Is the UK media industry excited about SXSW London?

South by Southwest (SXSW) is bringing its celebration of film, music, business and technology to Shoreditch, East London, in June.

What does the UK media industry think about the arrival of the festival-cum-conference? We hadn’t heard many people talking about it, so we decided to be proactive and ask our network.

Jonathan Emmins
Founder and global chief executive officer
Amplify

Adland has always had a tendency to be inward looking, benchmarking creativity purely against other brands’ work. Whereas in reality, brands are only one source of inspiration in a world where myriad forms of entertainment compete for audience attention. And yet it makes much better sense, both on a personal and business level, to seek inspiration from wider culture, identifying those places to play where brands can, at a bare minimum, be additive and, at best, create culture. By bringing various worlds such as creativity, tech and storytelling together, and more importantly, by looking at the exciting points of convergence, SXSW London is a rallying cry to the marketing and media industry to look beyond what’s just in front of us.