10 Trends from SXSW

THE COLLECTIVE / HAVAS MEDIA +
CAKE / HAVAS WORLDWIDE
SXSW 10 TRENDS IN 2015
There was a time when SXSW set the agenda, but now it seems to reﬂect it.
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Once a focal point of the digital design industry, the event has grown in size and ambition
to become a forum for a wide variety of contemporary issues, seemingly random in nature
and curated around no clear principles.
!
Havas has summarized some of the common key themes on display at SXSW, which were
reﬂected more generally as societal trends.
INTRODUCTION

1 SXSW 10 TRENDS IN 2015
THE ME’CONOMY

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Have we reached peak narcissism?
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Let’s be honest. The rise of the visual web from
Instagram to Vine and the obsession with up votes and
shares has led to people not just living life, but
broadcasting it.
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No longer is it enough to do something; now unless we
snapped it, uploaded it, shared it and commented on it,
it’s like it never happened. I tweet, therefore I am.
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From gif-taking photo booths, to portraits in
cappuccinos, to endless selﬁe sticks and step & repeats,
SXSW was a festival for all things me. Now our curated
social feeds reﬂect our personal brands more than our
handbags ever could.
!
The star of the show, of course being Meerkat, our
chance to broadcast live to the world what we’re doing,
regardless of whether anyone cares.
Meerkat, a breakthrough app at SXSW that promotes personal life broadcasting.
1 THE
ME’CONOMY

ADVENTURE CAPITALISM

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2ADVENTURE
CAPITALISM
This year, SXSW doubled the size of its startup village— and
to be fair it wasn’t small before.
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We’re in a golden age for entrepreneurs; the ample funding
from VC’s, endless and encouraging coverage of unicorn
startups, funding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, a
whole ecosystem of support from incubators to
accelerators, and most of all, the lowest company start up
costs the world has ever known.
!
In these heady, euphoric times, it seems launching a startup
is the new year out. Millennials are leaving formal education
to fail fast and learn from their mistakes.
!
Brands look to become increasingly involved. From
McDonald’s replication of Dragon’s Den, and MasterCard’s
Priceless Elevator Pitch - ample money and support were on
display.
Mastercard gives $15,000 to startup winners after successful 60 second pitches.

HUMAN TECHNOLOGY

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Technology is enveloping us.
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For years we’ve had an uncomfortable relationship with
technology. We’ve tried to keep it away from us, but now we’re
pulling it closer.
!
Our screens from the late 19th century to today have evolved
from cinema, TV, desktop, laptop, mobile phones and now
wearables. We’re getting closer, to ever smaller screens that are
increasingly personal and intimate. We no longer own single
devices, and soon we’ll host our own personal ecosystems of
connecting devices.
!
Our relationship with technology is changing, from tech we wear
to more intimate data we share. From smartwatches to smart
shoes, from Google Now to Microsoft’s Cortana, technology is
engulﬁng us.
!
The next step will be technology that uses anticipatory
computing to make suggestions. Just imagine what this means
for marketers.
!
HUMAN
TECHNOLOGY
Wearables are taking over our bodies & aiding our decisions.
Welcome to an era of personal device systems.

YOUR MOBILE HOME

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4
Our phones have become our gateway to everything.
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Since 2003 it has been “the era of mobile,” but what took
longer to arrive than expected has transformed our lives
more than anyone predicted.
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Our phones are no longer just devices helping us to
consume media or shop, they have become our primary
interface with everything around us.
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From operating our smart homes and booking travel, to
paying for merchandise and monitoring our health activity,
a number of companies at SXSW have shown that our
phone can be our personal hub.
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We may soon live in a world of personal device
ecosystems, with ﬁtbits, VR headsets, Myo armbands and
smartwatches, but it seems our phones are destined to be
the access point for everything around our bodies, in the
world and on the internet.
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YOUR MOBILE
HOME
Our phones become the key to access everything around us, in the internet
& on our person.

DIGITAL REIMAGINATION

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Slowly it’s dawning on all companies that to be successful in
the long term, they must embrace digital at the foundation,
and stop making it a “thing.”
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It’s commonly believed that there are two types of companies;
those that ignore technology, who bury their head’s in the sand
and hope for the best, and those that welcome the new, who
have adapted to the modern age, and have a head for digital,
a great website and an app.
!
A third type is developing; a digital-ﬁrst company. These are
companies rebuilt for the modern age, that see digital at the
center of everything they do.
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With this mindset, fast food joints, such as McDonald’s, think
about how they can act as charging stations and places to
share digital images, gyms like Equinox transition from being
places to workout to health management companies, car
ownership turns into car access, Sonos transcends its origins
from being a speaker maker, to become a gateway to music
and more.
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DIGITAL
REIMAGINATION
Lyft & McDonalds at SXSW, two big brands thinking with digital at the heart.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

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When big data meets with hyper-connectivity and incredibly
powerful processing, we’re on the verge of something new
and amazing: artiﬁcial intelligence.
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From Chef Watson at IBM’s cognitive cooking machine, to
Bina48, Martine Rothblatt’s android-robot-wife, SXSW became
a microcosm of what a future AI-fueled world would look like.
We’ve been talking about robots taking over the world for
years but this year the threat seemed real enough for
protestors to march with painted signs and poorly worded
chants.
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
IBM’s Chef Watson, don’t blame the chef or he’ll electrocute you.

CREATING THE HUMAN MACHINE

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Technology can make us healthier… and I don’t mean Shake
Weights.
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From apps that track your sleep cycles to contact lenses that gauge
your glucose levels, human beings are getting more data from their
bodies than ever before.
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Traditionally, this robust, metrics-driven approach was reserved for
machines on an assembly line, but modern technology allows us to
gather information about ourselves down to the millisecond. And
the more granular these data points become, the more
sophisticated become the tools and processes we use
to optimize ourselves. We are effectively becoming human
machines.
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At this year's festival, “The Pursuit of Equinox”included classes of 40
people on spin bikes that each measured half a million data points,
which were then displayed on a screen and made available via a
mobile app. We also saw the growth of telehealth, communicating
with healthcare providers through text messages, emails or video
instead of seeing them in person, and the rise of predictive analytics,
which uses data like blood pressure and skin temperature to predict
health problems.
CREATING THE
HUMAN MACHINE
The “Pursuit of Equinox,” where ﬁtness meets digital health

DEMOCRATIZATION OF CREATIVITY

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Thanks to better and more widely available tools, anyone can
now be part the creative class.
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For the ﬁrst time in history, the regulars can compete with
creative professionals in a variety of ways. The new iPhone 6 ad
campaign demonstrates how anyone with an idea can take
world class pictures. 3D printing now turns our dreams into
creations. From 3D scanners, to 3D pens, to pro-quality 4K
video cameras and a plethora of cheap apps, it seems anyone
can make anything.
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Distribution and funding are changing things too. YouTube can
launch careers and make celebrities of music or makeup artists,
while Kickstarter can propel any idea to business fame. We
once relied on a range of professionals to decide what we
could wear, buy, watch and listen to. Now we just use our own
judgement.
DEMOCRATIZATION
OF CREATIVITY
3D Printed Clothes, one of a variety of developing use cases on show at SXSW.

SIMPLICITY SEEKING

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What does mindfulness look like in the digital age?
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Many of the most successful talks at SXSW addressed humanity’s
reaction to new technology and how the constant demands of the
modern age are changing the way people behave.
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Some say the next generation should be called Generation Moth, as
they’ll endlessly stare at the light on their screens. However, SXSW
saw the development of apps and hardware to free us from our
screens.
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Wearables’ best hope of a use case is turning media into glance-
able screens, so people can live with less focus on the phone.
Software developments in the notiﬁcation layer, and smart invisible
apps like Dark Sky and Foursquare’s Swarm, run in the background.
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We have apps like Pocket Points reward students for not checking
their phones and in theory things around us are getting smarter to
alleviate the cognitive burden of thinking.
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It’s time for us to take back control of our attention spans.
SIMPLICITY
SEEKING
For every action there is a reaction, a drive to turn away from the fascination of digital screen.

10SXSW 10 TRENDS IN 2015
THE BIG FOUR

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10Four technologies could either change everything about the world
or disappear with little effect.
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Trends decks have been dominated by drones, virtual reality, 3D
printing and self-driving cars for some time. While progress is fast,
it’s still not possible to gauge what will come of it.
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Will 3D printers undermine and disrupt the entire construction
industry, global logistics systems and the very foundations of
manufacturing? Or will they just sit in home depot looking out of
place?
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Will drones change healthcare, emergency response, and delivery
systems to allow underdeveloped nations to leapfrog with
efﬁciency, or will they remain “man toys”?
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Will self-driving cars change everything about human settlement
and revolutionize transportation, or fail due to incredible
computing requirements?
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Will virtual reality create an alternative universe that parallels real
life and literally turn life on its head? Or is “real” reality good
enough?
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These are some of the most exciting questions in the world right
now.
THE
BIG FOUR
SXSW, another showcase of four technologies that could change everything or nothing.

Questions or Comments? Reach out to Greg James at greg.james@havasmedia.com

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10 Trends from SXSW

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