Ben and Bob’s SXSW Video Diary: Day 4

March 18 2016, 9:51 am | BY Ricki Green | 1 Comment

Screen Shot 2016-03-18 at 6.45.32 am.jpgClemenger BBDO Melbourne is at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Thirty thousand of the world’s early adopters and decision makers will gather to decide what new technology becomes part of our culture – and what doesn’t.

This year, Interactive Creative Director Ben Keenan (left) and new head of CRM, Gayle While, will be joined by Sydney’s Head of Creative Technology Brendan ‘Bob’ Forster (right) and colleagues from Colenso BBDO in Auckland for the five day festival.

It’s Day 4 at SXSW Interactive and the Clemenger BBDO Team spent the day at the SXSW Trade Show. It’s a showcase of brands, companies, initiatives, ideas and products that aren’t even on the market yet. You can hear about it via our Wrap: Day 4.

VIEW THE DAY 4 WRAP VIDEO

Ben went to a session with the founder and CEO of Under Armour, Kevin Plank. It turns out Under Armour has the worlds largest digital health and fitness community, with over 160 million people connected on their app. Under Armour is now only second to Nike in the US market. Who knew?

Screen Shot 2016-03-18 at 6.46.17 am.jpgWe got to have a look into the weirdly wonderful Japanese section of the tradeshow. One thing that really stood out for him was Panasonic’s new Bluetooth connectivity button that doesn’t need batteries – the action of the click can store energy itself. You can roll over in the morning, press the button next to your pillow and turn on the lights, put the radio on and start your coffee maker all with one click.

Screen Shot 2016-03-18 at 6.46.54 am.jpgBob came across an interesting app called Scoper. It feels like ‘Periscope on demand’ and has a very practical application at SXSW. Given some of the events have involved queuing for a couple of hours, Scoper can help you connect with someone on the spot to show you how long the line for an event is. Then you can make that all-important decision about whether you should stay in the pub or join the line. Not that we’d ever use it for those purposes, of course…

The biggest trending topic of the week has been Virtual Reality. Headsets are sold in the American equivalent of JB HiFi and the technology is only going to become more common and integrated into our lives.

Remember to check out the shorter videos at out Clemenger BBDO SXSW YouTube channel.