OMD FWD w/c March 20th
Hello and welcome to another edition of OMD FWD. This year’s SXSW lived up to the notion that everything’s bigger in Texas. Following on from 10 days of exhibitions, panels, demos and launches we bring you the highlights and inside scoop from Austin. On the OMD EMEA blog you can find daily recaps from our very own Chrissie Hanson, including the future of entertainment, the need for empathy and honesty in storytelling and the need to be open to dancing with change. SXSW was also home to the latest in wearable tech, AI, chatbots and Phillip Treacy’s ‘Spatium’. Renowned for creating hats that defy the possible Spatium allows the viewer to explore the structure of one of Treacy’s most famous creations on a scale that escapes the bounds of the physical. As photographers and directors embrace technology such as VR it will be interesting to see how immersive technology will transform the fashion industry. As always, please share anything interesting you see via #OMDFWD.
HEADLINES
- SXSW News: AI and Chatbots dominated the SXSW conversation. Ray Kurzweil stood by his prediction that we would reach singularity by 2029 and Bill Ford argued autonomous vehicles would be incredibly advantageous to urban populations
- Snapchat pitches original shows to advertisers
- Samsung S8 will use facial recognition to verify payments
INSIGHTS
- L2 looks at how brands are innovating on messaging platforms
- How The Economist uses data to drive subscriptions
- ‘Sixty-nine percent of transactions came from only one device.’ Stats from Criteo’s US cross-device marketing report
COOL
- SXSW News: ‘Sci-Fi No Longer award’ for the coolest scientific achievement or discovery that before 2015 was only possible in Sci-Fi. Winner: MIT Media Lab, DuoSkin. Here’s the full rundown of all the Innovation winners
- SXSW News: With so many headset experiences it was hard to choose a standout example. Inition’s ‘Spatium’, which celebrated the sculptural qualities of one of Philip Treacy’s millinery creations for Madonna, won for its visual artistry
- Super cool category: AR that projects onto a car windscreen
DEEP READS
- SXSW News: Joe Biden opened the Festival to outline his plans for his cancer initiative, in The Urgency of Now. Biden was subsequently crowned ‘Speaker of the Event’
- SXSW News: Beyond the Screens: the Ubiquity of Connectivity from Google’s Project Jacquard and Levi’s. You can see all the keynotes (including those from the film and music festival) here
- Harvard Business review ‘What’s the Value of a Like?’
As always, please share anything interesting you see via #OMDFWD.