Hasta La Creative!

Commercial artist Laurie Rosenwald will conduct a panel during the Art Directors Club Awards in Miami Beach April 2-4. Laurie, whose workshop has been taught to writers, filmmakers, musicians, market researchers, salespeople, real estate agents, investment bankers and many others aims to highlight the benefits of making mistakes.

Interested in Laurie’s panel or attending The Art Directors Club Awards? Then check out the details here and register.

Attending SXSW can be a whirlwind of live performances, big announcements, and networking. Keeping track of what’s going on can be a challenge even for the most connected individual.

We offer five suggestions for attendees that want to know about the latest social buzz before the crowd:

1) Read the Mashable “newspaper” – It’s surprisingly one of the more helpful things you can look at if you want to know what’s happening at the festival, what people are talking about, and more. It’s an ironic “newspaper” handout that Mashable prints and distributes by the thousands.

2) Use Management Tools (Viralheat, Hootsuite etc) – One of the best ways to see what people are saying about SXSW at any given time is through a social keyword search. Whether you care about concerts, the party scene, or which panels were most hated, just set up the right keywords and get a good idea of what people are saying in real time.

3) Word of Mouth – It may seem odd to engage in non-smartphone communication, but what people are saying in person can be very helpful. Going with the flow, hanging out with friends, and hearing the latest gossip is a time-tested way of finding out the latest buzz.

4) Plancast/Eventbrite, Facebook/Twitter – Use your social media mix. Everyone uses different sites online and each of them can help you determine what’s happening and what’s being talked about.

5) Check in on Foursquare – It was invaluable last year in terms of knowing where friends are located in real time so you can easily meet up to share the news.

Despite the serious business that is discussed and all of the news announcements, SXSW is supposed to be fun. So conduct your search for the latest buzz with a sense of adventure, and use a blend of old-school and new-school social tactics to make friends and enjoy yourself while you stay informed.

For the third year in a row, collaborative marketing platform CrowdTap will host its legendary “can’t miss” party during SXSW in Austin.

This year’s event is promised to be bigger and better and will take place Sunday, March 10 from 8:30PM until 2AM at Haven. The party will take on a futuristic theme and feature emerging music acts, like mashup artists White Panda, as well as ready to break-out bands Radical Something and Little Daylight.

Returning from past events are internationally acclaimed VJ Culture, NYC’s top DJ Vikas and, for the second year, the Battle of Austin’s Best Food Trucks. Guests will also be entertained by live performances from a fire wielding troupe of dancers and have the opportunity to win a 3D printer from Cubify.

We’ve been to CrowdTap’s past two events at SXSW and they have been great! If you’d like to attend, hook yourself up and register with this special code: Steve1419. The first ten people who use that code will be granted VIP tickets to the party while others will be given priority status on the waitlist for the event.

So by now you’ve probably heard the Art Directors Club has moved their awards event to Miami Beach April 2-4. If you plan on attending, there are just two weeks left to save $350 on a Festival Pass making the price $1,400 which, by the way, includes the cost of three nights at the W South Beach or Shore Club hotels.

Want to go? Check out all the details here.

If you are a brand or an agency that wants to be a part of what’s become the biggest marketing event of the year, SXSW, then we can help you do just that. A couple years ago it became clear SXSW had shifted from a geek-focused event to a marketer-focused event. And that shift will continue again this year as brands and agencies realize the event provides the perfect combination of B2B and B2C customer connection and publicity.

Adrants will be at the center of the action during SXSW reporting daily on marketing innovation, brand activity, news announcements, product launches, what’s discussed in the sessions and learnings from keynote presentations. Get your brand in front of the marketing community with this content marketing opportunity. Specifics include but are not limited to:

• Intro and outro sponsorship of SXSW-related coverage (website, newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus) leading up to the event.
• Intro and outro sponsorship of each SXSW article (website, newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus) we publish during the event (at least one each day of the event).
• Intro and outro sponsorship of SXSW follow up stories (website, newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus) after the event.
• Content sponsorship of event photography.
• A TBD number of AdverPost (content marketing ad unit) before, durring and after SXSW if desired.
• A TBD number of banner impressions before, during and after SXSW if desired.
• One dedicated email to Adrants subscribers promoting your product/service/white paper offer.
• Other awesome ideas we dream up together

Email sxsw@adrants.com for more details, pricing and to lock in your sponsorship now.

Last week we were in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit. It’s the premiere conference focusing on affiliate marketing. If you’re not familiar with affiliate marketing, you should be. Read this to learn more.

If you have been following us on Flickr, we always try to bring you photos of all the event’s happenings. Affiliate Summit is the kick off event of the year for our annual conference travels and a time for reflections and looking at the good and the bad of the year before. It’s also a great time to catch a cold from the 5,000 attendees and the tens of thousands who were in the city the week prior for CES.

Anyway, we’d like to share some news. Adrants contributor Murray Newlands was honored at the Affiliate Ball with a AFFY award for Outstanding Achievements. The AFFYS have grown is stature over the past several years and have become one of the recognized industry awards to win for individuals. Organizer Darren Blatt said “This (award) is a refection of Murray’s hard work in interviewing industry experts and getting them to share their knowledge and incites. We want to honor people who make a major contribution to our industry.”

So it’s not CareerBuilder deciding not to advertise in the Super Bowl but it is news for us.

Ever been to the Hardwood Suite at the Palms in Vegas? It’s quite the cool spot. Complete with basketball court, hot tub, pool table and full bar, it’s not a bad place to hang out for a night. And if you’re attending Affiliate SUmmit West in January, that’s exactly what you can do.

On January 13th, DoublePlayMedia along with Infinite Traffic will host their fourth annual Tipp Off Party from 10PM to 2AM in the Hardwood Suite. If you’ll be in town and plan to go, you could win a VIP table during the event. Just RSVP by December 21 and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a table.

Check out pictures from past DoublePlayMedia parties here and here.

In the advertising world, there is an award for everything. It’s like we’re all a bunch of kids stuck in a school that has vigorously embraced the self-esteem approach to learning which, let’s be honest, just sets kids up for failure when they hit the real world and realize there’s no trophy keeping a neat desk or returning your coffee cup to the kitchen.

It’s no wonder the the ad world consist of a bunch of entitled, pessimistic, selfish primadonnas who take great pride in amassing trophy cases ful of CLIOs, Lions and any other form of metal that represents creativity as defined by the same group of entitled, pessimistic, selfish primadonnas that create the stuff.http://www.thehubies.com/

OK, perhaps that was a bit harsh but in the face of all this self-centered back slapping, doesn’t it make sense we honor what really matters in this business? Yes, of course it does. Which is why the Advertising Week Social Club has created The Hubies.

The Hubies will honor the finest examples of narcissism in the advertising industry. And, frankly, there’s a lot of it. More, perhaps, than in any other industry, save Hollywood.

Tailored to mirror high school superlative awards, the Hubies are intended to serve up a wink and a goof on the industry. The name Hubies is derived from the word hubris, yet another trait this industry has in spades.

Currently, the Hubies are accepting suggestions for categories. On December 18, categories will be revealed. On January 5, nominees will be announce and voting will commence. On February 12, The Hubies Award Show Extravaganza will take place at…wait, what…on Google+ Hangout? What? No fun? No sun? No South of France?

Screw that. This industry doesn’t have the humility for an event that isn’t held on a beach with free drinks and 100 foot buffet tables. But it sure will be fun to find out who will be dubbed the biggest egomaniacal narcissist of them all!

As an entity that’s often involved in party planning and listing at various advertising and marketing events, we’re well aware of what it takes to host and sponsor a great event. We’re familiar with what it takes to promote a party. We’re familiar with the talent needed to insure party goers have a great time.

Which is why we are both amused and horrified that CES Partylist guy, Michael Terpin – also founder of SocialRadius – decided to appear in a promotional video drumming up sponsors for his Partlist Party. Yes, the entity that lists all the parties at CES also has their own party.

They are going to host it at the Michael Jackson mansion in Vegas and to make the announcement, Terpin donned a really bad Michael Jackson get up, complete with glove, to hype the event and to solicit sponsorship.

The video, which kicks off with the very camera-awkward Terpin doing a Hair Club for Men-like “when I’m not helping tech and entertainment companies with PR and social media and crowdfunding campaigns, I run the CES Partylist,” goes downhill fast like a really bad car dealer commercial.

Cheesy doesn’t even come close. But hey, they’re trying to raise money to head over to their Indiegogo page and check it out.

Hmm. We always thought Ted x was about concrete ideas that brought clarity to the sometimes confusing world of business and social advancement. Alas, it now seems to be about death, destruction and the popping of 15,000 balloons. All to reveal the true face of human nature.