What to expect from speakers at SXSW 2022

Whether you’ll soon be soaking up the Austin, Texas, sun with breakfast tacos in hand or logging on with a marg from home, it’s SXSW szn. So we put together this guide for what to expect at 2022’s event.

The deets:

• Where: Austin, Texas, both online and IRL
• When: March 11–20
• Who: Speakers include household names like US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Jonathan Van Ness, and keynote speaker Lizzo. Many ad industry notables will be speaking, too, such as Check My Ads co-founders Claire Atkin and Nandini Jammi.

Zoom out: Ahead of the event, Marketing Brew spoke with a few speakers about not only their panels, but also which topics they expect to come up the most at SXSW 2022.

The creator economy

Before you give us your obligatory buzzword sigh + eye roll, hear us out: Panels on the topic look like they’ll cover a lot of ground, from crafting a “creator-first” policy to “how blockchain will reshape and rebalance the creator economy.”

Kristy Sammis, founder and co-CEO of influencer marketing agency Clever, is on one called Brands & Creators: How To Play By the FTC’s Rules.

“We have so many young, new, fresh creators who really know nothing about the legalities behind what they’re doing. This is really an important time to set the record straight,” Sammis told Marketing Brew, adding that while she needs to know these rules from an agency standpoint, her co-panelists will speak from a brand perspective, a legal perspective, and a creator perspective.

Sammis noted that she thinks the creator economy is being discussed more at this year’s SXSW than in years past simply because of how much it has grown in recent years. As her panel description points out, the influencer marketing industry is on track to be worth $15 billion in 2022.

“It’s just bigger than it used to be. It’s more pervasive than it used to be,” Sammis, who has been in the influencer marketing space since 2006, told us. When her agency started 13 years ago, she said, the industry still felt pretty small.

“Even when influencer marketing started to become a known term, it was still pretty niche,” Sammis continued. “I would not say that creator marketing is ‘niche’ any longer…it’s bigger than it’s ever been. And it’s not going anywhere.”

Samir Chaudry is a creator who is the co-founder of Colin and Samir, a YouTube channel dedicated to the creator economy. He is speaking on a panel called The Creator Economy & Brands: How to Build Trust. Chaudry told us that, throughout the pandemic, advertising dollars shifted to online creators because they reached a bigger audience with everyone stuck at home.

“Today, the intersection of film and tech is online creators, and that’s what South By is about,” Chaudry told us. “The opportunity is bigger than it ever has been today, in 2022, for online creators, and I think it’s only continuing to get bigger.”

The Metaverse™

“Of course, there’s going to be conversations about NFTs and blockchain, and the newest technologies,” Sammis told us. She’s not wrong—many of this year’s panels touch on those topics.

“I think what Web3 unlocks on the internet is an active participation in what you are experiencing, creating, or consuming,” Chaudry said, adding that he thinks Web3 convos are happening at this year’s SXSW because the barriers to entry for that “active participation” have lowered, whereas the roadmaps have multiplied.

Emily Ho, founder and chief strategist Authentically Social, a marketing consultancy specializing in size-inclusive women-owned brands, is speaking on the same panel as Sammis. She told us she’s figuring out how to split her time between the metaverse-oriented sessions and the creator economy ones.

“I feel like there’s so much knowledge that can be gleaned, because there’s such a huge variety of sessions that are on the schedule around those topics,” she told us, adding that Dolly Parton is even dropping NFTs at SXSW this year.

Less fluff, more serious stuff

Between continuing conversations around the Black Lives Matter movement, the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and more, “the tone and the tenor of the event is going to be different than it's ever been,” Sammis said. “I just know that there’s going to be a more somber and serious tone overall,” she told us, adding that she appreciates “that the organizers and the tracks are putting so much emphasis on social good.”

“We’re seeing really important social impact programming that needs to be there, needs to be taken seriously,” she continued, adding that South by Southwest came out “in no uncertain terms” in favor of supporting Ukraine and denounced Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s anti-trans order.

Ho told us that she’s personally bookmarked “several” of the many sessions about diversity, equity, and inclusion this year.

Chaudry told us that his hope for these types of conferences post-lockdown is that, by hearing so many different perspectives at once, attendees have an opportunity to accelerate awareness of more serious topics. Whether it’s “how we can find ways to actively help what’s happening in Ukraine, or find ways to learn about a more diverse set of creators and more diverse set of success stories—that’s going to be really helpful,” he said.