R/GA @ SXSW 2015
SXSW is quickly approaching and we’re pleased to announce a host of panels and workshops featuring R/GA employees. Mark your calendars and come check out our sessions – we’d love to see you there!
Saturday, March 14
Title: Adv. Brand and Marketing for Early Stage Companies
Who: Paul Dery, Executive Creative Director (R/GA Austin)
Time: 9:30pm – 1:30pm
Location: JW Marriott, 110 E 2nd St, Salon H
For many early stage companies branding and marketing are hard to understand in a systematic fashion. Often people think a brand is simply a logo, tone of voice, or a catch phrase. In this workshop we will take you from understanding single things about brands and marketing to helping you prepare a system to grow your company.
Title: Watch What Happens Next: a World of Wearables
Who: Richard Ting, EVP Global ECD, Mobile & Social Platforms
Time: 3:30pm – 4:30pm
Location: Radisson Town Lake, 111 E Cesar Chavez St, Riverside Ballroom
Join today’s leading brands and innovators shaping the future of wearable mobile experiences to connect with customers in ways never possible before. Panelists will discuss the latest trends and initiatives shaping the future of an already rapidly growing ecosystem of wearables and mobile services, shedding light on today’s successful strategies and demystifying the challenges and opportunities to navigate the course ahead.
Title: Firestarters @SXSW
Who: Chloe Gottlieb, SVP, Executive Creative Director
Time: 5:00pm – 7:30pm
Location: Google Fiber Space
As the digital and physical worlds weave together, the distinctions between marketing, product and service are blurring and blending. Exceptional experience design is becoming an integral part of everything from apps to retail environments to socially-driven marketing. User experience design is fast-rising, much-sought and poorly understood. This panel will discuss how UX talent can blend into big organizations and how it can change products, marketing briefs, and service design.
Sunday, March 15
Title: The Principals of UX Choreography
Who: Rebecca Ussai, Senior Experience Designer (R/GA Chicago) & Glen Keane, Director & Animator (Glen Keane Productions)
Time: 11am – 12pm
Location: JW Marriott, 110 E 2nd St, Salon D
Rebecca Ussai of R/GA and Legendary Animator Glen Keane share how the 12 Principles of Animation can change how you approach UX design. Rebecca will explain how to practically integrate the principles into UX design to result in what is called UX Choreography that creates an user experience that is both realistic and emotional.
Title: Even Hardware is all about the Software
Who: Nick Coronges, Global CTO & Dylan Boyd, Managing Director
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Location: JW Marriott, 110 E 2nd St, Room 210
In this talk, experts from R/GA and Techstars will discuss how software can make up for hardware shortcomings, evolving to improve the benefits of hardware without requiring a service visit.
Title: We’re All ADHD
Who: Elizabeth Pietrus, Associate Director, Mobile & Social Platforms (R/GA Chicago) & Dr. Michael Pietrus, Senior Staff Psychologist
Time: 5pm – 6pm
Location: JW Marriott, 110 E 2nd St, Salon 7
America is having trouble paying attention. As of 2011, 11% of children age 4-17 and 20% of college students had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, making it second only to asthma as the most commonly diagnosed long-term health disorder in young adults. But what if we’re doing it to ourselves? Social media has had countless unintended effects beyond the original utility of staying in touch with friends. In the past decade we’ve seen significant changes to our collective attention span, including differences in the way we conceptualize focus, self-regulation and executive functioning. Part of what we’re doing with all of that time on social media is curating the personal brands the majority of the outside world sees, which makes it harder to accept our limitations. We expect success and when we don’t achieve it, we look for quick solves that require minimal effort – like stimulant medications to help us focus. What if we’re all ADHD?
Monday, March 16
Title: Mentor Session: Will Turnage
Who: Will Turnage, SVP Technology
Time: 11am – 12pm
Location: Courtyard Marriott, 300 E 4th St, Brazos I
Mentor Sessions enable less-established new media professionals to gain seven minutes of direct one-on-one career-related council from a more established / more experienced new media professional.
Title: Beyond 140 Characters: How to Stretch Your Limits
Who: Kristin O’Halloran, Associate Director Analytics (R/GA), Meghan Doyle, Account Manager (Twitter) & Stephanie Fuller, Strategy Director (Big Fuel)
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Location: Hyatt Regency Austin, 208 Barton Springs Rd, Texas Ballroom 2-3
Ever wonder how in the world you’re supposed to get any real messaging across in Twitter’s 140 character limit? There are 1 Billion tweets every 2 days, which creates a lot of noise. However, consumers are still interested in what brands have to say with 65% of users expecting to connect with brands on Twitter and 58% of users following brands to learn about updates. Therefore, brands must find a way to cut through the clutter.
Identifying a unique branded message, smart use of paid media, and eye-catching imagery are just a few ways to stand out. We’ll explore how some of the biggest brands are doing it and unveil some best practices from our experience with a diverse set of brands from CPG, Retail, and Financial Services.
Title: Hamburger Helper is My Bae: Weird Brand Twitter
Who: Chapin Clark, EVP Managing Director Copy (R/GA) & Katie Notopoulos, Senior Editor (Buzzfeed)
Time: 5pm – 6pm
Location: Austin Convention Center, 500 E Cesar Chavez St, Next Stage
Most of us are familiar with “brand Twitter.” Many of us are at least acquainted with the voices of “weird Twitter.” Now these worlds are starting to intersect, as restaurant chains are attempting to sound like cool teens in their tweets, and frozen pizza brands are posting ironically tone-deaf jokes and deliberately cryptic, grammatically dubious sentence fragments.
This can be a disorienting experience for us readers, prompting self-searching questions like: Why am I laughing at a frozen pizza? I buy the frozen pizza, do I have to be its friend, too? On the other hand, brands have always tried to ape the memes and language of pop culture to seem more “relatable.” Is this latest iteration so wrong?
We will discuss the most noteworthy practitioners of weird brand Twitter – skilled and less so – and the implications for how we view brands and the social channels that have become central to our lives.