Deutsch LA’s Invention Strategy team journeyed to South by Southwest 2012 to document the birth of over 100 new digital startups. Following the conference, the team monitored each startups' social mentions and press, along with cataloguing their feature set, user base, and underling social technologies. This research has culminated in a 12-page report, free to download, that identifies the key trends and opportunities that marketers should be focused on in their work for the year ahead.

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VOLUME 01, MA 2012
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CREATED BY Deutsch LA
Deutsch LA’s Invention Strategy team journeyed to South by Southwest 2012
to document the birth of over 100 new digital startups. What follows is an
exploration into the emerging trends and lessons, culled from that adventure,
that brand marketers can apply to their own businesses.
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ABOUT THIS REPORT
The discipline of Invention Strategy was created at
Deutsch LA with the mission to solve complex business START-UPS CONSIDERED
problems through means that fall outside the typical mold FOR THIS RESEARCH:
of advertising deliverables. Our team is charged with
5Degrees - AdGlue - Aglocal - Apptopia - Arqball -
developing disruptive offerings, relationships, and business
Banjo - Bloomboard - Bodimojo - Book Brewer -
models for our clients and for ourselves. To that end, we BrandYourself - Brass Monkey - BuyVite - BuzzData -
attended SXSW 2012 to study this year’s crop of fledgling Cellscope - CFA - CompathMe - ConditionOne -
digital start-ups. Crowded Comics - Dead Social - Echoer - FitOrbit -
Forecast - Funf Project - Gauss - Geeklist - Getwear -
Giftiki - Ginger.io - Glancee - Glomper - Goodzer -
When we study start-ups, we examine their offerings GooseChase - Grandstand - GeurillaApps - Highlight -
through two strategic lenses: Hipswap - Hoot.Me - Jiff - Just.Me - Kiip - KULA
Causes - Learnboost - Lemur IMS - Local Wiki -
Localmind - Medify - Meeps - Meexo - Modo Labs -
1) Start-ups represent emerging bets at the MoPix - Mowgli Games - NextDrop - Nowspots -
intersection of technology and culture. Any product Offermation - OneID - OneSchool - Parking Panda -
Peekseed - Personal - Picle - Pixable - Prism Skylabs -
that a company produces is inherently a prediction for the
RAVN - ReferralBonus - Rock Your Block - Roximity -
future. The start-up community, especially at SXSW, SaneBox - SceneTap - Scrible - Sensecast - Shapeways -
represents a rare opportunity to view hundreds of those Shelby.TV - Shortlist - Simplee - Sizeseeker - Sonar -
predictions in a single location, all vying for attention and Sourcemap - SpotFlux - Springpad - StitchLabs -
Switchcam - TappedIn - Taskrabbit - Thirst Labs -
adoption. Toopher - Trapit- Tugg - Uberlife - Umbel - Veenome -
Verbling - VitalClip - Vitzu Technologies - Votifi -
2) Clusters of start-ups help to identify what’s broken Voxio - Vsnap - Wanderfly - Wemo Media - We Video -
Whodini - WooCommerce - Zaarly - Zamp - Zeel - Zero
in current industries and where there’s opportunity for Desktop
disruption. If we look at a specific industry, say healthcare,
and what problems are being consistently targeted by start- ABOUT DEUTSCH LA:
ups in that industry, we can begin to identify opportunities
and threats for our clients in those industries. Deutsch LA is one of the most well-respected
and successful integrated advertising and digital
agencies in the United States. Deutsch LA produces
We’ve structured this report based on those two strategic award-winning and results oriented work for clients like
lenses. In addition, in the final section, we’ve included our Volkswagen, Sony PlayStation, Dr Pepper, and HTC.
recommendations to brand marketers based on the Deutsch LA is at its core a business building machine.
It's not just about making ads. It is about developing
analysis in this report. We hope you find this useful and,
strategically sound, insightful creative that connects
of course, we’d be more than happy to speak to your with people at the right moment in the right
organization more deeply about environment. Deutsch LA specializes in Digital, Design,
our recommendations. Media Planning and Buying, Search, PR, Experiential,
and Data Analytics.
Thank you.
New Business:
Bud Caddell Chad Saul – Chad@deutschinc.com
VP, Invention Strategy Careers:
Bud.Caddell@deutschinc.com Lionel Carreon – Lionel.Carreon@deutschinc.com
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OUR METHODOLOGY
The South by Southwest Interactive conference has At the event, our team divided our time between
grown into the definitive launching pad for the Startup Village and various panels to learn
startups. SXSW attendees are an attractive user base about current trends around technology and
of early adopters and select venture capitalists. culture. We sat in on pitches, collected flyers,
Moreover, the media and tech press use the event interviewed founders, and struck up hallway
to crown the next big web hit. In years past, small conversations. After the conference, we catalogued
unknowns like Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, and the startups we found and sorted them by their
GroupMe came out of SXSW as winners and went feature set, user base, and the technology at the
on to wider success. core of their offering. From there, similarities
became apparent, and patterns emerged. And since
This year there were nearly 150 official panels and the conference, we’ve been monitoring social
events around startups, including the SXSW mentions and press around each startup.
Startup Accelerator competition, which had 670
applicants from around the world. This year also One pattern we immediately noted was the shift in
marked the introduction of the Startup Village, startup origins. Silicon Valley has always been the
where startups had their own venue to meet center of digital innovation, but now startups are
investors and exchange ideas with fellow founders. popping up across the nation, especially in Boston,
New York, and DC.
WHERE THIS YEAR’S STARTUPS CAME FROM
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KEY STARTUPS AND TRENDS of 2012
Health & Wellness Gamefication
Quantified Self
GeurillApps
Ambient
Cellscope Data Analytics
Serendipity
Goosechase
Bodimojo
Zamp Gauss
Lemur IMS
Jiff Mowgli Games Echoer
BuzzData
Vitalclip Glancee
Zeel
Grandstand Kiip
Funf Sonar Future
Project
Medify Sharing
Meeps
Education
Personal
Learningboost
Ginger.io Glomper
Bloomboard Highlight
Modo Labs RAVN
Simplee
Ban.jo
Forecast Uberlife
Oneschool
Video
SXSW
Chat Niche Networks
Verbling Voxio
2012 Whodini Hoot.Me Geeklist
Social
Vitzu Arqball Shapeways
Thirst Followthis
Curation
Wanderfly
3D Tech Switchcam Taskrabbit Pixable
Shelby.TV
WeVideo Zaarly
Goodzer
BrandYourself
The Visual
Web
Video
WooCommerce
Aggregators Buyvite Giftiki
AdGlue
Tugg Group
Buys
Getwear
Personal SEO Source Map
Parking Panda
SizeSeeker Votifi
Rock Your Block
Adopt-a-Hydrant
Offermation
DataCouch
The Neighborweb
Local Wiki
Crowdsourcing
Ecommerce Tools Next Drop
Civic Startups
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KEY TRENDS
1
Future Check-Ins Ambient Serendipity
Startups:
Social networking sites such as Facebook 1, Twitter, On the web, meeting people is easy. Facebook and
and Foursquare were designed to help users Twitter use algorithms to match you with other
catalogue their “now”– what they’re up to, what users with similar interests and friends. But in the
they’re thinking, and what they’re currently sharing. real world, these sort of valuable connections can
As a result, these tools have created a culture of only happen by chance. Even before SXSW began,
spontaneity. We use these tools to make quick plans this batch of startups, promising to deliver
on the fly by finding out what people are doing and invaluable chance encounters, was already a hot
where they are in the moment. topic.
However, new startups are recognizing that humans Ambient geolocation technology is at the core of
are, at their core, future-planning animals. These this trend’s offering – location awareness paired
startups are making it easier for people to plan with data on your friends and your interests. This
ahead in a public forum: technology is highly controversial due to privacy
and safety concerns, but nonetheless, there were a
Forecast and Uberlife are mobile apps that allow number of startups experimenting with this
users to see what their friends are going to do. functionality.
Friends can post events they plan on attending or
gatherings they are organizing, to get others to join. Highlight, Glancee and Sonar connect you with
people near you that you might know through
RAVN is a similar app, but aggregates a list of mutual friends or shared interests. These services
upcoming local events that users can choose to run in the background of your mobile device and
attend. Users can also connect their social networks can therefore alert you to someone nearby at any
to invite their friends to join. moment.
Banjo is a similar service, but it also allows you to
find out where interesting conversations are taking
place nearby and who is participating.
Meeps can also show you conversations taking
place near you, but layers in a mobile chat
experience similar to the chatrooms of the ‘90s.
Users can partake in conversations that are location
specific, or on random topics of interest. Since
Meeps is separate from other social networks, these
dialogues are more intimate and there is no risk of
Forecast makes it easy to scroll through future plans. being judged by your Facebook friends.
1Recently, Facebook has been focusing a lot of their efforts on the past,
with the integration of Timeline, which emphasizes a user’s or brand’s history.
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key TRENDS
Micro-Networks The Visual Web
With the explosion of social networking, across With a glut of information piping through our
generations, and the resulting scarcity of our social networks, users tend to gravitate to the most
attention, comes the inevitable urge to pare back. easily digested form of content – visual content.
Now, users are seeking more intimate networks. Flipboard helped start the trend by creating a
Path was one of the first of these “small social more visual experience to feed our social networks,
networks,” with a limit of 50 members, but new RSS feeds, and curated news articles. Now, new
startups continue to experiment with this trait. startups are taking all text out of the equation, and
creating an aggregated experience of visual content
Geeklist is a network for developers to trade from our networks.
information, advice, and job openings.
Pixable is a new web platform that aggregates all
Whodini is a network strictly for members of the of the photos and video that your Facebook
same organization, looking for specialties and talent friends post into one place.
to assist on certain projects. It’s primary function is
to find experts in the office, but the service can Shelby.TV is a similar service, but focuses
foster new relationships by creating these exclusively on video. It essentially creates a TV
connections. channel out of your various social networks.
Hoot.Me is a social network for students and We also see this trend manifested in sites like
teachers. It allows students to collaborate and Pinterest, which allows users to collect images and
discuss homework assignments outside the display them in a very visual, inspirational way.
classroom. This is one example of new startups Many sites are adopting an almost identical user
tackling the education space, which will be interface to put the content front and center.
discussed later in this report.
Everything is an (API) remix
Application Programming Interfaces, or, APIs, are packages of Popular APIs amongst the startups
code with certain functionalities that developers can use without
reinventing the wheel. Startups are becoming variations of existing
startups, utilizing social APIs as the basis for their applications. But
this doesn’t make them any less innovative. A unique recipe of
social integrations can drastically differentiate one app from
another.
Many of the startups this year used social integrations to expedite
logins, personalize web experiences, or make content easily
shareable. Facebook is the most popular API, since it has a wide
range of your personal data, tailoring experiences based on
anything from your email address to your favorite band.
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KEY TRENDS
The Neighborweb Quantified Self
Craigslist has long established itself as the primary Data, by itself, is cold and daunting to digest. Yet,
digital community board - the place to post when we’re given data about ourselves and our
anything from used furniture, to apartment listings, behavior, we find an abundance of interest and
to personal ads. But what Craigslist lacks (and what intrigue.
new startups are helping to create) is a sense of
community and trust among its users. One of the very first places this was realized was in
health and fitness products. Nike+ was one of the
Taskrabbit is a peer-to-peer task and errand first services to make personal data useful,
service for local communities. Users can find motivational, and shareable.
vetted, trustworthy people in their neighborhoods
to help them with chores ranging from housework Now, visualizations of personal data are moving
to picking up the dry cleaning. into our everyday lives.
Zamp is a new startup that provides metrics
around travel. It tracks information such as
airports, distance traveled, types of aircrafts, and
cities visited, and it visually represents the
aggregated data.
Grandstand is a platform for businesses to
develop unique ways of visualizing data. The
service pulls in social data from a particular venue
Taskrabbit caters to both major cities and small towns or place of business, and repurposes the
across the country.
information into social games or full-scale
interactive installations.
With Zaarly, people can post any item they need,
and the price they’re willing to pay for it. Users can Personal is a tool that aggregates data from a
also post their own items they want to sell to their variety of sources: your social network, bank
neighbors. statement, purchase history, and travel itineraries -
and turns these secure pieces of information into
Parking is typically a nuisance both in big cities and “gems.” These gems make sharing to a select group
small towns, and Parking Panda is putting the simple, removing the hassle of logging in to several
power in the hands of the neighborhood to solve accounts to access the same information.
this problem. Members of the community can rent
out their own parking spaces to local car owners in
need.
Some of the “gems” available with Personal.
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Industries poised for disruption
Education
Education is becoming an increasingly hot topic in Problem: Higher education institutions are great at
the tech world. New companies are proving that building physical community spaces for students to
education at any level can be accessible and learn and connect with others, but rarely is there a
portable, moving beyond the typical classroom hub for students that exists online.
structure.
Solution: Create mobile apps that help students
The Kahn Academy has been a game changer in navigate their campus, connect with other students,
the industry. Offering a diverse range of free, and better organize their college lives.
online classes to anyone, anywhere in the world,
shows how a simple tool can foster learning. Most Modo Labs is a simple service that builds
recently, Facebook has created groups for schools optimized mobile sites for Higher Education
to allow students and teachers to interact and share dotcoms so that students, prospective students, and
information online. faculty can access information on smartphones and
tablets.
These examples are a sign that tech companies and
startups are acknowledging the shortcomings of OneSchool is a mobile app that bridges campus
the education system, and looking for ways to navigation and information with social tools.
improve it. Students can connect with other students in their
classes and form group discussions within the app.
Problem: Teacher evaluation systems are broken. It also encourages them to engage in discussions
around interests (another rising trend) with others
Solution: Give administrators and teachers better who may not necessarily be in their immediate
tools to assess performance and motivate overall group of friends.
improvement.
Bloomboard is a tool for school administrators to
better evaluate their teachers. It organizes
classroom evaluations with personalized feedback
systems. It also provides individual training and
professional development for teachers.
Learnboost is a platform that integrates lesson
plans, schedules and gradebooks into one place for
teachers to organize and share information.
Through data visualization, a multimedia lesson
plan builder, and sharing capabilities, teachers can
Bloomboard was one of the winners of SXSWedu’s
assess performance, organize class time, and share
first annual LAUNCHedu competition.
information with administrators and parents.
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Industries poised for disruption
Health
One of the biggest trends in startups this year is Problem: Healthcare expenses are difficult to
the rise of health-related tools and applications. As manage, let alone understand.
healthcare has become an increasingly hot-button
issue in politics, startups are beginning to address Solution: Create a platform where patients can
these issues through innovative private solutions. organize their health plan information, medical
records, and bills, all in once place.
Problem: Patient visits to the doctor are often
unnecessary, unproductive, and too frequent. Simplee is a dashboard, similar to Mint.com,
where users can access personal records, pay bills,
Solution: Provide patients with the right and see how much they have saved. Simplee
information up front. Give them the tools that educates the patient as well on confusing or
empower them to take ownership of their health. complicated healthcare information. People are
seeking transparency when it comes to their health,
Ginger.io aims to provide doctors with accurate and with Simplee they have control over their
behavioral data on their patients. Often, patients personal data.
with chronic diseases have to track their behavior
and symptoms with a pen and paper, which leads to This service can also address the problem of lack
potential errors and misdiagnoses. Now, these of information, providing insight into their medical
patients can track their behavior on their mobile history and any patterns that emerge.
device and the data is immediately transferred to
their doctors for further analysis.
Ginger.io is powered by patient behavior data.
Simplee makes healthcare manageable.
Medify creates a better system for illness and
symptom research. The internet is filled with
inaccurate, biased content on health and wellness,
and people are seeking real information.
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Industries poised for disruption
Local Government
The last keynote at SXSW and one of the more Problem: Local government has a limited budget
inspiring speeches of the conference was from that prevents them from tending to all civic issues.
Jennifer Pahlka, the founder of Code for America.
CFA is similar to Teach For America in that it looks Solution: Empower citizens to take on issues as a
for individuals across the country to use their talent community. Jennifer Pahlka said, “Government is
where it is needed. But instead of teachers to something we do together.” And one program that
schools, CFA matches developers to local came out of Boston proved that.
governments to create innovative tools that address
specific local problems. Adopt-a-Hydrant was first created in Boston as a
way to save hydrants from being buried during
major snowstorms. Each year during a major
snowfall, fire hydrants would get buried, rendering
them useless. The government didn’t have the time
to shovel each one out. In response, a Code for
America fellow called on the community to pitch
in. Adopt-a-Hydrant uses data to show every
hydrant in the city and users can indicate which
hydrant they can dig out of the snow.
The idea was so successful it was taken on by
Code for America’s site serves as a hub for tools and apps. several other cities across the county.
Problem: Government holds tons of big, valuable
data, but very few people know how to access it
and to use it to its full potential.
Solution: Create a tool that converts big data into
an API that developers can quickly understand and
build upon.
DataCouch is a Code for America fellow project.
It is a web platform that serves as a store for open,
accessible government data. Developers can
creatively use the data to build apps for the local
community or outside visitors. The site also serves
as a forum for coders to share knowledge and Adopt-a-Hydrant, one of CFA’s most successful projects.
collaborate on projects.
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OPPORTUNITIES FOR MARKETERS
So, what can be learned from these trends? How want to focus in these areas, they must be mindful
can marketers make them actionable for their of the local companies that already exist. To
business? Admittedly, most of the startups listed compete in this space, they must find a sense of
here will not become the next Twitter or Facebook. authenticity and trustworthiness within the
What is far more likely is that many of their traits community.
will survive in later ventures or will be adopted by
major players. Because of that, consumer behavior
and consumer expectation will be shaped by these
traits and we believe that the following lessons will Build ecosystems of value.
therefore be critical for marketers to heed in the
future:
Historically, brands have been obsessed with the
value their product provides to their customers.
Cut through the noise. Now, brands should be just as obsessed with the
value their customers can create for one another.
With new peer-to-peer networks, people are
People are seeking more intimate networks, apps increasingly more comfortable sharing their
that unlock deeper new relationships, and tools that garages, cars, homes, and personal items with
parse their overloaded social accounts for the most others. They are consciously negotiating their
valuable content. Brands, first and foremost, should privacy for returned social value. Brands can
be concerned about not adding more clutter to the leverage this culture of openness by becoming a
already noisy social spaces online, as consumers will social matchmaker, introducing the consumer to
be more willing than ever to opt out of brand new experiences, new information, and even new
communications. However, there is also an connections.
opportunity for brands to offer services and tools
that cut through the online din, make the web
easier to digest, and deliver what the user is looking
for more easily. Capitalize on consumer intent.
As users broadcast their upcoming plans, or opt in
Create experiences on a local level. to events in advance, brands can begin to have a
presence in the future. With current social
networks, such as Foursquare, brands provide
Mobile certainly allows for more geotargeted content or deals in the moment. Now, there is an
experiences - especially with ambient technology opportunity for brands to craft a message for
that delivers content based on our whereabouts. future patrons, and incentivize a potential customer
But local also applies to our neighborhoods. to keep their plans. As consumers being to think of
Technology is bringing our communities together, their activities further in advance, brands should be
and individuals are finding a sense of pride and strategic in how they time their messaging as well.
solidarity as a result. However, if larger brands
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OPPORTUNITIES FOR MARKETERS
MAKING INVENTION
Use data to earn loyalty. WORK FOR YOU
Looking at the range of startups this year, it is “Disrupt yourself before
someone does it for you.”
apparent that the most salient theme among them
– Google
is data. Data is being put in the hands of the
consumer as both a utility and a means of self-
We believe that in order to survive,
expression. Whether it is the number of miles you organizations must myopically chase their own
ran, or your progress as a student, data can obsolescence. All businesses face an
empower individuals to take action and potentially increasingly connected and therefore more
change behavior. If brands can provide worthwhile uncertain world, and with it, we all compete in
data, and a utility that surrounds it, they can turn a smaller pool, full of more demanding and
engaged users into loyal customers. We think that a less attentive consumers. Advertising can be a
strong data offering could be a potent lure in powerful driver of growth, but advertising
loyalty programs. alone cannot steer a firm to future success.
That’s why we’ve created a department of
Invention Strategists – a mix of researchers,
creatives, technologists, and entrepreneurs – to
help our clients experiment with new tools,
Always be inventing.
START-UPS CONSIDERED products, and business models.
FOR THIS RESEARCH:
Our group specializes in concepting
SXSW 2012 was unique in that there was no clear and developing pilot programs that disrupt
“winner” among startups, like there was in years the status quo, ignite culture, and create
past. The most talked-about company was not a business change. We also help brands find their
scrappy bunch of young founders, but rather a social mission and work with the larger
highly established brand. Nike stole the show with advertising force at Deutsch LA to pursue that
the introduction of the Fuelband, the simply mission through interactive ideas. If you're a
designed wristband that tracks a users’ physical business with an appetite for experimentation
and marketing innovation, we'd love to partner
activity. Even the retail space and events around
with you.
the launch were new and exciting. Nike is an
example that brands can create innovative products
Get in touch.
that intersect technology and culture. By instilling a
sense of fearlessness and a habit for Bud Caddell
experimentation, brands can be inventors, too. It’s VP, Invention Strategy
also critical to remember that the success of
Fuelband began long ago, with Nike’s first forays bud.caddell@deutschinc.com
into developing products outside of their typical
offerings.
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