What We Can Learn from the Marketing at SXSW 2013

At this point we've all heard about South by Southwest Interactive festival (SXSW), and if you're like me, you wish you were there for not only the amazing content, technology trends, and marketing stunts, but also for the celebrity sightings. This blog is all about marketing though, so let's look at what we can learn from the marketing at SXSW 2013.

According to some research I've done some of the most popular marketing memories include grumpy cat and Google's talking shoes. Here's what we can learn from these epic marketing tactics.

Grumpy Cat: The Grumpy Cat is the star of many Internet memes. The cat itself was on display at the Mashable House and resulted in long lines of conference-goers waiting to see the famous feline. According to Mashable, the Grumpy Cat was the social champ of the conference racking up 3,000 tweets per day for three days! The Mashable House did a great job capitalizing on the popular meme and trend, by bringing in the star itself knowing it would attract conference attendees and make the Mashable brand even more popular.

Although us small business owners/managers might not have the same budget as Mashable, we can take this marketing tactic and use it in our own ways. We should be capitalizing on popular trends to market our brand as leaders in our industries. We should look at what's trending on Twitter, or what the most popular videos, or other content are in our industry, or locations. When we can, we should contribute to the hashtags or post about the videos and content, adding our own analyses and expertise. Get in on the action that is making headlines and people will trust that you're in the know of your particular industry and/or locations where you service.

Google's Talking Shoe: Forget Google Glass, Google is onto the next best thing - talking shoes. Just kidding, Google Glass is still really cool, but Google's talking shoes were on display at SXSW this year. These shoes, while they are just an experiment, have sensors inside the shoe that can talk to your phone or encourage you to complete certain tasks.

Google does an amazing job staying at the forefront of their industry and making sure that everyone (literally) knows that they're a leader. We may not have the budget or resources or time to commit to talking shoes or glasses that project information over the physical world, but we are experts in our fields. If we can commit to creating new content each week, and regularly improving our products and services, we will stay at the forefront of our industries. With these commitments to our businesses, we'll continuously engage new customers and clients, and retain their business.


Here are some more interesting marketing stunts from SXSW on the ABC News site. Which are your favorites?

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