A Most Eye-Opening SXSW Talk. Hmm...

It was a bit of a scramble this morning. So many people are at SXSW this year that they had to move some of the seminars last minute. Ours moved from the fancy Intercontinental to a Presbeterian Church down the road. Weird. But hey, that's Austin. Anyway, it was an R/GA talk of absolute awesomeness aptly named: "I May LIKE You, But I'm Not In LIKE With You." It was delivered to us by Chloe Gottlieb, a nice Jewish girl from NYC who happens to be in charge of R/GA's  Digital Design Department. She really put things into perspective from a digital standpoint using some amazing case studies (see below) that she worked on, strategised, designed, seeded and monitored, even up to today. Her view was that campaigns don't end. They evolve and the best ones actually add value to people's lives be it Nike for athletes or fund-raising for charities... and we, as creatives, must help them do so. Not pass the buck onto others. She challenged the way typical agencies attempt digital and especially the clients who only care about "Likes" and nothing more. She talked about the many different audiences one brand can have and why it's fucking stupid to try and say the same thing to each of them, or worse, to expect the same level of engagement from each of them. Most importantly, she spoke about how to manage expectations, which if you're in advertising, is always the flippen problem, right? Anyway, I could go on and on here. It was a great talk. For now, have a look at one of the campaigns she showed us. I've tried to find more online (there were a few Nike ones and a great MasterCard one) but no luck so far. In the meantime note how this one engaged with people not only in a different way, but in the right way, getting the right people to view or share or collaborate or even take part.