Time is a Flat Circle: Avoiding Extinction through Reinvention

On a call with a senior leader in our industry when talking about this moment we’re in she said “Time is a flat circle,” quoting Rust Cohle in True Detective, who was played of course by the legendary actor Matthew McConaughey.

Essentially it means everything we've ever done or will do, we're going to do over and over and over again. Or, if you want to think of it in more pessimistic terms, it means that humans don’t learn from their mistakes. We think the world revolves around us, we exist for “individuality,” but in reality we are just a species walking towards our extinction by putting maximum effort in avoiding that, knowing it’s unavoidable.

About sums it up right?

When I think about what is happening today and when I look back on the past four months, I am struck by how much change we have experienced, the extent to which we have endured and even embraced extraordinary levels of disruption, and the larger impact that this is having on how we think about the future. I’m exhausted, but I’m healthy. Wearing a mask seems perfectly acceptable to me. We will get through this. Please vote. :-)

Perhaps Rust is correct, perhaps we are going to continue to repeat the same mistakes, or that we are on a march towards extinction, but I have tried to use this time to explore new whitespaces and new opportunities in the hope that, even in a small way, we can challenge the way things are and perhaps even avoid our own extinction. We can do this through reinvention.

In less than four months my company has gone from running major in-person conferences around the world to hosting a four-week virtual conference called #SMWONE, which brought together over 10,000 digital marketers and hosted more than 170 hours of live programming. This was in May and we were at the beginning of a global pandemic and now it’s July and we are still very much in the eye of the COVID-19 storm. When this will end we do not know and I am past wondering when things will go back to normal. They won’t. They never will. We can’t predict the future, but we can shape it and that has been our focus over these past few months.

When I think about virtual conferences, the importance of creating hybrid-experiences, and the future of the Event Industry, I am struck by how little there is in the way of truly disruptive, original, or transformative thinking. I get it, we like normal and we want things to get back to the way things were, but this is not going to happen and we have to move towards a new future, which is unclear, uncertain, and a little bit scary.

My business has been sucker-punched by COVID-19. I have grieved for that business and I have now moved on. My live events business will come back, perhaps stronger and perhaps better than before, but for now, we are focused on something new, something which I am incredibly energized about and something that I am excited to share with you today.

I have for a long time been a Peloton user, an investor, a student of their business, and a highly engaged member of their rabid community of mega-fans. I am in awe of what they have built and back in 2010, I had the opportunity to interview their founder and CEO John Foley at our crowdfunding conference in New York City. When I spoke with him I was convinced that this was going to be a massively disruptive business. As a huge fan of Spin Cycling, but also as someone who derives little in the way of benefit from going to an in-person class, the model just made sense to me and I could see it was on a path towards global domination. I did not know how massive they would get, or how much they would inspire a whole new category of at-home fitness, but we are just at the beginning of that trend and we have a long way to go to really understand how big it might get.  

Back to the present, we’re still in the midst of COVID-19 and my business once again needs to pivot quickly to see our way through the storm and even come out the other side in a stronger and potentially more interesting place. As we evaluated our options and reflected, I kept coming back to Peloton, their 1 million strong community, their instructors who have reached celebrity status and the fact that people are motivated to join a class live or on-demand because the instructors are simply incredible, inspiring and because they provide the necessary motivation to get off your ass and invest in your health and fitness.

What if there was a Pelton for professionals? What if we could provide a platform that offers live and on-demand programming that helps people in a marketing exercise their minds and become the best versions of themselves? What if we could provide a platform for the smartest thought-leaders in our industry to help them build an audience and reach an elevated level of status in their careers? The Peloton for professionals? Really? Yep.

Introducing SMW+, brought to you by Social Media Week, a live and on-demand video streaming service for marketers that aims to help professionals advance their careers and their brands.

SMW+ will provide live programming led by some of the world’s greatest thought leaders, innovators, and marketing practitioners. At launch, we’re thrilled to welcome over 20 incredible presenters including:

?? Orchid Bertelsen, Head of Digital Innovation at Nestlé USA, will lead insightful conversations on driving innovative change from within organizations in “The Intrapreneurial Mindset.”

?? Raashi Rosenberger, Global Brand Marketing, Consumer Apps at Google, will help drive meaningful conversations around neuroscience with storytelling.

?? Joe Wadlington, Global Creative Lead at Twitter, will offer best practices for becoming a more creative short-form copywriter and tips for participating in cultural conversations.

?? Sabena Gupta, Global Brand Marketing Lead at Amazon, will lead a session centered on purposeful and values-based marketing and how organizations can create meaningful intentions today and beyond.

?? Mario Moreno, Head of Marketing at H&M, will host a series around building ambassadors out of influencers including how to lean into emerging platforms like TikTok.

??Nue Agency’s Jesse Kirshbaum will host Beats, Bytes and Brands” a deep dive into the music vertical exploring why this aspect of culture is vital for brands and marketers today.

Our presenters are so excited to connect with you and share their knowledge, especially Marcus Collins, Lecturer of Marketing at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business who said, "I am beyond excited about SMW+! What a perfect opportunity to create and curate content for marketers, by marketers!” 

SMW+ launches at a prescient moment in our industry where everything seems to have been turned upside down. Marketers are looking for leadership and direction and SMW+ will serve as a compass that will help us navigate through this moment and provide an essential place to engage and connect.

Our mission is to empower marketers to become the best versions of themselves, and SMW+ will be a powerful vehicle for us to fulfill this. We’re living in an exceptional moment in our history and if we want to fulfill our obligation as marketers and drive business and social impact, we need to reinvent ourselves, our industry and our role, and impact in the world. SMW+ will provide marketers with the understanding and tools to reinvent themselves and drive change for their businesses.

“We’re proud to be part of the launch of SMW+ and to share learnings from our global Media Genius work,” said Chief Innovation Officer at Weber Shandwick, Chris Perry. "We're experiencing a media reset moment — one characterized by new formats, sources, and cultural icons, and accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Bettering our collective understanding of the shifting landscape has never been more important."

SMW+ will be available to subscribers and enterprise members, with live programming officially launching on August 4th. The benefits of becoming a subscriber include access to live programming, the on-demand library, and the opportunity to connect with thousands of other digital marketers. Subscriptions start as low as $39 per month.

To request an invite to the platform and for more information, news and updates about SMW+ visit the website smw.plus and follow SMW+ on Twitter and Instagram.

Thanks for reading this far, thank you to my incredible team who have once again demonstrated an extraordinary amount of strength, positivity, and resilience during a very difficult time and to our community for inspiring us to think big. We honor you and we serve you and we cannot wait to welcome you into the SMW+ community over the coming months.