South by Southwest (SXSW) has become well-known in the industry as an annual festival that features a unique convergence of original music, independent films and emerging technology. Beginning in 1987, it has since continued to grow in scope, size and splash, with huge sponsorship packages that involve everything from free signage on hotel keycards to rickshaws to free-flowing beer starting early in the morning. SXSW still proves to be a great opportunity to network, with so many digital players attending. I decided to ask two of our adtech peers who are based in Austin their thoughts about SXSW. I also got to chat with them to learn more about their businesses.
Jeff Shoemaker, VP of Business Development, Polygraph Media
1. Being in Austin, what are you hoping to gain from the conference?
Austin is a bit of an island geographically-speaking. We are far from New York or California. Heck, we are only the fourth largest city in Texas! So the opportunity for others to come here for a few days (rather than us going to them) is immeasurable. And, of course, it’s a great way to promote Austin as a place to do business and have fun.
2. What are your top three tips for networking at an event like this? After seeing the flow of events this year, what would you recommend for someone planning to attend SXSW in 2017?
Know why you’re networking. Are you trying to chat up people with a specific skillset? Are you hiring? Selling? Investing? Or are you simply looking to cut loose, have fun and meet interesting people? Answering these questions beforehand will help you get the most out of your time.
To connect, be a connector. It’s a cliché for a reason. The most valuable thing you can do for somebody may be an introduction to somebody else. SXSW is unique in that the networking is more valuable than virtually any of the events themselves.
Pace yourself. SXSW is like nothing else in the world. There is much more stuff to do than ability to do it all. Next year it will likely be even bigger. It’s a marathon, not a sprint!
3. What does the headline on your website, “Programmatic. Not fauxgrammatic,” mean?
“Programmatic” means something very specific in display, but in social and messaging, there is still tons of uncertainty. In a way, “programmatic” is much harder to achieve in social and messaging than in display: things like how to distribute dollars across platforms, how to identify the right content to promote, how to report post-campaign, etc. So most solutions punt on the programmatic concept entirely…despite how they describe themselves.
Polygraph’s “obsessively data-driven” approach starts with the end in mind and works backwards towards the beginning. Our customers tell us it’s a better way.
Sree Nagarajan, CEO/Founder, Affinity Answers
4. You are based in Austin. How has SXSW evolved over the years in your opinion?
It has become bigger, more sponsor-driven and, in general, shallower in terms of content depth. It is still one of the best places to get exposed to ideas you are not familiar with. However, you generally can’t get deeper exposure to areas you are familiar with. This may be a side effect of crowdsourcing the content. Since the panels are picked by the public, the sessions that get voted higher are the ones that most people are generally familiar with, not the fringes that become mainstream eventually. Ironically, SXSW was started to address cross-pollination between areas and, thus, promoted non-mainstream ideas. As WSJ said a while ago, SXSW started as a way to fight “The Man” but it slowly became “The Man.”
5. You said in a recent AdExchanger article that, “The past 10 years for us have been the dog years, but now we think the industry might be hitting a tipping point. It’s very hard to say when it’ll happen exactly, but the industry is facing enough pain points in terms of their existing measurement systems not really giving them what they need.” Our CEO Joe Zawadzki agrees. What do you think the outcome of this industry shift will be?
Rallying around a new way of measurement that is optimized for agile activation at its core, rather than designed for elaborate upfront planning. Thus, activation will be the way measurement will get validated rather than the other way around.
The industry will shift to measuring consumers, and their preference for brand and content. Media will become a transparent pipe. Thus, it’s The Walking Dead, not AMC, which the consumer and, thus, the advertiser wants. This will make most existing media-centric measurement and ad placement systems obsolete. The vendors that embrace this disruptive change will stand to reap the benefits for decades to come. It will make advertising and related activities such as sponsorship a lot more relevant, benefiting consumers with more emotionally-aligned experiences and advertisers with more effective engagement with their consumers.