At SXSW, Apple schools the marketing experts | Hacker News Reader

At SXSW, Apple schools the marketing experts

cnet.com

19 pointsevo_98 comments

Can somebody explain to me what SXSW is? I was always under the impression that it was a music festival in Austin, but it sounds like over the last 3 years it's morphed into some sort of "social media" expo/convention.

Has the entire world gone completely insane? A huge, publicly traded, multi-national consumer electronics company opens a place for people to spend money, and this is the most memorable part of SXSW?

"Well, sonny-boy, let me tell you about the best SXSW ever! Apple opened one of their stores right in the festival and let me give them my money! It was great!"

It started as a music festival in the late 80s, though "music festival" doesn't really cover what it was even then.

It was from the start more of a showcase for indie bands to make their mark than a festival in the same sense as most other fests. Bands with little exposure (but hopefully much talent) would be invited by the curators, and reps from all the record labels would show up. It was a chance to make a name for yourself. There's also a music biz conference that goes along with it.

They eventually added a film festival, and it's become a launching pad for indie filmmakers in the same way the music side did. It's not Sundance, but in some circles it's even more influential as it doesn't back off from genre material. It also has a biz conference for film.

In the last 10 years or so, they started playing up the "interactive" side as well. Basically a conference for new media, internet startups, etc. That's been gaining ground and is now an influential event in that arena as well.

It seems like it's on the verge of being a little too big these days, with not entirely favorable comparisons to ComicCon becoming more popular. It might outgrow its usefulness in the next couple of years, but right now it seems to be on top of the world in several arenas.

> Can somebody explain to me what SXSW is?

The best succinct statement I've heard:

"SXSW is Spring Break for nerds"

This article is akin to being impressed if the LA Lakers got accepted to the NCAA tourney and ended up winning the whole thing. They're the Lakers, they're supposed to dominate a bunch of college teams.

I fail to see how its considered all that surprising when a company like Apple has a dominating performance at SXSW when they have access to more money and resources than any other companies present, arguably by far. Someone please help me understand. Thanks...

Ummm... IBM, MS, and Google are there as well, so they aren't the only ones present with deep pockets. They haven't done anything at SXSWi before that I am aware of.

It's amazing how SXSWi has grown into a legitimate conference as opposed to the poorly attended appendage to the Music and Film festival.

Not much here, Apple schools the marketing experts because they opened a store at an event and many people showed up.

This is called event marketing. You have a large number of people with similar interests and if they are your potential customers, you put yourself there.

The one thing Apple is great at is getting free press by keeping secrets, this article is a good example of that.

It's a shame what has happened to cnet, they used to have good tech content. Now they publish poorly written articles with catchy headlines to get clicks. From the looks of this article it seems like they also employ the same standards as the new AOL.

I really don't see what was so special about what Apple did ... there were lines outside of pretty much every Apple store in America to get the ipad 2 ...

They opened a temporary store right next to a conference that geeks (who happen to adore them and the ipad) are going to be in attendance and its supposed to be this jedi-esque marketing move?

Please.

This is a terrible article. Not only is it not "brilliant" and the thing that people will take away from SxSw, but it's also untrue. I'm at SxSw and went to the Apple store to check the hullabaloo yesterday and there was no line (afternoon).

So far, I think the thing that people will remember most is Marissa Mayer's talk on Google Location dominance.

Apple makes great products, but I don't see why the 2nd gen iPad is so sought after that anyone would spend an entire day of a festival they've spend thousands of dollars on waiting in line for it (other than to say they were waiting in line)

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