The red line is clear, and everywhere… here is a summary:

Liquid content – It’s about liquid content, content that gently swooshes around the consumer, like a hot bath on a cold day. Find out who the consumer is, detail his whereabouts, passions, worries, and views through hard data. Go find, curate and create content that bridges the gap between the consumer’s content consumption and your corporate message. Repurpose content that is created by your consumer. The superior stage of liquid content is interaction.

Platform agnostic – Way too often campaigns are targeted to and tailored for a certain platform. But the math is simple: if your target is not on Facebook, your Facebook campaign will no reach him. Period. Simple. True. Good campaigns bring the content mountain to Mohamed, not vice versa.

Any screen, all screens – the power of Liquid is carried by intelligent and responsive design. If it does not work on all screens the consumer might have access to, if it’s not designed well, ultimately it will not be overly successful.

Follow me – good content flows downhill, together with the consumer to the sea. To put in another metaphor: good content is the river that carries the consumer to your harbor. Good content follows you to the ultimate destination: the transaction (be it behavioral change, sale, …). So the impact of liquid can and should be measured, its ROI captured in data.

Touch Points are dead. Touch Waves are in – to be fully liquid, we need to stop seeing every touch point as a singleton, and deal with a multitude of touch points as a connection wave. Wave thinking guarantees the creation of a communication pattern, carrying liquid content over a multitude of touch points to the consumer, ultimately guiding the consumer into harbor.

Confucius knew it already centuries ago: to carry the swimming man, you want to be the water, not the rock….

The Volkswagen Darth Vader Kid was cool. But, as a Trekkie fan, I was nicely amused by this new Audi commercial, starring old Spock and new Spock. Both Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto playfully mental chess-ing a nice game: marketing as it can be . With two Spocks trying to outsmart/outdo each other, good old Leonard Nimoy cursing (and losing his temper), and: best of all, an unexpected declamation of”The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.” O, and did I mention Audi?

Johnson is convinced that the automation and industrialization of the media and the thoughtless consumption of it creates an obesity based on information overload and mass-ignorance. He advises a better “diet”.  “There is a strange shift” he claims: “In the past, ignorance was stooled on a blatant lack of information, now an uncontrolled flood of information triggers the same thing.”  He points an accusing finger to some of the bigger thinkers in society, journalists and influencers who are more obsessed by increasing clicks and hits and likes than focusing on the quality and trustworthiness of the info that gets released. “For publications, it seems that concentrating on quality is a lost effort: clearly, it does not pay…” That is why he believes we have a collective responsibility in keeping it healthy: “if we all go on an info diet, the media world will be less obese”.

In his book, he gives a clear path towards a healthy content lifestyle: he urges everyone to write at least 500 words before breakfast: “Be a creator. Be a producer. Set yourself in the state of mind of someone who has something to share. Don’t start your day as a content junkie.” He also advocates to time the periods of media consumption, to switch mail and mobile off on set times, to “go of the web for a couple of hours.” In reducing the time spent immersed in information, he believes we will become more critical on what we consume. “We eat three times a day, do the same thing for media consumption: schedule it!”

Johnson also pleads for more clever content consumption: who is feeding you content, and why. Are they left, right? Is the information biased? Can we verify? “Be a conscious consumer of information, seek information rather than blind affirmation of beliefs you already hold to be true. We need an information diet for more critical, healthier media that starts informing again instead of  persuading. We need this diet to re-cultivate a culture of healthy suspicion and common sense.”

The wow goes to the nice idea, the better implementation, the smart strategy.  And… that is a good thing. Social Media is getting mature, it’s part of peoples reality.  People use it to find their way around, locate sessions, comment on content, book cars and taxis and hotels, hunt for food.

The different applications on the smartphones are used, often on daily basis. There might be fewer applications in average per phone than a couple of months ago, but the applications that make it to the phones’ homepage are truly used, truly used, and become a integral part of peoples life. Most people even forget that the app or service they are using was once called Social Media. It turned into the stuff they use every day: tissues, car keys, chewing gum, twitter, facebook, google maps, foursquare.

Social media is mainstream, it is everywhere, and it slipped into people’s lives and became quietly ubiquitous. As people do not get excited about car keys and bottle openers any more, they do not get easily excited about social media anymore either.

Focus goes clearly on functionality: does it work, will it work better, smoother, quicker? Will it interact with my social ecosystem? Does it link to my social networks? Do I really need it? Does it enhance my life?

The crowd became picky, asking for proof before want. Having new is not cool anymore, having best in class is. That forces developers and strategists to shift down a gear, and to push the pedal to the metal: that download from the app store will from now on have to be earned. The days of cool and shallow are over. Social media, social media application need to become relevant. Relevancy just became the new black.

But, then comes the gazillion dollar question: How do you get your campaign snowballing, how can we make your movie get a viral twist, how can we make your idea more even infectious? One movie gets trashed without mercy with only a couple of hundreds of views; the other one brings piles of cash, and a lot of fame. Every marketer, every agency, and every brand would gladly give and arm, a leg and a piece of a kidney to get the magic formula to guaranteed viral in a heartbeat.

Comes in Jonah Berger, professor of marketing at Wharton Business School. He wrote a book Contagious: Why Things Catch On,  that packs some real good insights based on more than 10-years of relentless research. Berger for sure is a very patient man. He concludes that for an idea, product or movie to get contagious, infectious or viral, it is not so much a question of luck, but a matter of careful planning, psychological understanding of the audience, and a healthy dose of science.

In one of the most talked about sessions here at SxSW, Berger demonstrates that getting widely spread, requires to look way broader than just at the usual influencers. While influencers certainly help driving the message home, and are primordial in helping you create precious awareness, they do not have that much to do with your campaign going viral. Real contagious content spreads like a wildfire, regardless of who is at the sending end.  Therefore, there is a much better pay off concentrating on the target audience and the message, than on intermediate messengers like influencers.

Berger also puts a lot of focus on the social currency. People only share what will make them look good, funny, ad rem, connected and smart. All the other stuff gets highly appreciated, but not shared. Campaigns should be calibrated to the impact they have on the social currency of the people likely to share the message. Worth of mouth has become a unique way to make impressions, and build a personal brand.  No-one sane will share things that might harm his/her carefully constructed image.

A third trigger is the element of contradictory controversy. The message needs an unexpected outcome. Something that triggers an alarm bell in the brain, something that is not following the highly predictability path that we are already plotting in our brain, Contagious content takes an unexpected side road, and triggers our interest, and makes a long lasting impression.

Look at this ad for Panda cheese. Pandas are always cute, right? 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, it looks like a fair share of developments in digital and social technology are finally getting out of the fluffy all virtual zone, but are rapidly linked to what they can do to enhance matters in this real, mostly physical world. Digital and social experiences are great, but for brands they only become interesting if they merge seamlessly with the real world., preferably driving sales.

Nike’s running shoes and application are a great example. How to build a community in a most individual sport: running. Adding real life sensors to real life shoes, operated by real life runners, and using the collected data in an online community where people can compare, share, and compete makes a social media experience very physical.

What Dassault systems is doing together with the Harvard University is also promising: get all the physical data of real places, like Paris, or the Giza pyramids documented in 3D, in the Cloud, man it with avatars, and invite schools to use this space technology to offer their real life students a perfect immersion in history.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another good example is enhanced and augmented reality, build into fashion wear.  Google Glass comes as a pair of spectacles (sort of ), that  overlays your true view with all kinds of digital data. Offering the same technology Apache fighter helicopter pilots have been enjoying for some time now to everyone opens exciting new possibilities.  @JasonSilva, recumbent eidetic brain, energy bulb, futurist and philosopher raved on the Google Glass possibilities naming it  ‘a total paradigm shift and ‘one of the first examples of the convergence of the digital and human space in a way that is not intrusive’. Virtual data possibilities in real life through Google Glass are endless: from simply finding directions, accessing social network updates, weather, traffic and temperature, facial recognition and identification …

The real world is being touched and transformed by virtual and social technology more quickly and more radically than natural evolution itself and it seems only the beginning.  For brands, facing these exponential changes requires the willingness to let go of the obvious, and start making smart educated bets in expanding their marketing, communications and connecting strategies, looking for convergence with relevant digital, social and virtual technologies.

A clear path is slowly showing: it’s not about the web anymore, not about location, not about sharing. Gone are the sessions on content, community building, endless apps… it’s not even about networking or hardware. It’s about changing habits, changing ways of thinking, changing ways of interacting. It’s about finding ways to deal with a rapidly emerging phenomenon: the connected consumer.

Big thinkers point it out: from the introduction of the web, over BBS and social media, digital communication is becoming an integral part of how we communicate as a species. We communicate as hard and as much on digital devices, email, social media and chat as we do in real life.   The web hosts our friends, Google is an extension of our memory, and the cloud harbors our data. Slowly the bits and bytes are becoming an integral part of our being human.

People are connected to the internet through small, handheld devices that have access to more processing power than the multi-million dollar computers of a decade ago, and pack more intelligence and communication power than the president of the United States a decade ago. Bluetooth headsets allow smooth in-ear communication, and open the way to voice controlling most intelligent systems of a car, a phone, an office, a home. Intelligent vocal interfaces like Apples Siri allow access to the countless petabytes of information freely available on the web, AI -connected systems like IBM’s Watson understand human language to perfection. Slowly, traditional interfaces like mouse and keyboards are disappearing.  Lights go on with a snap of fingers, smart TV’s controlled with small hand signals.

Where is the computer in your car? Your car is the computer, your living room becoming so connected and intelligent that it adapts to, and anticipates your every move.

Your shoes send data of your working out sessions to your personal trainer in the cloud, proximity systems give you information on your contextual environment, opening exponential possibilities to interact with shops in your neighborhood,  including getting rear time feedback on where the best food is, rated by your trusted friend.

Information on products, buildings, weather, stock exchange, traffic, directions and people near you is being streamed to consumers in real time, all the time. It gets displayed on retina sharp smart touchscreens, or the fancy augmented reality Glass from Google. Your personal information systems are connected with the plethora of intelligent sensor devices of the Internet of Things.

The consumer and his digital shadow (the avatar) are becoming Siamese twins. The consumer gets connected, and if Darwin and Kurzweil are right, there is no way back.

Agencies and their clients have claimed for decades that it is all about reaching the audience. Reach and GRP’s. But the audience is slowly but steadily digitizing itself, becoming part of a virtual, augmented self that is truly, surely and stubbornly undividable from the traditional self. This trend is not only unstoppable,   all data show it is accelerating at exponential speeds. To keep up with its target audience,  the whole of the communications industry with their market dollar spending clients will have to re-invent itself to be able to continue to find relevant touch points.  Slowly evolving will not cut the cake, disruption and radical change will be needed to follow the consumers to their hybrid lairs…

And… I met him at breakfast. Meeting Chairman Bruce is like getting your brain upgraded with bubbly things.  “I’m glad I do not have to consult brands these days on how to deal with the fast changing concepts of today. I could have consulted Nokia. It would not have done them any good’.

Sterling sees only one option for brands to stay afoot in the game: agility and flexibility. Social media and the steampunk  metaverse are becoming more and more prominent in today’s society, and sterling thinks that assuming it will ease down, or go away is foolish: ‘It’s only the beginning. Social media is as big a thing as the internet ever was. It’s changing everything it touches.’  He sees a clear connecting in fast moving hardware, changing habits, and endless software possibilities “Soon, the furniture, the house, will be your computer. People will not have interfaces, people will ask to have things, and their environment will react.”’

Only when brands are prepared to stop thinking static, and only when they are prepared to re-invent themselves every morning, will they survive. ‘It’s like living in a cataclysm zone. What you build today can be gone with the flood tomorrow. Rebuild, or vanish’.  Brands that are willing to continuously rethink their ways in connecting to their markets will stand a chance: ‘we’re talking massive changes. Gadgets like telephones will cease to exist. We will be connected to our environment; we will be part of this metaverse. Find out as as brand how to deal with that.’

Knowing that Bruce Sterling always is a decade or two ahead, there still might be time….

Click here to view the embedded video.

And then, you need to see the crowd flocking around astronauts Ron Garan, Nicholas Skytland and John Yembrick . Nothing beats an astronaut. You could see the eyes of all men glow with excitement, the eyes of the kids with wonder and awe, the short skirted SxSW girls with desire… astronauts. The last super heroes have come down from their daily space explorations at NASA, to mingle with us common mortals.

NASA is prominently present at SxSWi. After star-space, the social space seems to be the universe that fits the Space Agency like a glove. While most brands still are struggling with the idea of getting away from their corporate logos online, and take on a more human identity online, NASA is way out there, miles ahead of the curve.

NASA is without a doubt one of the most advanced social media players. Every single mission gets its own social universe. The Curiosity robot jeep is happily tweeting from the red dust sandy heaven of Mars, you can interact with the Hubble telescope, tweet with astronauts in the Space Station and talk with mission control. William Shatner regularly talks with the new Captain Kirks circling around our little blue planet, giving them some wise Federation advice.

NASA’s social media efforts keep space exploration at the very heart of the population, and make the giant leap between humans and astronauts melt away like a Blue Cheese in a microwave.  It also proves that daring to make your social interactions more tongue-in-cheek, funny, human, honest and character-profiled pays off big time.

My guide was Alice, a 12 year old Space Camper. Her eyes were blazing with Space Holy Fire. She will be the captain of the ship that will save the population of Earth just before The Big One hits. I’m sure. Nothing beats an astronaut.

I’m not taking any chances, I’m securing my seat in Alice’s rocket. I’m following her on Twitter.

Silva described in the fastest English this side of the asteroid belt that the world we live in today leaps through an exponential progression of technology. Tech is killing the perceived time lag between the imaginable (what we can imagine) and that what we are able to create:  ‘We are rapidly converging to become a civilization of networked minds that will transcend all previous limits. As Erik Davis wrote in Techgnosis, -When everything becomes linked with everything else, matter becomes mind- ‘

His ideas certainly match nicely with Kurzweil’s exponentiallity, and with the incredible 3D  printing rage that seems to have taken over Austin Texas by storm this year. When an idea can be printed, in 3D… the leap between mind and matter becomes very very small indeed, and one can see how this will dramatically change the world we live in.

‘With the coming overlapping revolutions in biotechnology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, the instruments to remake the world will be in everybody’s hands.’

Jason Silva believes the challenge for people and brands is to stop thinking linear, but to start thinking exponentially. Exponential thinking is parallel, and allows individuals and brands alike to recombine fast moving different ideas, coming from different disciplines. Embracing current and future possibilities across a plethora of different specialties and darker corners of science will allow surviving and excelling in a world where nothing can be taken for granted anymore.

On the marketing and media place, Silva notices in the video-interview I had with him that “attention” is becoming a currency, an endangered species, a new limited resource. The ability to capture and catch people’s interest in a brands conversation will depended on how exponential that brand is willing to think and act. Old school media, where we put everything in boxes and pre-chewed messages will definitely not get us in the charts anymore.

Click here to view the embedded video.