stephenson: For anyone that doesn’t already know, what is SXSW, and what is its relevance for marketing?

Stacy Chan: SXSW has been a festival since 1987. It currently spans ten days and is held in Austin, Texas. Industry leaders converge in the city and discuss numerous topics such as film, art, media, tech, and music. This year we heard from so many fantastic people, including: author, entrepreneur, and professor of marketing, Scott Galloway; entrepreneur, TV personality, and media proprietor, Mark Cuban; American futurist, author, and founder of Future Today Institute, Amy Webb; and singer, songwriter, activist, and businesswoman, Lizzo.

Clara Flikstein: SXSW is the nexus of everything in our culture today – tech, media, film, art, and music. It’s the only conference that brings all of those things together. Getting together and talking about interesting topics that are happening in film, media, marketing, and art. And hearing how it relates across the board is vital for us as marketers. We have to have our finger on the pulse of all of this.

Chris: Can you give us a sense of what SXSW is like as a festival on the ground?

Stacy: It was so busy across the board; events were happening all over the city. There were brand installations sprinkled throughout the city, main conference centres, meetings held in hotels, and roundtables in restaurants. It was an exciting time, especially as a first-timer. I was shuttling between mini-events about brand innovators or crypto conferences – the place was booming.

Clara: It’s organised chaos. To some degree, you have to plan your agenda, but so many things happen last minute. Plan for your plan to change. Go with the flow. Give yourself that freedom because you’ll constantly have FOMO and want to adapt.

Stacy: Also, go to events that are outside of your wheelhouse. SXSW lets you expand your horizons and learn about so many different industries and soak it in.

Chris: What particular sessions or presentations stood out for you or changed your thinking?

Stacy: Mark Cuban had great sessions, and so many people were crammed into his talks. He focused on calling for everyone to have a digital wallet and enhancing value exchanges.

Another exciting speaker was Amy Webb, the quantitative futurist. Her talk on emerging tech trends for the future was truly unique. She honed in on Web 3 in the metaverse, AI, and how that has or hasn’t affected the way we look at VR and AR, and her last topic was synthetic biology. This was the most intriguing one. I think we’re still a few years away from that, but her predictions are thinking about and looking ahead for at least 10 years and beyond.

Clara: My favourite was the neuroscience of memory and how to be memorable as a presenter, marketer, and brand. The presenter, a neuroscience biologist, and researcher taught us how our brains remember things and digest complex topics. For marketers, we need to look at how we create memories for our audiences and tap into their long-term memories to invoke personal recollections.

It reminded me of one of my favourite Maya Angelou quotes: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” The ultimate mantra to live by as marketers.

Another session that stood out was when I went to NFT school to learn how to be a coder for an hour! It was great to be in a classroom environment with coders and gamers, literally learning how to build an NFT from looking at code on the screen.

Chris: What were the themes and takeaways coming out of SXSW?

Stacy: As might be expected, the big themes coming out of SXSW this year were Web 3 and the metaverse, diversity and inclusion, climate change, and sustainability. And the ideas that touched all three areas were interoperability value exchange for consumers and adopting scale.

Ultimately, it’s been about calling for accountability, transparency, and democratisation. Allowing consumers to be more of a part of the revenue sharing and the value exchange.

For example, the way VW Group has combined their financial earnings with their emissions climate impact report. That desire for accountability is not just screen washing but making a real impact. It is interesting to see how they want to do more to shape communities for good.

Clara: I have to agree that climate impact and diversity and inclusion were my biggest takeaways too. These are not last year’s topics; they’re still today’s topics. We need to think about these, front and centre, as marketers. We need to always think about how we’re contributing to the communities we are a part of and ensure we’re not just taking from them.

This topic was first discussed on the Media Weekly, PHD’s weekly media news podcast which keeps future-facing marketers up to speed with the latest media news and what it means for their marketing agendas. Click below to listen on Spotify.

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