SXSW: Trying Too Hard To Be Hip

SXSW: Trying Too Hard To Be Hip

I'd have to agree with you. When a big event like the multi tiered SXSW gets as big as it is, the folks running the show tend to be out of touch with reality. What once was an organic festival is now this huge corporate happening, run by non-hip, disconnected people. It might make it better if they added more bling and made it more like the MTV awards or something...everybody likes a gift bag.

"The tricky thing about "coolness" is that when you are trying to appeal to those who are, it usually means you are not." Love it!

Get fonzie and a ramp, this tank is ready for jumpin'

Unfortunately as soon as anything - person, event, or work - establishes enough credibility, it becomes a "brand" and is assigned a certain value. When the value reaches the level of "aided awareness" - "sure, I've read/heard about SXSW…" - it becomes ripe for abuse. Gone are the early days of "screw the record companies, let's have our own festival" and enter the major sponsors like FUZE, LITE, and Mountain Dew who, because they MUST BE so damn cool for being sponsors, hope that coolness translates to brand-loyalty from attendees.Cha-ching $$$$$.
Equally tragic are the sessions that are so obviously nothing more than efforts at self-aggrandizement "buy my book/product, subscribe to my twitter feed, invest in my company, just tell your fiends how cool I am".
As soon as Marketeers see an opportunity at "brand leveraging" - using what was originally a cool, down to earth, celebration of stuff you SHOULD know about - and send Fonzie flying over the tank of sharks to ally their brand with this cool thing, well, when that happens it's fucked. (and for the love of any-deity-you-choose, when a session's title rightly contains the word "fucked", just write the damn word. Kids can easily find labial photos of every celebutard imaginable, so quit being afraid of words George Carlin loved.)

When "Corporate" arrives, the highjinx start...

I think the quote at the top of their homepage says it all:

"In its 22 years, SXSW has grown from a tiny music festival in the Texas capital into a massive, unavoidable media beast..."

When "Corporate" gets involved in anything artistic/creative, some amount of integrity is lost.

Now I'm not naive or a purist-- I understand some corporate involvement is needed, especially if you want your music/film/technology marketed and distributed.
But witness what they have on their Sponsors page:
"Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company is the Exclusive Cigarette and Roll-Your-Own Tobacco Sponsor of SXSW 2009 Conferences and Festivals."
Wow -- thank got they were able to fill that vaunted Tobacco Sponsor spot....

Too hip???--Yeah, so Hip, I can't see my Feet!

Great Article--couldn't agree more! This new brand of "ubercool" marketing is popping up all the time in all new venues. Don't get me wrong, I love a clever marketing campaign, I am just so with you about not loving those "over-caffeinated marketing types." What's wrong with having the product (or seminar) sell itself--really?...do we need to have cheerleaders telling us how hip and cool things really are before we purchase or attend?! Nope. I see this a lot with College Course Descriptions too. When I attended college, there was nothing "hip" about the descriptions, you took the courses that were in your Major. Plain and simple. But when I got the job to teach College Courses (many years later) we were told that Course Descriptions (as well as the class content) had to be jazzed-up to keep the MTV generation of kids interested. Why do we suddenly need all the smoke and mirrors to make someone attend a class, conference or to buy something. If it's cool, trust me, the cool kids spread the news--not the Wizards behind the Curtains.

Finally, I think you hit it right that people actually are being detered from attending otherwise interesting programs simply because the Programs are being promoted--not by the credentialed few; but rather, by Geeks with Egos. And that, I am afraid, is just not cool. Great Article! Looking forward to your next one!

Well written, good points

Formely "an event", SXSW has evolved into a tradeshow. Have you considered writing an article about the potential for the SS SXSW to sideswipe an iceberg (aka down economy)? Could SXSW be this decade's Comdex?

Looking fwd to your next article.

Corporate types trying to be hip?

Conferences, in general, are all corporate to some degree. The degree to which they're corporate usually depends on the conference's subject matter. Something like Comic-Con has a very low corporate quotient while something like the IBM Developer Conference is going to have a very high corporate quotient.

Now, not knowing much about SXSW, I'm going to guess that it started as a very non-corporate affair. However, whenever you see that there are going to be presentations at a conference, the corporate quotient jumps. When the presentations have titles that begin with MBA buzzwords like "Core Conversation", you know damn well that this is a corporate event.

And when you see that the people that put the whole thing together are trying to make jokes in the titles of presentations that start with MBA buzzwords, you realize that the independently minded spirit that started the whole thing is, in fact, deader than a doorknob and won't be coming back because the folks who got it off the ground to begin with have sold out to the corporate lackeys and are off vacationing on their own private island somewhere in the tropics.

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