Seven’s CMO Mel Hopkins has warned the industry to not “throw stones” at the the first SXSW Sydney if things aren’t “perfect”.
“I think our job as an industry is to champion this [SXSW] and not fall into the trap of throwing stones if it’s not 100 per cent perfect. It’s never been done out of out of Austin and I think it’s going to be brilliant. Our job is just to keep pushing it forth for the coming years,” she told B&T.
In terms of just how big this is for the industry, Hopkins didn’t mince her words – “this is f*cking huge,” she responded.
With global household names such as Nicole Kidman, Baz Luhrmann, and Charlie Brooker attending, it’s hard to argue with her.
Seven has gone all in in celebrating the global festival of creativity. Its temporary structure Seven House – set in Tumbalong Park – is one of the festival’s largest structures.
For Seven, it was important to grab the opportunity presented by the festival, Hopkins said.
“In Austin, one of the really big things [about SXSW] is that you get to interact with the brand in a more informal sort of scenario and situation. South by Southwest is a week-long event and we wanted our upfronts to last a week. So that’s why we decided it was important to build a house. It’s being constructed in line with our tagline – that’s massive”.
The house can host up to 250 people and is spread across two floors. The downstairs floor is available from around 09:30 am to around 19:00 with guests able to grab refreshments (including Tim Tams) and network.
There’s also an exclusive suite of informative programmes and a daily happy hour running from 17:00 to 19:00 (yes you read that right, daily!).
To come up with the programme it was important to balance the needs of Seven’s stakeholders and audience, alongside the themes of the festival Hopkins said.
“The house is a microcosm of what’s happening across South by Southwest but it also includes topics that we know our clients and our audiences and our stakeholders are interested in”.
One of the key topics to look out for is an event on Thursday at 10:30 a.m. which looks at how audiences can be predicted using data bricks, Lucio Ribeiro, director of marketing digital and innovation at Seven said.
“Datbricks is the new darling of global audiences in terms of predictive analytics,” he said.
The session will see experts “talk specifically about how you work around predictive audiences and predictive behavior,” he said.
There is also a session on the future of the sport, he said, adding that “we believe that sports have a big collaboration around viewership”.
You can see the full schedule here:
