Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people.

The SXSW conference started with opening remarks from Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh on how fostering a passionate culture of employees while proving extraordinary customer service can massively extend your brand. He spoke about good deeds, chasing your dreams, greater life purpose, goals, inspiration and ended with a strong recommendation for a book by Jonathan Haidt called, "The Happiness Hypotheses". Heavy stuff for a company that known best for selling shoes.

It was inspiring and while obvious on many levels, became an underlying theme throughout the conference: sharing, open, trust, playing fair.

Over the next four days, the number of references to relationships, friends, community, openness, honesty...were many. While not a new concept to business chatter; individuals, brands (countries, civilization...), are realizing the need to focus on the basics to create, foster and extend their image, products, brands and survival.

Concepts like sharing, openness and free may be the new buzz, but would never have made it to the white boards of corporate America as a priority or requirement to remaining relevant. It's a monumental shift for companies formed around protecting intellectual property to now open their doors to the open sharing of content, often for free.

The panel on Becoming Social: This Changes Everything, lead by the heads of development for Myspace, Yahoo, Google and Reuters Thompson was interesting specifically in that the former was a perfect example of a company founded on the dissemination of proprietary information finding it a difficult transition to becoming transparent with it's data, while acknowledging that there was not a choice. To survive, brands need to not only acknowledge consumers, but to open their doors, give them something they don't expect and foster the open conversation that drives perception, respect, trust and happiness?

Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Figure out how to monetize free.

The Future of Visual Storytelling is Interactive. Or Is It?

This panel was lead by five different creatives:

Victoria Ha, Stitch Media Inc; James Milward, Secret Location; Mark Pytlik, Stink Digital;
Phil Stuart, Preloaded; Rick Webb, Barbarian Group

The opening slide was based on the concept of storytelling of today, being a bit more complicated than that of the past. Where there was once one linear, path from beginning to ending, problem to resolution, content today seems to involve storylines that evolve as the user experiences it. What also is unique about today’s storylines is users abilities to affect the stories arc, and even in some cases effect the resolution.

Rick Webb, from The Barbarian Group, showcased recent work done by his agency for Dove, Waking Up Hannah. An interesting concept, this story follows the story of Hannah, but shot from the perspective of 46 different members of the party. The user has the ability to switch vantage points of the storyline whenever they see fit. Imagine the possibilities then of how many different stories can be taken out of one story.



Rick made a comment that the more time a user gets to experience with the brand, the stronger affiliation they will have for it. An example like this reminds me greatly of a movie like Cloverfield,. Cloverfield, which was shot from the perspective of one camera in New York City during the attack, could essentially release millions of versions of that movie from the perspective of different New Yorkers. What if the version that I saw in theaters was the most boring vantage point of those events (which I doubt)? What if they did release several different versions of that movie in theaters, who would be inclined to see it more than once?

Victoria Ha, showcased several examples of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). One of which was Enitech, for The Sarah Connor Chonicles.

This was also followed up by a philosophical question of “inviting consumers to play, vs. gaming.” Certainly ARGs are not the solution for everyday brands, but considering the creation of shows like Heroes will the brands followers have a sense of engagement, and involvement, I am more than certain the homage of “expect the consumer to do nothing,” loses much of its relevance.

My main takeaway from this panel was the tools we have today give us the ability to engage consumers in a much more unique and involved way than we have before. For as long as I remember my mom has figured out who committed the crime on Law & Order before the show was over.. Now what would happen if Law & Order rewarded her for getting it right? Or what if the show was affected by her locking the wrong criminal up, and the crimes continued?