Grant Hunter’s final day at SXSW in Austin: music, fashion and why 5 year old whizz kids

March 16 2012, 9:26 am | BY Lynchy | 3 Comments

Screen shot 2012-03-10 at 8.03.52 PM.jpgGrant Hunter, regional creative director APAC of Iris Worldwide – who divides his time between Singapore and the rest of iris’ offices across the APAC region – is at SXSW in Austin, Texas this weekend, and reports exclusively for Campaign Brief.

You can clearly see the energy changing in Austin as the geek crowd start to move out and the musos move in. 6th street is gearing up for the music festival to hit hard. With that in mind I decided to hear about the future of music from Spotify.

Screen shot 2012-03-16 at 11.15.20 AM.jpgKen Parks, Spotify’s Chief Content Officer spoke with Billboard’s Editor Bill Werde. Currently the service has 3 million paid subscribers and 10 million active users.

Parks announced that Spotify launched today in Germany (the globe’s 3rd biggest music market). Parks expanded on the types of people who use the service. The user base could becalled  ‘dedicated pirates’. Spotify gives millions of people who don’t want to pirate any more an alternative.

 

What makes Spotify different? Parks acknowledged that they stand on the shoulders of other services that came before – Pandora, Rhapsody. But it’s the Spotify combination of all the music you can access with the deep social connection and the free funnel that resonates with people. It gives music lovers the opportunity to migrate away from privacy. Spotify has benefited from Facebook’s open graph; music can now be shared across the 800 million people hanging out on Facebook. He stressed that they are cannibalising privacy and he gave out an astounding fact that there’s more money gambled in Mauca than is generated by the recording industry each year. The industry needs a new model and a Spotify’s subscription philosophy allows users to try it free and then dive in to explore limitless music.

 

david draiman1.jpgDavid Draiman (pictured),lead singer of Disturbed, then joined the conversation. He’s been very vocal about internet platforms and he’s a Spotify fan.

He proposed that the quality of music has decreased over the last decade and that’s due to the record industry’s assembly line approach.

It’s all about hitting quotas. Artists are driven to produce. Record labels are only concerned with how good does their bottom line look. He said if things continue the way they are then we’ll see the death of the album.

In our sound bite culture it’s all about single tracks. Single tracks are cheaper for the label to produce. Parks then offered up that Spotify is starting to see people revisit albums so that they are listing to the flow of the story as the artist intended.  And that’s because once their subscription is paid they are free to explore and listen to what ever they like.

Facebook integration seems to be the big thing driving the change for both the fan and the artists. David maintain that’s it’s great when an established artists shares a playlist of the stuff they listen to on the social network. This he believes is a massive untapped marketing tool for new up and coming bands.

 

The way music is consumed has been revolutionised by services like Spotify.

Fashion on the other hand (and particularly High Fashion) hasn’t really embraced the changing digital landscape. And this is largely down to High Fashion’s need to remain aloof hence the title of the next talk I attended “Why Karl keeps his shades on”. It was hosted by Roisin from our London office. She took us through the changing dynamic witjin the fashion world and showed that times are changing.

anna.jpgShe started with who is more powerful the established print journalists or the new young bloggers on the block. She titled it the Battle of the Bobs. On the left – Anna Wintour, (pictured left), Vogue Chief with a 1,264,034 circulation.  The iron bob.

On the right – Tavi, (pictured below, when she was younger), a 16 year old who has been blogging for 4 years since she was 12. She gets 96,380 hits a day on her blog has 50,534 followers on Twitter, has been featured in pop mags and ad campaigns for uniqlo. Tavi now gets tavi1.jpginvited to the front row ofshows and infamously wore a ‘big’ hat to a show, much to the annoyance of the old school hacks sat behind her. The Internet really had clawed itself into the front row of fashion’s elite

 

Roisin then went on to share examples of Fashion using social media and the digital space well.

Jeffrey Campbell outrageous shoes became a meme and Uniqlo’s Lucky line gamified shopping as you create your avatar to stand in their virtual line.  Ted Baker’s Rutting Season saw in-store photo booths encourage shoppers to wear the new season’scollection, don a mask and get snapped. The images were then shared online and became part of the look book. Sales went up 10% and they attached 12,300 new followers.

 

But the biggest and best fashion brand adopting digital is Burberry. The art of the trench saw Burberry gather Sartorialist pictures of people wearing theiconic item. The site  it became its own photo sharing network with 7.5 million views and 10% in through sales. Burberry can be called the first truly digital luxury brand.  

 

Across the social space there are apps/platforms spring up to help people share orsell their stuff. From renting out your home, garage or car when you’re not using them to communities that sell clothes that you no longer want. Roisinshared Covetique a site that buys and sells pre-owned designer fashion. It taps into that desire that most girl’s have to raid their stylish friend’s wardrobe.

 

She then finished with a hi fashion brand not taking itself too seriously. Lanvin in 2011 created a viral video featuring their models styled to the rafters but having fun and making fools of themselves. It opened up fashion as you’re seeing the story behind the print. It racked up the views and feels different for this type of brand

 

My final session of the festival was Google and R/GA’s “Why a 5 year old is more digital than you CMO. The two guys are both fathers and actually meet through their kids rather than through work. John Militello is a creative at Google and Sean Miller a planner at R/GA. They showed that great YouTube video of a 2 year old kid using an iPad and then trying to use the same touch gestures on a printed magazine. The pace of technological change means that even a couple of years difference between kids means their experience of different types of technology is vastly different. I know that when I went back to the UK at Xmas I wa
s using my old UK phone and I got incredibly frustrated with having to use the numerical keyboard to SMS. Even with the predictive text on it felt primitive. For their session they had interviewed various parents and kids at both Google and R/GA to delve into the relationship of kids with technology. They foundthat it was a polarizing topic right up there with sex, politics and religion. They were keen to stress that they were just reporting back and not making a judgment either way.

 

The speed of change was one of the major changes that parents acknowledged and when you look at it in context new services are popping up all the time and the speed of their growth is exponential. It only took 88 days for Google+ to reach 30 million users. From a Rewired understanding the way generations learn study. Kids between 2-5 have better computer skills than early life skills. That’s testimony to the advancement in user interface design in the last few years. We always talk about intuitive interfaces so it’s no surprise that a kid can grasp hold of an iPad and make it work.

 

The guys made the following observations and recommendations to a CMO

 

1. Kids are collaborative. They solve problems together. So use the power of the group

 

2. Kids are fearless. Everything is new and that’s exciting to them – so dive in

 

3. Kids are tinkerers. So stop thinking and start making

 

4. Kids are unfiltered – they have no preconceived notions. So be a beginner, again.

 

 

SXSW is an assault on the senses. It’s hotpot of cultural ideas. There’s definitely some truth in the criticism that it has gone too big. At times you look at the schedule and there are multiple talks you’d like to attend but simply can’t. There are panels you go to that really do lack content. But that’s part of its charm – you never know what you’re going to find. If you take in a film or two and catch a few bands it’s an experience you can’t beat. It’s so much more interesting than the ego fest that’s known as the Cannes Lions festival. By the end of the 5 days my brain is fried it’s now time for the 30 hour journey back home to Singapore. Goodbye Austin – stay weird but please have fewer but better panels and ship in more cabs.