postcard from Austin

When the first SXSW took place in 1987, 150 attendees were expected, but more than 700 showed up. It feels like the same jump this year, only the shark is much bigger. Last year, 18,000 attended South by Southwest Interactive ("South by", to badge holders) and this year estimates are closer to 20,000. There are lines for everything--sometimes even lines to stand in line. (Except for women's restrooms, which is a nice change of pace.) Badge pickup for arrivals was, at one point, two hours. There are over 5000 sessions and panels to choose from, but rooms get closed out. Especially sessions about branding and marketing.

Running late to a session, I stopped by an Info Booth. "Where's Ballroom D?" I asked a friendly looking guy. He pointed to a map. I can't read maps. But I knew enough to know he had made a mistake. The box he was pointing to wasn't marked D. It was called The Ogilvy Day Stage. "They changed the name," he said. Which gives you an idea of the ad agency presence here. What used to be known as Spring Fest for Geeks is now Cannes-west for Advertisers. Some gripe about this. But there are advantages. Like that Ogilvy does cool wall-size visual notes of some sessions and makes them available each day at its Day Stage (next to the elusive Ballroom D.) You can see them in the virtual world, here.

Crowded or not, SXSW is a blast. Whatever you're interested in, someone more interesting than you will talk about it onstage or at a party. So far, I've attended sessions on social TV, transmedia, publishing, cool hunting and how women present themselves online. (Natch, missed The Crash Course in Becoming Superbetter.) I don't begrudge the attendance, nor the monsoon-hard rains. Austin needs them both. According to Wikipedia, SXSW is the highest revenue-producing event for the city's economy, bringing in $167 million last year. Excuse me while I make a civic-duty run to Allens.

when you care enough to send the merry best

It's snowing like crazy outside my window (Dutchess county) which reminds me of UK Ogilvy's brilliant holiday greeting. It isn't a card, it's an iphone app that lets you seasonalize any photo with falling snow.

Jealous of Adrants who just received picture-perfect greetings from 1963. Production is Mad Men-meticulous, down to sunburst clock and wood paneling. Not to mention aluminum trees, a nice, shiny touch from Cultivator Advertising.


And from the folks who brought you last year's viral "An Advertising Parable for the Holidays" comes the jolly "It Came Upon a Movie Clip", a retelling of the classic carol using scenes from 41 TCM picks. Even more mesmerizing is "the making of" version which airs longer cuts. Oh, those talented elves at WorldWideWadio. Enjoy.

now, a detergent for digital dirt

"Retracting something from the internet is like trying to remove pee from a pool," Ogilvy's Rohit Bhargava quipped recently.

Well, now there's an app for that. Wisk It helps you search Facebook for regrettable photos and remove them by sending a request to the person who posted them. Even more intriguing to me than the app itself is the fact that it's created by... a laundry detergent. What could be better advertising for Wisk than giving users a way to get rid of "tough stains like Spring Break photos." Kudos to TracyLocke Advertising. And to brand managers in Wilton, Ct. who've come a long, admirable way since Ring Around the Collar.

social media turns anti-social for Advertising Week

Last week while New York resounded with fervent proclamations from ad agencies saying they are "going digital" (Grey's president: We're bringing in kids with mohawks and tattoos!) more than 200 social media practitioners gathered on the opposite coast for Adweek’s Social Media Strategies Conference in San Francisco. Michael Bissell and I were honored to be among presenters from Razorfish, Mattel, Facebook, Gap, Ogilvy, DDB and others on the forefront of new media. Keynoter MC Hammer (who tweets to show he's "not just parachute pants") proved surprisingly articulate and insightful on the subject.

Give me anyone in this audience and $15 million and I promise you I can make 'em hot. That's easy. But social media is disrupting this model--creating brands + buzz with little investment...Social media is to Hollywood what Napster was to music.

Other retweets throughout the day:

Trying to retract something from the internet is like attempting to remove pee from a pool. (Rohit Bhargava, Ogilvy)

The first social media manual was written in the 30s. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. (Brian Morrissey, Adweek)

You can't optimize traffic until you optimize content! (Paul Beck, Ogilvy)

Dunkin Dave from Dunkin Donuts is an actual person. Who knew? (MC Hammer)

Barbie's Ken is going to be 50 in 2011! [say it ain't so!] Cynthia Neiman, Mattel

If Facebook was a country, it would be the fourth largest in the world: 1. China, 2. India, 3. US, 4. Facebook. (Ian Schafer, Deep Focus)

from Ian Schafer's keynote presentation. Which can be seen in its excellent entirety here.

blast from the past (don't forget your luggage)

My husband brought in the paper this morning and I had a disorienting moment when I saw the front page laid out on the table. All the news fit to print on 7/21/69. First 3 pages were reprinted and inserted into subscriber copies, courtesy of Louis Vuitton.

What most interested me weren't the headlines which have been screaming from newstands for weeks. It was what was set in small type: the price of the paper (ten cents),  the poem on the front page ("Voyage to the Moon" by Archibald MacLeish) (Can you imagine a poem printed on the front page today?) and the description of the moon from Buzz Aldrin, who took that giant step right after Armstrong: "Magnificent desolation." 

I appreciated that interruptive ad content was kept to a minimum, limited mostly to a portrait of former spaceriders by Annie Liebowitz, with a link to a rather engaging website in which the legends are interviewed and conversation is encouraged. Smart marketing, Ogilvy.

And if the creative team over there is looking to extend, the journeys of Hemingway might be a good fit. It's just come out that he found his famous lost notebooks in a stored trunk he'd forgotten about, a trunk that Louis Vuitton custom made for him in the 1920s.