SXSW 2025, Day 2: Looking beyond the obvious

How can we differentiate ourselves and cut through the noise to actually innovate? That question appears in more and more events, and SXSW is looking into finding answers. The event’s second day looks into what customer-centricity and customer demands look like in 2025, how to (and why) reach one of the most promising target audiences of today, and more about connecting with customers and brands.

We also had the chance of hearing straight from futurist Amy Webb what are the tech trends that will headline this year, as she launched her Emerging Tech Trend Report in Austin, and to catch an encore of one of most renowned talks from yesterday, by Google’s Chief Innovation Evangelist Dr. Frederik G. Pferdt. Check out more about South by’s Day 2:

Navigating the “liminal space” of today

Most of South by’s speakers so far have mentioned how the times we are living in are challenging in a lot of ways — many of which we can’t even explain, as Amy Webb put it at the beginning of her session. She calls these times as “The Beyond”, a liminal space between the world before and the world that is being created as a result of science, technology, and the decisions that we are making today.

Considering Multimodal Language Models (MLLMs) and Embodied AI — Artificial Intelligence applied to machines we can interact with, such as robots — as some of the main paths AI is moving towards, Webb also presents the concept of Living Intelligence (LI): systems that can sense, learn, adapt, and evolve, made possible through Artificial Intelligence, advanced sensors, and biotechnology — an ecosystem of interconnected agents, machines, and biological entities.

The futurist believes that LI “will shape the future decisions of every leader going forward”, accelerating segments such as energy, biotechnology and, of course, robotics — which connects to MIT Technology Review’s own technology report presented yesterday, featuring robots that can help in several different ways instead of mastering just one specific task as one of the most relevant ways in which AI can improve our daily routines and work lives.

Instant payments are the future of the financial industry

The Emerging Tech Trend Report features a section about the future of financial services, with risk modeling and fraud prevention as major topics: Webb and her team see great potential in Quantum Computing (a subject which will feature heavily in upcoming SXSW days) and in digital identity as a key aspect of security.

As for payments, the highlighted trend is something we have been talking about for a long time here at PagSeguro: instant payments. Citing Brazil’s very own Pix as an example of the potential for mass adoption held by instant payments, the report also cites the challenges that arise from instant payment processing:

As real-time payments become the norm, businesses and banks will need to adapt to faster transaction speeds, new compliance requirements, and shifting revenue models. (...) On one hand, instant payments provide a competitive edge, reducing settlement risks and improving customer satisfaction. On the other, legacy infrastructure, processing speed limitations, and regulatory compliance create significant barriers.

The full 2025 Emerging Tech Trend Report can be downloaded here.

Understanding and valuing your customers

Another recurring theme at this year’s South by is longevity and the new needs that come up as humans start to live longer and better. One of these is the strengthening of what is today the core target-audience for many beauty and self-care companies: women in their midlife.

Women over 50 years old hold a spending power of USD 15 trillion, but are still a demographic severely underserved and overlooked by brands. With women of all ages making 85% of all consumer purchasing decisions, it’s clear that companies should be looking into this group — but, to do that successfully, it’s essential to truly understand what they are looking for. Broadening the conversation, this goes for all businesses that target end-users: their needs and demands are changing fast. Are you keeping up with them?

Going back to the subject of women in their midlife and how they connect to beauty brands, the key insight from South by is that they are now seeking optimization, not improvement. The beauty industry has historically been “problem-solution”-focused, that is, identifying a customer problem and coming up with a solution for it. Today’s industry is more focused on supporting customers’ beauty rituals, self-care routines, and empowerment instead of “fixing a problem” — it’s fundamental that companies stay in tune with these cultural changes.

Shopping in the times of AI

Another way in which customer-facing businesses have been “forced” to adapt is in finding the new role of physical stores in the world of e-commerce — which now has a powerful ally in Artificial Intelligence.

As presented by Vice President of Consumer Shopping Lilian Rincon, Google has been heavily investing in tools that improve and expand customer experience, both online and offline. After all, one of the most important things today’s merchants must understand and apply is that they are the same: “Ensuring that you have the same experience online and offline is essential, since for the customer, it’s all exactly the same”, shares Sapna Parikh, Chief Digital Officer of Kendo Brands at LVMH.

For example, today it is very usual for a customer to walk into a physical beauty store, find an interesting product and look it up online to read reviews, check prices in other places, find different shades. A Google tool that supports that is Lens, which allows the customer to take a photo of the physical product and let Google do the rest. The company goes much beyond, though: Rincon presented a new feature that uses AI to search online not for a product you saw in person, but that you imagine — if you know in your head exactly the red work backpack you want but can’t seem to find anywhere, you can describe it to Google, which would create an image of it using GenAI and then look for similar matches in online stores.

In a panel completed by Dawn Mai, COO of luxury fashion brand Simkhai, the shopping and consumer experts agree that innovation comes along to improve, not to replace the current shopping experience: AI can help merchants become truly omnichannel, streamlining internal processes, and increase personalization.

At the end of the day, as Mai put it, “only the store has that human connection” and, ultimately, “you cannot automate the creative process or replace human connections”. With physical stores becoming more and more a place for experiences, special events, and a way to directly interact with a brand and their products, they definitely still have a place in the future of commerce.

Creating the future we want

Speaking of future, we could not finish today’s highlights without mentioning Google’s Chief Innovation Evangelist Dr. Frederik G. Pferdt inspiration talk. In an event that is so focused on trends and on looking beyond, there has been a lot of conversations about how to look into the future — and for Pferdt, we should not try to predict, but rather to imagine the future.

By envisioning the future we want — for ourselves, for our businesses, for our industries — we are more motivated and focused to actually try to build it, which he sees as more beneficial than “trying to make predictions that most likely will not come true”.

In this context, he positions the concept of mindstate, which can be more flexible and intentional than our mindset — which, in the speaker’s opinion, is harder to change. “Don’t just wait for the future to happen to you; make it happen every single moment”, he provokes.

With that, we close our coverage of South by’s Day 2. Once again, we hope you’ve found our insights and analysis of today’s conversations relevant and thought-provoking, and that you come back tomorrow for Day 3 of SXSW 2025!

by Mariana González, Content Lead at PagSeguro International

Austin, Texas, March 8th 2025