CJRW@SXSWi: Biz Stone of Twitter on Creativity, Success

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone talks creativity and defining success at South-By-Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas.

(Editor’s Note: Rob Anderson, director of content strategy for Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods advertising agency in Little Rock, is on the ground at South-by-Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas. He and his team are filing regular reports throughout the week on what’s hot at this influential annual conference. You can see his first report here.)

The weekend at SXSWi was filled with big workshops, big speakers and a lot of little panels, and all of it was packed with techies, entrepreneurs, marketers and Mad Men. 

Like Friday, “Big Data” and content ruled the days, but new technology for communicating and storytelling also received attention. 

Sure, there were Hollywood celebrities like Joel McHale (and the entire cast of “Community,” which is moving from NBC to Yahoo for another season), Ryan Gosling and Jessica Alba, but the focus was Silicon Valley celebrities like Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, CEO of Jelly Industries and entrepreneurial icon. 

Stone’s session, titled “Creativity and Redefining Success,” was a Q&A with Fast Company executive editor Noah Robischon, and the topics ranged from his thoughts on Twitter now, his ideas about the future of marketing and his proposed “new success metrics for capitalism.” 

Some of the highlights of the discussion included:

“The future of marketing is philanthropy” – Stone believes that the day is coming when brands and businesses will grab attention and customers through giving back. Already a popular approach for brands trying to connect with Millennials and make noise in social media, “cause marketing” will become the norm, said Stone, with brands and nonprofits teaming for mutual benefit. 

“In the future, $4 million of a $5 million marketing budget will go toward supporting a cause, and the remaining $1 million will be spent highlighting what you did for that cause,” Stone said. 

Emotional investment – Stone had only a few nuggets of advice for entrepreneurs. The most important thing, he said, is for those launching a business or building a product to be “emotionally invested” in their idea and mission, because it will help them ignore criticism and overcome the challenges that arise in bad times. 

Using his own firm, Jelly, as an example, Stone explained that entrepreneurs and creators should also be willing to pivot or shift focus if necessary, as long as it fits their high-level mission or philosophy. If a new business or product is struggling or seems stalled, Stone advised that the creators look hard at the data they have and see what part of the overall project is working and refocus on that. 

“The definition of success in capitalism needs three ingredients, instead of just one – financial success.” – While Stone acknowledges that financial success is still the key, he believes that it should be combined with some sort of positive social impact (either locally or globally) and a sense of “joy at work.” He believes that if a business venture doesn’t lead to all of these things, then it is a failure. 

Twitter trajectory – Stone wouldn’t discuss specifics about the company he is most associated with, Twitter. He pointed out that he is no longer involved with Twitter, but said he communicated and was generally pleased with the company’s current leadership. He admitted that he felt the company should do some things differently, but declined to offer details. 

“Mobile phones are the hyperlinks of humanity.” – Stone emphasized the importance of mobile for every business, because, quite simply, it’s how we all connect to each other and to the information we need or want. 

Here’s some additional highlights from a major weekend session on Big Data: 

The Big Data Myth – In a workshop titled “What Marketers Really Need to Know about Big Data,” Michael Wu, chief scientist at social software firm Lithium, described what he called the “Big Data Myth” that, “If you have a lot of data, you’re going to get a lot of information out of it.” Data is not the same as information, he explained, adding that raw data has a lot of “statistical redundancy” or the same information over and over. Not all of it is useful for getting information that might help solve a problem. 

Signal vs. Noise – “Big Data is very ‘noisy’ – 99.99999 percent of it is irrelevant,” said Wu. It’s noisy, he explained, because data is collected irrespective of a specific question or problem. Big Data technology captures and stores raw information and there’s a big gap between this collection and the insights businesses need. 

Data Done Well – Wu explained that building a data team is possible and can prove to be very useful for marketers and businesses. Done properly and well, data analytics can help companies adapt to changing market conditions and understand how to optimize their operations for continued success and growth. 

Next Time

Later today we’ll have the latest on new storytelling methods, the importance of content (and good writing) to product marketers and some key highlights from the Monday lineup. 

(For more, follow Rob’s team on Twitter at @RobWAnderson, @WeAreCJRW, @ZackHill, @LizzyMichael and @BryceParker.)