Dan Lacaze: A Suit in SXSW – day three
Dan Lacaze, a Group Account Director at BMF Sydney, is attending SXSW in Austin, Texas and is writing a daily diary exclusively for Campaign Brief.
Day 3: New frontiers
Battery life is the holy grail.
If I were working for any of the hardware giants, I would be pouring all my innovation budget into increasing battery life.
Wherever there is a powerpoint, there is a SXSWer plugged in, and people are perpetually wired to their devices.
Perhaps the answer is not longer battery life, but a move back to interchangeable battery packs that can be swapped at vending machines or 7-11’s?
This insatiable desire for data and content was discussed in a session I attended titled Content Marketing vs Don Draper: the end of ads? There was a heavy hitting panel of senior global execs from GE, L’Oreal and Dell, and I was pleasantly surprised to see they were all women. Much of the debate was around ‘native’ advertising and the rise of branded content.
So what’s an ad these days?
The panel defined an ad as ‘great compelling content that’s worth sharing’.
GE have it right. Being founded by an inventor (Thomas Edison) they place innovation at the core of their business. They have created ‘Disruption Labs’ that drive their marketing communications. One output of these Labs is the GE Moon Boot sneakers, created to commemorate the company’s role in providing materials for the astronauts on Apollo 11. The limited edition sneakers were launched on Snapchat, and sold for $196.90, a reference to 1969, the year of the mission.
The GE Global Director of Brand was embarrassed to admit they had a marketing department and a separate digital department only a few years ago.
GE want to “be around” Science and Technology, and they understand they can’t be the centre of the conversation anymore. They have been working with BBDO for decades but now have over ten agencies they partner with. They described the modern Agency village model as different and chaotic, but more fun and full of enormous potential.
I’m not sure how Don would handle life in an Agency village. At least he didn’t have to worry about battery life.