Door Number 3 @ South by Southwest: Monday, March 16
Posted on Mon Mar 16 2009
Bryan Keplesky and Prentice Howe of Door Number 3 in Austin, Texas, are filing reports for BrandFreak from South by Southwest. They are looking at emerging trends, technologies and strategies that brand marketers are using to reach today's trendsetters and tastemakers.
THE DAILIES
T-SHIRT: There were more Belgians in the lobby of the Hilton today. They were all wearing great T-shirts. One of them was wearing a "misprint" from the Wrangler jeans factory. I think we would refer to it as "irregular" here in the U.S. This one had a sweet Texas theme, but it is actually the T-shirt for a rock band from Belgium. Yeah, I wish we thought of it too. Unfortunately, I couldn't find evidence that Triggerfinger will make an appearance during the music portion of SXSW.
NAMEDROP: turn2live. According to Tammy and Laura, press organizers for SXSW Interactive, right now it's all about the freshly launched Web site turn2live. The site tracks down what live shows the user would want to see most according to his taste, location and mood (?). It seems to be limited to the Austin area for now, and there are a few kinks that could be ironed out, but it was fairly easy to use, and the show listings had a nice aesthetic.
INTERVIEW: It was around lunchtime when I interrupted Ingrid while she was responding to e-mails in the lobby of the Convention Center. Ingrid is a Web developer for Gnip who is attending SXSW for the first time from Boulder, Colo. She had this to say about branding at the conference.
What are you excited about seeing this year?
I think for me it's about the people. A lot of these people I talk to online and don't get to see in real life, ever. So, it's kind of closing that loop.
Have any promotional items or events stood out to you so far?
It's kind of hard to keep track of that stuff. I did find out about some parties via Facebook. And then through Brightkite and Twitter I have been able to keep track if there's something different going on. But it's a little bit overwhelming. I didn't even get a swag bag because most of that stuff is throw-away and I just didn't want to be bothered.
Do you think street marketing works?
Probably not. I might be too old. Maybe it works for younger people. I mean, it's not bad, it just doesn't necessarily influence what I'm going to do. I tend to plan more, and again, for me, this is really about the people.
NVIDIA
Living in 2-D is so 2008. NVIDIA invites gamers to load up some software, plug in a Samsung SynchMaster monitor, pop on a pair of wireless glasses and watch their favorite PC game be transformed into an interactive 3-D experience. Sure, 3-D isn't anything new. But the NVIDIA experience is a far cry from donning paper glasses and watching Creature From the Black Lagoon. This is the first hi-def 3-D solution for the home. It's crystal clear. No hints of ghosting or flickering. And surprisingly, the glasses don't make you feel like that much of a jackass.
The rise of 3-D technology could open the floodgates for new product placement opportunities. Is anyone at Wonderbra reading this?
This is the year that visuals overtake words in the boardroom. That probably wasn't the most convincing way to start a blog posting, but so be it. It's true. Dan Roam began spreading this gospel on a broad scale in his book Back of the Napkin, named the No. 5 business book of the year on Amazon. The gist: A scrap of paper is the best way to explain complex business ideas. I also see it as a powerful way to connect the dots between brand strategy and creative messaging.
Here's a pretty cool visual-language piece someone created during Stephen Baker's keynote interview with Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com. See a larger image here. Silver is the whiz kid whose statistical analysis predicted an Obama landslide very early in the presidential election. As attendees poured out of the conference hall, I heard more than a few "I couldn't follow that guy" mumbles. Maybe if Silver had used some drawings, they would have had a different take.
ZAPPOS
If you're like me, you've probably heard the broken record that is Tony Hsieh talk about his company's culture. This is the guy who offers new employees $2,000 to quit after their first week of training, thus weeding out the people who aren't committed to working at Zappos. Hsieh hammers home his "culture first" mantra to any media outlet that will listen. You've surely heard some of his sound bites, like how all employees are encouraged to decorate their cubes or how team members meet up through Twitter after work.
This is cool and all, but does a warehouse worker making $11 an hour really expect his company culture to be all that riveting? Shouldn't Hsieh be a little more focused on, say, the new line of cross trainers or how to unload white sandals after Labor Day?
Apparently not. And Hsieh has $1 billion in sales to back that up.
He says that when the culture is right, everything else falls into place. Everything. It begins by aligning personal values with company values, something that took Zappos one year to fully define. If employees are given a path to happiness, all else—from sales to customer service—works itself out. Zappos employees are genuinely happy to work there. So much so, in fact, that Hsieh allows reporters to speak with anyone in the organization. A PR guy's worst nightmare, right? Not in the case of Zappos, where transparency is ingrained into the corporate DNA.
These guys have a genuinely good time, and they express it via Twitter and company blogs. (Employees are given a Twitter tutorial when they join the company.) For them, social networking is both fun and a way for outsiders to connect to their brand personality. Hsieh gave a personal example of how culture impacts the customer experience before finishing his keynote address to a sea of SXSW attendees. He was out drinking with some shoe vendors one evening. The woman from Sketchers wanted some pizza, but it was late and most restaurants had long since closed. Someone joked, "Call Zappos and order pizza from them." She decided what the hell and dialed them up. The Zappos rep kindly explained that they sell shoes, not pizza, and then asked her to hold for a minute. She returned to the line and gave the woman the five closest places that were still serving pies.
While Hsieh's message may get redundant, you have to give him an A for consistency. Where would Customer Service Hall-of-Shamers Sprint, Comcast or Time Warner's AOL be today if they had adopted his methodology from day one?
So, here's my plea: Take note of this broken record, and infuse his line of thinking into your own company. As creative marketers, our jobs would be far more rewarding if every client was as purpose-driven as Zappos. Instead of burning brain cells trying to create a believable brand personality, and then watching the model fall apart when it isn't embraced internally by the company being advertised, we'd instead be merely coming up with unique ways to project a personality and soul that already exists.
E-mail Tony at tony [at] zappos.com for a free copy of the Zappos Culture Book. Be sure to include your physical address.
MOUNTAIN DEW
Seems fitting that Mountain Dew is the lead sponsor for the ScreenBurn Arcade, a venue for exploring the newest innovations in video games. Most of the attendees are 16- to 29-year-olds in search of their next caffeine high.
Mountain Dew set up a Rec Room, which seemed to miss the mark. The focal point was a Vegas-style bar with hottie waitresses (good). But surrounding this were living-room sets with plaid sofas and wood-paneled walls donning dartboards and posters (bad). The result was an awkward amalgam of new school and old school. It's as if there were two set decorators and neither one talked before the exhibit. But here's the saving grace, Mountain Dew: Every set of eyeballs in that exhibit was fixated on an LCD screen, so nobody much cared.
AT&T
Even though AT&T has absolutely no brand presense at SXSW, it got enough column inches (on Wired, Business Insider and all over Twitter) today to make any marketing director jealous. Oh wait—all the talk was about how horrible the AT&T service has been throughout downtown Austin after a few thousand iPhone 3G nerds simultaneously conducted a Twitter search for "open bar."
AT&T's respsonse: "To accommodate unprecedented demand for mobile data and voice applications at SXSW, we are actively working this afternoon to add capacity to our cell sites serving downtown Austin. These efforts are ongoing, but we anticipate that customers should see improved network performance this evening and for the remainder of the event. We will continue to monitor network performance throughout the event, and will do everything possible to maximize network performance throughout. We apologize to customers who were inconvenienced during this surge in local network demand."
