South By Southwest, the interactive adventure! Brandhomies Erik, Jef and Elise had the opportunity to check out the renowned South By Southwest festival (SXSW 2016) in Austin, Texas. Every year, the international festival is home to music lovers, media fanatics and emerging technologies and film enthusiasts. Our Brandhomies didn’t go to Texas to ride bulls or improve their rodeo skills: for Erik, Jef and Elise, SXSW 2016 was all about interactivity. It was a spectacle where presentations were combined with networking opportunities and a lineup of relevant programs gave the brightest minds in emerging digital technologies a chance to have their say. They sifted through the festival for one week to broaden their creative and strategic selves and came back fully inspired. Want to get inspired too? We bundled our insights in a handy slideshare. Take a look! Brandhome is all about inspiration, creativity, brand intelligence, digital design and strategy. But most of all, we love to think out of the box and wave goodbye to traditional marketing. SXSW Interactive 2016 showed us new means and ways of implementing digital technologies and broadened our minds. The future of branding and advertising lies at the foundation of this successful interactive festival.

3. • THE NEW MODEL FOR TALENT DEVELOPMENT
• LEARNING NEW THINGS (WITHOUT FEELING LIKE A N00B)
• COMIC SANS EXISTS FOR A REASON
• BUZZFEED: THE FUTURE OF MEDIA COMPANIES
• THE END OF THE WORK-MORE CULTURE?
• THE "DISPENSABLES": AUTOMATION, HUMANS AND BRANDS
• THE BOSSLESS COMPANY
• LET’S DROP THE TERM MILLENNIALS
CONTENTS

4. THE NEW MODEL FOR TALENT DEVELOPMENT
Moran Cerf (Professor)
Sarah Hall (CEO - Harley & Co)

5. Learning new things should be on the job.
THEORETIC
LEARNING
All variables
under
control
LEARNING
ON THE JOB
Realistic situations,
with different
variables

6. Take people out of their comfort zone:
creating stressful situations that challenge them
in dealing with things they did not expect.

7. True learning will only take place
when people have experienced it.
Not when they have heard about it.

8. We always look for the same characteristics in a profile (social, confident, …)
But sometimes, you need to look for a different profile to do the job.
!
Who would enjoy a job that you would hate?
Someone with a different profile than yourself!

9. When hiring someone:
we are always biased by different cues.
Challenge yourself
by filtering out all these cues.
!
F.e. give every applicant the same outfit to do the job interview.

10. LEARNING NEW THINGS
(WITHOUT FEELING LIKE A N00B)
Erik Natzke (Principal Designer - Adobe Systems Inc.)

11. Creativity originates from a necessity:
to understand / to create / to evolve
!
Creativity is not a talent: it is a way of operating!
!
Creativity is about playing for its own sake!

12. Creativity does not exist under pressure.
Create from an open mode.
!
Less purposefull.
!
More humour.
!
More playfull.

13. COMIC SANS EXISTS FOR A REASON
Graham Lee (CCO - T1)

15. Love it or hate it: Comic Sans it the most used,
yet most hated font in the world. But why?
!
It does the job!
Design is about communicating things
in an easy and understandable way –
not about ‘being pretty for the sake of being pretty’.

17. We need more people like Comic Sans.
!
People who dare to be proud of what they are
no matter what people think about it.
As long as they get the job done!

18. BUZZFEED: THE FUTURE OF MEDIA COMPANIES
Frank Cooper (CMO/CCO - BuzzFeed)

19. Empathy + human connection
= the new superpower
to build new audiences.

20. Go to where your audience is,
instead of the other way around.
(Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, …)

21. create
Creating content is about continuous evolution.
DISTRIBUTE
LEARNADAPT

22. THE END OF THE WORK-MORE CULTURE?
Christian Blauvelt (Deputy Culture Editor - BBC.com)

23. The wrong question is:
how many hours do I need to work?
!
The right question is:
what do I want to achieve by when?

24. Research in Silicon Valley in start-ups has indicated
that productivity peaks at 31 hours a week.
Working less is underproductive,
as well as every hour above 31 hours a week
31

26. Most important 'efficiency jammers’
!
meetings,
social media,
open office spaces

27. Most important 'efficiency stimulators'
!
animals/dogs in the office,
disconnect email/
mobile phones when working,
simplify management
meet our
Brandhome
dog Nacho

28. By 2025 most millennials will work 20 hours for
an employer, and 10 to 15 hours as independents
for multiple clients (eg. Uber, Lyft, AirBnb...)

29. THE "DISPENSABLES":
AUTOMATION, HUMANS AND BRANDS
John Havens (Author/Heartificial intelligence - The Happathon Project)
Tim Leberecht (Author en Founder - The Business Romantic Society)

32. Romance is a human right.
Romance is the glue that keeps society together.

34. THE BOSSLESS COMPANY
Jason Stirman (CEO - Lucid)

35. Holocracy system
= self-management of the organisation
by its employees

37. 'Process extremism':
extremely simple and few processes,
but with extreme strict focus to follow
= reason why there is no chaos

38. Large companies can learn from holocracy
how to get more efficient.
(e.g. Amazon implemented meeting rules of Zappos
and number of meetings have been reduced with 53%!)

40. LET’S DROP THE TERM MILLENNIALS
Philippe von Borries (CEO & Co-Founder - Refinery29)

41. We need to stop looking at millenials as one group of clones:
millenials are less predictive than a f*cking horoscope.
!
Three concepts which are shared by this group:
INDIVIDUALITY CONNECTIVENESS PURPOSE

43. Niches can be huge.
They are a community
with shared interests.
NICHE SMALL

44. If you want to create a culture:
stay true to who you are and who your audience is.
Break down the walls.