Marketing & tech trends over 6 years

My name is Erik Eskedal. I'm a digital strategist at Iteo, a digital marketing communication agency in Norway. This is my sixth time at South By, so I've been here every year since 2012. Yeah, always coming back to learn more. Awesome. So I have kind of already given you a small task that you've done some really tedious work and sat down with your notes, right? From the last six years. And that's the thing, it's a gift we're having you who've actually been here for six years. So you can actually, I'd love for you to share the trends, the development that has happened within, especially digital here at South By the last six years. Yeah, because South By is everything about, it's all about the FOMO, the Firm Missing Out. So the last couple of years, we've seen a lot of big launches at South By earlier. And I think that the first couple of years I was here, everybody was sort of like looking for the next Twitter, which was launched there in 2007, ten years ago. But during the years, we have seen some new apps coming. We've had Meerkat, we've had Hidden, Secret, a lot of different apps, which sort of like, they went dead quite quick. So we haven't seen any new Twitter. So people are not looking for that anymore. It's more that we are seeing the actual evolution of the things that we talk about. So of course, some years there was Spitzbots, this was all about the content, the storytelling. And you also have, of course, there's a lot of things that keep coming back every year. This is especially in regards to robotics, artificial intelligence. So this year, 2017, prior to the event, you noticed that I misunderstood it, it was all about the bots. And it's still a lot about the Internet of Things, connected world. But now what we see now is that virtual reality, artificial intelligence is taking further and further steps. And especially in regards to artificial intelligence, there was the co-founder of HubSpot said that where we're going now with artificial intelligence is that the artificial stuff is getting less and less important. It's more about the intelligence. So it's more about the data and how to use data. So we've seen examples of robots discussing and discussions about sushi with different aspects. Also in regards to the Internet of Things also, it has to be more available and it keeps getting more available. And also in regards to virtual reality, there's a discussion now because it's very costly to do virtual reality. And the thing is that since there's not that many people who have the hardware to see virtual reality, use it at home, companies are not that keen on actually spending a lot of money to produce virtual content. But I can have a look back here and if you see back at the five years, in 2012, my first year, it was all about mobile payments. Brian Solis introduced the sort of the digital garbage nation where things are evolving in marketing and marketing is changing fast. We've seen that and we talked about that for every year since. It was also about the social TV revolution, gesture-based computing and a lot about visualization of data and of course mobile first. In 2013, it's a lot about privacy and we had speakers like Snowden and Assange on video. And we also had the sort of like impact of social media on technology and focus on content more than that strategy from a marketing perspective. And 2013 was also a year where personal tracking got up again. Nike launched their Nike Fuel Band here in Austin on site itself by 2011. But it wasn't until 2013 we were actually talking about the personalization and utilization of it. 2013 was also the year where 3D printing got really excited. The Makers, it was about memes and for those who were there, remember Mashable and the Grumpy Cats. And of course big data and also 2013 was sort of like the start on health and social media which has been with us after that. So it goes on and on. 2014, another high focus on privacy and personal data. This time with sort of like the ownership discussion about it. Once again 3D printing and that we're all Makers. And also a lot of robots came in 2013. Internet of Things wearables came along. Bitcoin was also big in 2014. This year it's all about blockchain so things are happening. So it's more like a different currency rather than... Yeah, I remember Bitcoin was launched when we were here in 2012. I actually had a discussion with a friend of mine here that if we had put... That year the Bitcoin was worth $59 and now it's worth $10,000 for Bitcoin. So there's the development. Yeah, you also saw sort of like turning into social media with the rise of anti-social media apps with secrets. And it's a lot about the focus on technology and sorry, it's a focus on people, not the technology and marketing. And of course content marketing and storytelling. That was 2014? That was 2014, yeah. So 2015 that was all about the live videos. The launch of Meerkat Periscope was popular. Once again wearable robotics. We talked about starting to talk about connected cars. Internet of Things and beacons again. Artificial intelligence was very popular. Also argument in reality. And then actually South By took it further on in regards to health. They actually made their own health tech conference as part of South By. And once again personalization and privacy was again. So last year was a lot about the thing that Obama came and actually was one of the biggest speakers here. He even came to eat some tacos which got viral. And 2016 was where they say that VR comes everywhere. So now you can see it in all the industries and in marketing and all that. Once again it was a lot about live streaming with Facebook. It was a lot about measuring results. And of course Internet of Things. This discussion where we went from social media to social messaging. And how important Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp has become. There was also some talk about dark social and of course health tech. So yeah. A lot of the same things and I come back with different reasons. So based on all these, one thing is hypes. And another thing is basically things that are more sticky. Like stickiness of some topics that basically sticks with us. What would you say are the sticky ones? It's privacy, Internet of Things and VR. That's where the stickiness is. You can see that's the way things are going in marketing and speaking. And I also think it's really good that now we're really focusing on data. We're focusing on how to measure stuff. The funny thing is that for the last couple of years there's been a lot of talk about big data. But it's very trendy now that we're talking less and less about big data. Because it's data. There's nothing big about it. It's just loads of it. So what do you think that you can, for you as a consultant, as an expert within this field, what is it that you can bring back to your company, to your customers? What is the main things that you feel that you can actually... In that perspective I have somewhat changed the way I go to stuff. Because during the first years I think it was for me it was trying to be interested in all the new stuff, the futuristic stuff. But even though Norway is quite far ahead, the big news in technology coming here will most probably be for us to talk about in five years maybe. So what I do here is I focus on trying to learn not only basics, but things that I've tried for a couple of years in the US. So you can take all their learnings back to Norway. Even if it's marketing, it's digital, it's technology, VR, anything like that. So we need to be on top of things in regards to what VR and artificial intelligence and chatbots can do for our customers. But still they have to be taken down to a more realistic scope, where we can see how we can use it for our customers in Norway. So what is next for you? What do you think is the next thing that you're going to be focusing on? I think as a marketer we still have all the big problems that we already have. We need to break the silos. We've now got better and better tools to talk to our customers. And I think that we need to see how marketers can use technology to make the content, the stories, all our communication need to be put together, and use technology to have it all together in one system in a way. I don't think it will ever come there, but that's what we want to do. We need to involve sales, we need to involve customer services, so everybody is working together. That's more of a human problem than a technology problem, I guess.