By Brandon Curl, Copywriter

Would it really be Valentine’s Day without a love story?

This year, GSD&M is helping Southwest share its heart with the city of Atlanta with a campaign that features the new heart logo in TV, print and more.

Atlanta is a city that Southwest has had its eye on for a while. Now thanks to the completion of the AirTran merger, we’re ready to show Atlanta what Southwest is all about.

In a word—heart.

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GSD&M completed a second consecutive Super Bowl spot appearance on Sunday, featuring Avocados from Mexico. The spot spoofed the “First Draft Ever” and together with complementary social engagement was well received by viewers and media alike…and a collective sigh of relief has fallen across the building. However, inquiring minds still want to know: How do you actually get through game day? Enter the digital command center/war room: the true culminating end of the road of modern event social marketing. I wasn’t there myself, but from these numbers, we can get the drift:

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Helping execute a Super Bowl ad campaign is, of course, on the bucket list of many advertising professionals, and I count myself lucky to have touched the campaigns I have in my career. The reality, though, is that the Super Bowl bar continues to rise in terms of brands creating a multifaceted experience. No marketer has the luxury of stopping with a Super Bowl ad anymore. With the over four-million-dollar cost of entry, the responsibility is real to craft innovative consumer engagement opportunities (e.g., contest, call to action) to complement the game day spot investment. Clever, headline-grabbing, real-time content and organic social participation featuring lots of positive buzz about the ad are also musts.

What’s a social strategist to do?

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A topic that continues to intrigue me in this dawn of the Internet of Things/Everything is how much even basic Internet access can still be easily taken for granted. I suspect this is because I grew up in a rural area where cable TV and even city water access were huge deals when they finally arrived. Though memory isn’t the most reliable mistress, I think I was actually nearing high school by the time the county water plant connected to our home, finally making my family bona fide utility-paying citizens. As a child, I picked up on an unspoken message that we were different to not have great TV connections or city water running to our homes. We were… country and thus effectively banned from resources considered completely mundane givens by our city-living peers.

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If you’ve been to CES you know before you have a chance to unpack or fully process the overwhelming number of innovations, ideas and connections you’ve just made, the first question that everyone asks is “What was the coolest thing you saw at CES?” or “what was the one thing that really blew your mind?” So, let’s just cut to the chase right here and now and ask the GSD&M squad who spent the week in Vegas what was the one thing that they remember most. It can be a specific innovation from the show floor or a key takeaway or idea that inspired them.

Aaaaand, GO!

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Another day of pounding the pavement at CES 2015 has uncovered more exciting innovations that are on the horizon and huge potential to trigger fundamental shifts in consumer behavior in a variety of categories. As marketers, it’s important for us to keep our pulse on how these shifts in behavior open up exciting ways to engage and provide value for consumers.

We heard a great description of CES from a CNET tour guide that sums up the show so far. “CES 2015 is the intersection of the Internet of Things and Big Data”. So the opportunity for us is to ask ourselves how we make all of this data actionable. As Shelly Palmer stated in an innovation breakfast event yesterday, how will not only consumers’ behavior change, but our behavior change (as marketers) based on the data sets being created by what you see on the CES showroom floor?  It’s a paradigm shift in the way we think about technology and how it serves our needs as marketers.

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The CES 2015 showroom officially opened today with, what resembled, Black Friday Door Busters as the velvet rope dropped to release throngs of eager tech enthusiasts onto the floor. The first day is always filled with anticipation to see tomorrow’s technology in action.

The GSD&M team is on the ground at CES tweeting and posting in real-time, but we wanted to take a moment to ask some of our team for three words to describe CES on Day One.

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Well, the holidays are over and as everyone prepares to get back to the normal work routine, GSD&M is heading to Vegas! The Consumer Electronics Show, aka gadget mania in the city that never sleeps, may not be the ideal transition from two weeks of Netflix marathons and lazy afternoon naps, but I can’t think of a better way to kick off the year and get energized for an exciting year of technology innovation.

I feel privileged to be a part of a group of attendees from GSD&M, whose leadership recognizes the importance of this annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas to build on our expertise on the convergence of creativity and technology. As a consumer-centered business, it’s more important than ever that we understand and celebrate what’s “next” in short and long-term innovations and the Internet of Things that are increasingly taking center stage in consumers’ daily lives.

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By Ben Harman, Associate Design Director

Earlier this morning, GSD&M celebrated Austin’s 175^th birthday by unveiling a new logo for the city.

When faced with the daunting task of consolidating all of Austin into a logo, you begin by asking yourself some questions:

When you celebrate 175 years of Austin, what are you celebrating?

What represents Austin?

Is it a place, like Barton Springs? Or an event, like a music festival? 

Is it an attitude, like keeping weird? Maybe a bat? Bats are weird. 

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I came across a very interesting story this morning as I was snooping around for what might be the big CES 2015 consumer product discussions. Apparently, just when I thought it was it was enough to be fitbit-ing my wrist, Nest-ing my house and contemplating how soon my car could drive itself solo for a donut and milk run, I discovered that the world of fashion has declared its own Jestsons-esque entry into the Internet of Things (IoT) arena.

Imagine smart clothes that scan your body’s vital statistics like Cityzen Science’s D-Shirt. Imagine the potential of designer Lauren Bowker’s current project to create clothes that can change color by reading your actual brain waves and determining your mood. This technology alone could alert you to reschedule meetings with coworkers who show up in a seeming black shroud of angriness. My personal favorite is LikeAGlove.

Image: Like a Glove

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