Here's What Top Marketers Learned at SXSW 2025

Yahoo

17-03-2025

South by Southwest brings nearly half a million people to the city of Austin, Texas, each spring for its sprawling series of conferences and festivals. For many marketing professionals, it's a tentpole event on par with CES or Cannes Lions-but offering a different audience and focus.
While CES showcases futuristic tech and serves as a jumpstart to the calendar year, SXSW has a culture-focused component that gives marketers more time to network, explore, listen to music, and catch up with industry colleagues.
For agencies, it's still a client-focused affair-but with an arguably more fun backdrop than the Las Vegas Strip. It's also ahead of Cannes Lions, where marketers take the temperature of different industry trends and determine which predictions made at CES are proving true.
Throughout the week and after the final day of SXSW on March 15, ADWEEK asked marketing and advertising leaders to share their learnings, takeaways, and general impressions from the 2025 conference and festival. Here's what they said:
Paulie Dery, chief marketing officer, AG1
It's not the panels, it's not the parties. It's not the self promotion or the self pity. It's the people that make a great SXSW. And the best people are still coming to Austin.
I was pleased to see accessibility efforts like ASL interpreters and closed captioning in Understood.org's official session. However, there's an untapped opportunity to accommodate the one in five people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD, who might find events like SXSW overwhelming. Sensory-friendly environments, like quiet rooms, and clear wayfinding throughout downtown Austin could significantly enhance the conference experience.
This is where trends happen, where they originate, still. Culture can get shaped at [SXSW], and we want to be a part of that. We think we're doing it-we think [the Whataburger Museum of Art] is really cool and something we want the world to see and we want to share. By doing it here versus just setting setting it up in a random convention center in some town, we think it just delivers stronger cultural relevance that we can continue to build off of.
Three key themes stood out to me: 1.) The return of immersive storytelling; 2.) The creator economy continues to advance, with brands shifting dollars from other channels while simultaneously exploring new models and longer-term partnerships to help mitigate risk; and 3.) AI has already started to change how humans (and enterprises) approach daily tasks. We can learn from previous transformative technologies like the intersection of mobile and social to help us forecast the more profound impacts that AI will have on human evolution.
[At SXSW], what I'm seeing our clients doing is brand building. Their personal brands, being on panels and then the brand activations. For me, this is about being where my clients are.
I am a big fan of blockchain, and I think that some of the attributes of that technology allow us to provide super fans ownership. Not through stock, but through marketing to become part of the brand and advise the brand and create a two-way conversation about the brand. That's a different kind of loyalty. I want to move us all from purchase loyalty through discount programs to earned loyalty because you love what the brand stands for.
Brand purpose was talked about more this year than in years past. Companies that unapologetically deliver on brand promises will succeed. During my time at SXSW, I met with senior leaders across the aisle and across industries-challenging them to use 'their privilege' and to join me in addressing inequities across the U.S. We need it now more than ever.
SXSW underscored the importance of conversations that drive innovation and cultural change. These prompt us to move from 'should we' to 'how we?' From talking to action. We're demonstrating this through accelerating materialization initiatives-73% of our products now utilize at least 90% recycled stainless steel-plus developing innovative partnerships with scaled and like-minded organizations such as the PGA Tour. For Stanley 1913, walking our talk must be our most meaningful contribution.
This year's SXSW felt more intimate-in the best way. As a local, it's always great to connect and host people when they come to our hometown. But looking around, it's clear brands have an opportunity to bring back the buzzworthy activations that once lit up Austin. On the content front, the smartest brands aren't just pushing content or focusing on creators-they're meeting audiences where they are and curating the right conversations. This must be the goal for all of us.
I did see more hesitation and trepidation from leaders across the board in answering questions around DEI this year. I witnessed this firsthand, in one-on-one discussions, at events and on the stage. It was a topic no one wanted to touch. We need to continue to do the work and stay the course. Imagine if more brands did this in 2025.
The need for personalization and human control over data usage and AI oversight was a recurring theme at SXSW 2025. SXSW 2025 also reinforced the evolving role of purpose-driven brands. I feel inspired by Intrepid's ability to show up well because in-person, real-life experiences built around community and connection will be very much in demand in an increasingly artificial world. We saw it in our main stage panel on the Sunday as well as in all of our meetings with leaders who are getting to know our brand.