5 BIG Themes from SXSW 2012

Julie Martell, Luke Perez, Hachem Hosenbux, Chris Nelson, Kyle Kowalski and Jim Dayton

May 10, 2012

In early March of this year, six Intouch employees joined the 24,566 other attendees of South By Southwest Interactive in Austin.  Despite torrential rains, delayed shuttles, and lines that snaked through the entire Austin Convention Center, we crammed as much information into our brains as was humanly possible. After we caught up on our sleep and the work that was waiting when we returned, the information download began.  In the past, attendees have come away from SXSW with one overarching theme that seemed to define the entire conference; 2007 was the year that Twitter and Microblogging were the buzz and 2010 was all about location based services. We were grateful to our leadership for sending several of us to cover the conference because SXSW has now grown to such a scale that the variety and number of different sessions spread across the Austin Metropolitan area yielded not one, but five major themes specifically of interest to digital marketing, especially digital pharmaceutical marketing:

1. Big Data
From the sheer amount of data we now collect on our customers to topics on privacy and ownership, Big Data was a big topic.

2. Neuromarketing
Many people are finding new ways to use all of that big data to speak customers' individual needs.

3. Trust and Privacy
How do we establish trust among our consumers so that they will share their information with us and have the confidence that we will keep their best interest at heart?

4. User Experience is Your Brand
Bad User Experience = Bad Brand Image

5. Thoughtful Innovation
Innovation is crucial, but not at the expense of the brand’s core vision

We’ve put together the following slide show to share a bit more about our thoughts on these themes and how they are relevant to digital marketing.