Head of digital at Ogilvy Melbourne, Ben Kidney, who joined Ogilvy Melbourne in December 2015 following a stint as Executive Producer at RG\A New York, reports his day by day experiences at SXSW.
What a day, peppered with brilliant speakers on powerful and interesting topics, throw in some Hollywood superstars a futurist and you have a mind-blowing day.
In terms of a profession in the digital/tech industry it doesn’t get more worthy than the recently formed White House Digital Services team, following Barack Obama’s speech at SXSW 2016 to the tech community for civic engagement and to help make government processes and initiatives better. The White House Digital Services team (who operate out of the White House basement) took us through projects they have successfully implemented and in some cases rescued from the brink of failure - remember the infamous Healthcare.gov website that crashed upon launching? The Digital Services team is made up of the best and brightest digital minds from US startup tech industry and the visit by P.O.T.U.S on Friday shows serious commitment and the intent of the US Government to be a innovation led culture and economy.
Now for a topic close to my heart, ‘Sucking Less when Presenting Creative’. If I learnt nothing else from this talk (which was good but not groundbreaking), it was a testament the power of a great title. The room was filled to capacity, surprising event organisers and the presenter.
Someone who wasn’t surprised in the slightest by the crowd was Kevin Plank, Founder and CEO of Under Armour. Under Armour hasn’t penetrated the Australian market to the same degree as the US, however it’s coming, and in a big way. With the investment of 500+ million in startup tech, employing over 350 app and web developers, and 160 million active app users, Under Armour has a rightful place at SXSW. Plank outlined the companies ‘connected fitness strategy’ and vision for winning would be underpinned not just by product but by data, referring to data as “the new oil”, but it is clearly a critical pillar in Under Armour’s strategy. With two billion workouts (not to mention monitoring sleep, food intake and general health and wellbeing) logged to the Under Armour connected fitness app in 2015 they have without doubt struck Texas Tea.
Plank relished the opportunity to tell his rag-to-riches story. I’ll give you the 10-second version. In 1996 he identified an untapped market in US apparel - that being the undergarment for athletes who wear padding and play sport in extreme cold or heat (US Football, Lacrosse, Ice Hockey) and started the company from his grandmother's basement. The company was on the brink of failure for the first five years. Fast forward 20 years and the company has had 23 consecutive quarters of 20% growth and is valued at $4 billion, forecasting to double size by 2018.
The sheer motivation and energy Plank brought to his appearance at SXSW had the crowd in raptures. Clearly the tech play for Under Armour is a key growth strategy and a way they hope to gain supremacy over their biggest rival, Nike. The drive to win is something American companies take very seriously, Plank is not in the game just to compete, he’s a winner take all kind of guy, this permeates the company culture, from motivation slogans posted on office walls, and marketing and advertising like in their latest TVC starring Under Armour athlete Michael Phelps for the lead up to this years Olympic Games
… Amazing spot.
After Plank was an all star panel with Director JJ Abrams director of Star Wars, the Force Awakens and Andrew Jarecki director and creator of HBO’s critically acclaimed documentary ‘The Jinx’. The pair talked about technology, social media and their ability to enhance storytelling but also ability to reduce the “human factor” which is incredibly important to storytelling. Abrams and Jarecki launched an App live on stage that they had co-created called KnowMe (available in the App Store), KnowMe is a mobile video storytelling platform. The audience was also treated to a sneak peak of JJ Abrams latest project ‘Westworld’, which looks as good as Game of Thrones.
It is a testament to SXSW’s star power to attract two of Hollywood’s hottest directors.
And just when I thought I was satisfactorily over stimulated, the final session of the day was presented by Wired Author, Kevin Kelly on the ‘Inevitable Tech Forces That Will Shape Our Future’… Do you want to know them? Stop reading now if you don’t…
Kelly predicts that in the next few years there will be artificial intelligence capable of completing professional human tasks, virtual reality and augmented reality will be ubiquitous replacing many human interactions and evolve all forms of current social media, and his final inevitable prediction is that 100% of all of our online and offline interaction will be Tracked 100% of the time. The compromise for constant monitoring, says Kelly, lies in transparency and a value exchange.
Missed Kidney's reports on SXSW?
Check out day one here, day two here and day three here.