Tag: SXSW

Four Major Brand Activations To Look Forward To At SXSW 2015

Posted on by Lab Team

It’s SXSW Interactive time again, and the Lab will be in Austin covering the latest developments. The buzz is already beginning, though, with major companies looking to make an impact at an event typically associated with startups:

  1. McDonald’s Hopes To Win Millennials Back
    McDonald’s will be hosting a charging area, dubbed the “Fry-Fi Station”, as well as food truck, street performances, live music, and a lounge equipped with WiFi and TVs streaming coverage of the panels. The fast food company will also be hosting three pitch sessions to showcase the company’s commitment to digital innovation. However, McDonald’s has already attracted negative press by initially opting to not pay bands to perform.
  2. Twitter Plans to Boost Brand Presence
    Twitter has kept a pretty low profile at SXSW for the past few years, with a small pop up-space showcasing ad content and networking with potential partners. Glen Brown, head of content and partnerships, would not reveal any specifics about what the messaging service has up its sleeve for this year, but he did reveal plans to increase brand presence and share a new native video strategy.
  3. New Transportation Options With LyftLine and “Magic Mode”
    In addition to allowing multiple riders to share a car with LyftLine, the company is also unveiling a SXSW-dedicated promotion called “Magic Mode” that will allow attendees to request stylish rides including a 1963 Bentley, 1960’s era mini cooper, a Tesla Model S, and a Range Rover.
  4. PayPal Supports Start Ups
    PayPal is launching a new contest this year that will let startups pitch to shark tank’s Daymond John. The winner will receive one-on-one consultations and $30,000.

 

NYT Now Competes With Yahoo & Others

Posted on by Lab Team

At SXSW, The New York Times announced a new app called NYT Now that looks set to compete with short-form, curated news apps like Yahoo’s Digest, Flipboard, and others. It’s an app that will, much like Yahoo, have a dedicated staff responsible for picking stories and editing them down for mobile consumption. The Times suggests that the stories will be more visual than their web content, featuring short paragraphs and bullet points to get the the meat of the story in fewer words. As well, the app will have an “Our Picks” tab that highlights other, editor-chosen content from around the web. There is also a Pocket-like “Save for Later” section that’s fairly self explanatory. The ultimate goal of the app is to get to a younger, mobile crowd that might not otherwise consider NYT as a news source. That said, the app is subscription based, with all this content available for $8/month, which includes access to full versions of stories featured on the app. Whether the price is too steep remains to be seen, but what’s clear is that publishers are responding to consumer demand for elegant mobile solutions to getting news – and, at its core, content – on the go. 

The 6 SXSW Startups Brands And Marketers Need To Know (And 1 Awesome Game Of Thrones Pic)

Posted on by Lab Team

I often compare my job at the IPG Media Lab to an A&R man scouting bands for a record company.  The classic old-school A&R pitch is “I’m gonna make you a star kid,” but for me the pitch goes something like “I love your startup and I want to put you in front of Chrysler.” Or maybe it’s Tesco, Hyundai, or MillerCoors.

Just as hundreds of bands descend on SXSW in hopes of cutting through the noise, hundreds of startups now do the same for SXSW Interactive.  Sure we saw plenty of technologies we could live without, but there were also a number of great companies pitching in the Accelerator competition or hidden in the corners of the expo hall.  Here are six of our favorites from this year that we think brands and marketers need to know about.

1. PAR Works. 

An augmented reality company that offers precision at the millimeter level, PAR Works has a self-service platform that allows you to tag any object, product, or building by uploading photos from different angles to create a 3D model.  Users can then take a photo of that object to trigger an augmented reality overlay that can include video assets, additional information, links and more.  For marketers this means consumers can take photos of a building to get a discount offer inside or take a photo of any product in store to learn more about it or get a special deal.

Why we like it: AR technology often does not live up to its promise, but PAR Works precision separates them from the pack. Enabling theoverlays through a photo is also compelling given the rise of image sharing.

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2. Jifiti.

 An app that lets you scan and buy a gift in store and instantly send a notification to a giftee’s phone to redeem in any of the store’s locations.  Users can also create a list of items they want, which friends can access and purchase regardless of whether they’re in-store.  Jifiti’s ecosystem already includes retailers like Old Navy, Crate & Barrel, Barnes & Noble, Sephora, William Sonoma, and Brookstone.

Why we like it: Jifiti provides the thoughtfulness of a physical gift with the flexibility of a gift card as recipients can redeem another item of equal or lesser value.  With mobile shopping on the rise, Jifiti’s stock will likely increase in the coming years.

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3. AuManil.

 In Inuit Mythology “Aumanil” (pronounced au-MAHN-EL) is the god that controls the movement of whales, and fittingly AuManil bills itself as “Whale Management for Online Games.”  The startup helps you analyze and manage high spending gamers within your games, and also provides risk assessment to help re-engage players that may be on their way out the door.  While the company is getting its start with gaming, look for it to conquer whales in other seas in the near future.

Why we like it: 1% of consumers are often responsible for over 50% of a company’s revenue. AuManil not only identifies these high value customers, they give you action steps to engage them.

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4. Cord.

 Cord provides the music technology for Marvel’s Project Gamma, which was unveiled as SXSW as a new interactive way of experiencing music for comic books on tablets.  By layering musical stems that are triggered by the pace of readers as they scroll through the comic, Cord synchronizes sound with action in a novel way.  While Cord already handles sonic branding for a variety of large brands, this new technology has great implications for what’s possible with sound in tablet advertising.

Why we like it: Cord has figured out a way to make audio interactive in a complementary way that does not distract from the digital experience. Anyone interested in digital storytelling should take note.

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5. SnapTrends 

SnapTrends lets you monitor social media discussions by micro geo-location across a variety of channels.  For example you can view the social media buzz across multiple channels at a specific building or sports arena, and measure volume, mood, and sentiment.  The Austin startup was born as a way for local government to monitor social media discussion in areas devastated by brushfires as power outages rendered social media the only way of communicating with people in harms way.

Why we like it: A very small percentage of social media is actually geo-tagged, but SnapTrends technology uses natural language processing to discern location whether or not location-services are enabled.

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6. Higi

 Higi makes quantified self in-store hardware as well acompanion app that measures basic health and wellness (a person’s “Higi Score” contains components like Body Mass Index, blood pressure, pulse, diet, and sleep). The company caters to what it calls the “Pre Quantified-Self” audience, and already has hardware units in CVS and Kmart in the Midwest.  Surprisingly, Higi named hip-hop star Lupe Fiasco as its Creative Director, a clear indication that it’s angling for mainstream adoption.

Why we like it: But most exciting, it’s partnering with a variety of QS players and may eventually create a unified ecosystem that pulls data from a variety of existing QS devices. We’d love to see the day that Nike Fuelband and Fitbit users compete with each other.

Gesture Everything: Leap Motion Controller

Posted on by Lab Team

Kinect was fun for gamers, and enticing to marketers for out of home installations. Now it’s time for “the Kinect on steroids,” known as the Leap Motion Controller.  The controller is set to launch at retail on May 13th, but lucky individuals are getting to see it in action at SXSW this week with a host of compatible software by a range of developers.  The early enthusiasm over the device is, at least partially, owed to its ability to detect changes in motion as small as 1mm, but this sharp precision is of concern as it can cause readings to be less smooth than desired.  The technology is still in its infancy, and improvements are on the way via software developers, but as it stands, the Leap Motion Controller certainly offers something to look forward to as an out-of-home marketing must-have waiting to happen.

SXSW 2013: Swarmly Launches For Android

Posted on by Lab Team

As if it wasn’t easy enough to find tech savvy people in public by following their trails of tweets and cast-aside year-old Apply products, Swarmly now geolocates packs of them and delivers the information directly to iOS and Android phones.  After a quiet iOS launch last September, the Android version launched today on Android to increase its effectiveness and potential user base.  Swarmly doesn’t require check-ins. Instead, users enable the app to use their location data to contribute to “swarms” of people nearby, linked to specific locations where groups are likely to congregate.  The app is designed to work instantly, instead of relying on historical data patterns like many check-in based applications.  Swarmly could be a darling of SXSW 2013, and it will be interesting to see its guerrilla marketing implications.

SXSW 2013 Has No Early Darlings

Posted on by Lab Team

The rapid growth of South by Southwest’s Interactive portion is raising concerns over the event’s ability to effectively launch new tech startups.  28,000 attendees are expected at this year’s portion, a jump of 9,000 people from just two years ago.  The festival has formed a tradition over the last five years of providing promising startups with a large-scale launch platform, and the model worked for current mainstream hits Twitter and Foursquare.  With no early favorite emerging before the festival, concerns have been raised that the sheer scale of the festival may prevent any single entity from emerging as a fast favorite, taking away much of the saturation effect that launched favorites in previous years.  Of course, we’ll only know what emerges next week as SXSW runs its course for 2013.

Missed any SXSWi coverage? See what we talked about

Posted on by Lab Team

As the Interactive portion of SXSW comes to a close, here’s a recap of all the great things our team spotted and wrote about over the past few days.

“Immersive Labs Spotted as SXSW”

Immersive Labs is a technology vendor with whom we have a great relationship.  They work in digital out of home media, integrating the ability to analyze the audience of a video screen and serve up relevant content.

“Wellness and Technology with Aetna CEO”

Ina Fried of All Things Digital and Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, discuss wellness and technology, highlighting technology’s ability to enable preventative care and the benefit these technologies for insurance companies.

“Fred the Shred”

A look into outputs of hack-a-thons, including Fred, the shredder with personality.

“MIT Media Lab at SXSW”

A recap of the MIT Media Lab’s SXSW session, including a discussion of one of our favorite products Affectiva and the insight from chairman Joichi that, “over time, the amount of information in the world tends to exceed the ability of even the largest organizations to do big things on their own.”

They also showed off an installation that graphs Facebook data on a globe and can be moved by user gestures via an Xbox Kinect.  See it in action here: “Take the World in your Hands”

“PepsiCo Digital Signage”

A look at the innovative digital signage used by Pepsi in the PepsiCO Central lounge, including content on transparent screens and a dashboard updating social mentions of SXSW in real-time.

“AT&T Mobile App Hackathon”

AT&T held a competition for teams of developers to earn prizes and money for creating a mobile app.

“The Decline of Apps?”

With the evolution of new JavaScript platforms and HTML5, mobile web experiences can rival native app experiences in terms of functionality and design.  Additionally, these platforms allow reach across a much greater variety of devices than traditional apps, giving companies more bang for their development buck.

“Smell-O-Vision for the 21st Century”

An exploration of new technologies that activate all five senses.

“Taps For NFC?”

A recap of a session debate about the probability of NFC adoption.

“Net Present Value of Future Self”

A discussion of how consumers use real-time data looked into when real-time feedback is best and when other forms or timing of feedback might better suit the user.

“Isis Consortium’s Heavy Presence at SXSWi”

A look into Isis Mobile Commerce Application, a mobile payment technology, that is to be integrated into 95% of POS systems in the near future.

“Virtual x Physical”

Notes on a session that discussed the meshing of the virtual and physical world, including app-enabled accessories and augmented reality location-aware games.

“Fulton Innovations Discusses Wireless Power at SXSW 2012”

Fulton Innovations, a company we’ve been interested in since CES, displayed the future of wireless power, demonstrating their technology that uses electrical induction to liven up packaging and wireless charge electric vehicles.

“Timehop Takes You Back To The Future at SXSW 2012”

Timehop, the service that sends daily emails recounting what users did exactly one year ago on their social networks, showcased a Delorean replica from the movie Back to the Future.

“Valuable Visualizations”

TaskRabbit’s Head of Business shared with the SXSW “Start Up Village”  the lessons he has learned working for a start-up, including the importance of data analytics and visualization.

“GE Unveils ‘Social Fridge’ at SXSW Using Grandstand Platform”

The GE Garage showcased interesting ways to connect to people at events using social media in novel ways, including the Social Fridge, which required 10 people to check-in before literally unlocking the door and giving free beverages to those who participated.

“Kinect Boxing Bots”

For the SXSWi opening party, Microsoft showed of the potential of Xbox Kinect hacks that allowed party-goes to control boxing robots with their motions.

“ ‘FutureShop’ SXSW Panel Discusses QR Codes and NFC”

A discussion of NFC and QR codes that reinforced the fact that technology cannot change consumer behavior on its own, but that marketers have to deploy the technology in ways that really solve consumer problems.

“Brand as API”

A look into a presentation that discussed the idea of a Brand as API, in which the presenters urged brands to make themselves and their apps more flexible, allowing and encouraging consumers to interact more with the brand.  Includes a link to the presentation slideshow.

“Bold Frontiers of Gesture”

A panel discussion about Kinect hacking, featuring the Kinect Robots from the opening night party.

“The Future of Money”

A panel of VCs and startups discussed the future of mobile payment, agreeing that while complete NFC adoption is still a few years off, there is a huge opportunity for mobile payments.

“Tag, We’re It”

A discussion of current uses and best practices around QR codes and NFC.

“Get Out Of My Memes, Get Into My Car”

A presentation from Audi asserting that automobiles will become the “5th screen” and a roadmap of Audi’s digital integrations.

“This Is Your Sojolife”

A look at Sojolife, a start up that helps people to connect at events via wireless enabled USB keys.

“Hitchery a Ride”

Startup Hitchery showcases a game that makes a cute and fun use of augmented reality in a scavenger hunt scenario.

Hitchery a Ride

Posted on by Lab Team

At the SXSW trade show there is a booth for a startup named Hitchery. They are officially launching here this week, and their platform is a cute twist on AR scavenger hunts. Their world is populated with cartoon hitchhiking kids. Each one has a destination to which they are going. Using their app, you can find them and see them with an augmented reality overlay on your device camera view. You can see where they’re going, and if you’re headed that way you can virtually pick them up and then deposit them in a new location. Then other players can find them, do the same and help move them along their way.

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This Is Your Sojolife

Posted on by Lab Team

Sojolife is a startup with a product designed to form connections at events or any kind of large real-world gathering. Event organizers hand out the little Sojolife gadgets, which are basically special USB keys with wireless communication capabilities. Each one has a unique ID number, and they do not store personally identifiable information. When people at the event meet each other, they can simply tap their gadgets together and the gadgets record the interaction.

When they get home, they plug the gadget into their USB port and go to the Sojolife site. There, on an opt-in basis, they can identify themselves and add as much or as little contact information as they want. They can then see the people who they’ve tapped, arranged in a handy timeline, and if those people have also opt-ed in, they can see their contact information and reach out.

Below is a video of a company representative here at the SXSW trade show explaining the product: