Written by Kelvin Morgan

The first SXSW London had so much promise. Over five days across Shoreditch in East London, there were 2,095 hours of relevant panel events I had bookmarked beforehand. Now I haven’t been to Austin for SXSW, but I have been to Glastonbury and the queues on Monday were on a par with trying to get into the South East Corner on a Saturday night.

So with that in mind, it is no surprise that I spent most of my week stood up in queues, sometimes in the rain, trying to get a seat inside. Was I in Somerset a few weeks early? No. Despite this damp report, there were some standout speakers, who provide marketers and communicators some tips for their day-to-day and longer term strategic planning.

An AI brainstorm idea

I have a pretty high tolerance but even I was done with hearing about AI by day three, except for this interesting brainstorm exercise.

Inspired by Henry Coutinho-Mason (The Future Normal) and Rohit Bhargava (Non Obvious Insights), this audience-powered idea generation format offers a fresh take on co-creation and insight mining:

The process:

1. Ask people to draw a business idea
2. Take a photo and upload it to a central platform
3. Use AI to visualise and categorise the ideas
4. Repeat across workshops, events, or teams

Result? Many ideas, which turn passive attendees into an innovation hub. This could be a goldmine in business planning or client workshops where creative thinking is stuck or siloed.

Did I mention the queues?

Act like publishers, not advertisers

The statement came from Charlie Smith, CMO at Loewe, which stayed with me and also reminded me of the earlier fireside chat between Cristina Diezhandino (CMO at Diageo) and Leandro Barreto (CMO at Unilever), who both laid down the new rules for brands and marketers:

• Make brands matter again – reconnect them to culture, joy, and real human emotion
• Return to brand DNA – what made brands iconic still matters
• Scale with soul – use tools to expand content with tone, not just volume (Yes, I’m looking at you AI)
• Anticipate trends, don’t just react – build foresight into creative and product pipelines
• Experiment with neuromarketing – track how people feel, not just what they click

Lastly, have some optimism – “Don’t let ideas wither and die.”

Building influence with your community

Well, well, well.

Madano’s Orange Paper on Communities from 2024 was right.

From SXSW themselves, Unilever, to Loewe, to Neil Patel, the concept of Community was the talk of the town (I mean East London). Stevie from Made in Chelsea, a speaker at SXSW on the creator economy, joined this bandwagon and also left the audience with this equation on building influence:

Genuine influence = Trust + Transparency + Tangible Outcomes

So in short, SXSW London had some interesting insights, but I missed out on a lot more due to poor event planning (and likely by me too), logistics and the many queues.

Will I be back? Maybe. The week left me thinking, I miss the Excel centre (which sums it all up).

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