In-person Experiences:
IBM at SXSW 2017
The big question: How do you bring a B2B company to life in a way that resonates with an audience of consumers and casual festival-goers (who may or may not be day drunk)?
One sentence summary:
I led all things content—from curating the tech demos and activations at the event to writing social posts, official communications and nearly every word in the space—for IBM’s presence at the 2017 SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas.
10-second backstory:
Three months into my career at IBM, I was asked to help with the creative copywriting for IBM’s upcoming SXSW presence. Needless to say, I was thrilled. “What sorts of activations and experiences are going to be there?” I asked, trying to get a better sense of what I would be writing copy for. The answer: “We have no idea.”
It was at that point that I realized my contribution would have to go far beyond simple writing: I would need to play a significant role in identifying and curating the experiences that would go into the space, as well as crafting a content system that would draw people into the experiences, engage their curiosity, and ultimately explain how the experience was created (from a technical standpoint) in simple terms.
Animating ideas:
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A simple mental model. Few companies are involved in as many different industries and technology domains as IBM. With this in mind, we knew it would be crucial to create a simple conceptual model that allowed us to 1) organize the physical space in a way that was intuitive and engaging for visitors, and 2) help individuals understand the value that IBM added to their everyday lives in a way that was simple and easy to understand.
We were also trying to elevate IBM’s maker culture, which helped inspire the event’s main tagline: IBM is Making. When creating the content system, we built on that core message, using it to speak to how IBM is Making our world healthier, more secure, more personal, more creative, and more engaging. This mental model ultimately informed how we laid out the physical space of the event, with each theme becoming a path that an attendee could walk down.
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A look under the hood. One of the big goals for this event was to attract and engage developers by showing them some of the cool things they could do with IBM technology and tooling. After a number of conversations and brainstorm sessions, we came up with the idea of turning our tools into sticker decals so that attendees could literally “pick up our tools” and start “Making” after seeing an experience that piqued their interest. The back of each sticker had a brief description of the tool and a shortlink pointing to online demos and resources for that tool.
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Playful vs. professional: a delicate balance. One of the biggest challenges of this project was nailing the tone of the writing. SXSW is a dynamic festival with hundreds of unique and engaging experiences all battling for people’s attention.
We wanted our space to radiate authenticity, energy, and fun, but at the same time, we also wanted to demonstrate the rigor, expertise, and thoughtfulness that goes into any and every experience we create. In other words, we wanted to show that while we don’t take ourselves too seriously, we take our work very seriously.
What I actually did:
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Content curation and development: I led the effort to identify and curate a list of activations (think interactive demos and experiences) from all across IBM. I also worked with each team to help present their activation in a way that would engage our key audiences and align with the broader themes and narratives of our presence.
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Creative copywriting throughout the space: If you saw a word anywhere in Brazos Hall during the five days we occupied it, there’s a 99% chance that I wrote it.
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Social and comms copy. Social media was a big part of our promotional strategy. I handled all of the copywriting for our social tiles, and also took the pen on a few other promotional materials, like a custom invite email to developers who were already using IBM Cloud, and a “5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Miss the IBM Experience” blog post.
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IBM Snapchat Takeover + media tours. When IBM hosts major events, we often feature them on our corporate social media accounts. Having led the content development for SXSW, I was asked to take over our Snapchat account for three days to help capture and document all the cool stuff that was happening in our space.
Check out more pictures from SXSW 2017 below!
