As stated in my first session of the day on How to Personalize Without Being Creepy. Basically, as marketers, we need to enter into our relationship with consumers slowly and conservatively. Personalization is important – it makes content more relevant and appealing to the consumers – but you can’t just jump right in.  First, we Read More...

One of the more interesting research projects I’ve encountered at SXSWi hasn’t been in a panel or featured speaker series or even a hallway discussion, I experienced it in the line at Starbucks. While waiting in the always long line at Starbucks across from the Convention Center, I was asked to fill out a 17 question Read More...

Ahh… Sunday morning at SXSW.  It was time to roll out of bed, kick back in a big overstuffed chair with a steaming cuppa French Roast and The New York Times, right?  Um, nope, not so much.  Despite last night’s completely aggregious time change, today’s crowd seemed enthused and ready to rumble early. For me, Read More...

This panel, led by Scott Belsky of behance.net and the99percent.com, was one of my favorites so far. While, I took a ton of inspiration away from it, there was one little tweetnugget I tweeted into the tweether that was retweeted more than most of the grammarless blatherings I usually share on twitter: Seek to reach Read More...

One thing I’m picking up on as I make my way through the scheduled panels is the recurring throughts throughout. No matter what the topic seems to be, themes keep popping up. For instance, I’ve heard “eat your own dog food” not once, but TWICE. I’m obviously talking about the more relevant themes as well, Read More...

If you’ve ever gone to a community site just to check it out or perused the comments on your favorite blog, well, I hate to break it to you, but you’re a big creepy lurker. What I learned in Lurkers: Your Most Important Community Members was that if lurkers make up 80% or even 90% Read More...

I’ve never thought of fear and risk as something that I should rely on during my creative process.  However, today at the Fear and the Art of Creation panel I learned that without them, the process is actually not creative at all. The beginning of every truly creative endeavor starts with a question and a Read More...

A random guy in the crowd at today’s #4chan #hatersgonnahate panel had an interesting quote: When it comes to online advertising, advertisers are the echo, not the boom. In the context of #4chan, it spoke to the authenticity and originality of the site’s content and the real-time nature that the content is either heralded or Read More...

That’s right.   In an age where you can track calories, heart rate, pace, and even choose the voice of the person who will cheer you on in your iPod as your “power song” plays, most consumers still fall back on good old fashioned Excel to track their fitness.  This was a pretty surprising point that Read More...

In a time where prototypes are rendering business plans useless and start-ups are hammering goliaths, I can’t help but wonder how many more of the brands I know and love will become obsolete, and why. Needless to say, I have been looking forward to this session since setting up my SxSW schedule months ago…and here Read More...