‘Involvement starts at seven figures’: Why SXSW Sydney’s shortcut to success failed
Matt Jones, co-founder and brand director of Four Pillars Gin, writes about why the money-grabbing South by Southwest festival was doomed to fail in Australia from the very start.
The author Matt Jones
I suspected SXSW Sydney was in trouble from the first phone call I made about it back in 2022.
The news had just broken that the world’s most exciting creative conference would be making Sydney its first international home. And, as the co-founder of Four Pillars Gin, my instinct was simple: something this creatively significant landing in Australia should have Four Pillars attached. We’d built our brand around craft, community and creative collaboration. SXSW seemed like a natural fit.
The person I called agreed wholeheartedly. Then, with the same casual certainty you hear in Sydney whenever someone mentions property prices (and yes, already they were referring to SXSW Sydney as “a property”), they said meaningful involvement would start at seven figures.
Another flaw in the plan: Melbourne is the Austin of Australia, not Sydney.
How about Destination NSW does an audit of who paid what for what and release the results for tax payers to have a look at?
Really well said Matt – you captured the essence of the issue!
Hopefully the next ‘big cultural thing’ will be in the brewpubs of the inner west.
I really really wanted this to succeed but had the same experience as Matt. The main issue I experienced was that the team were under resourced and set up way too late for year one. They then wanted high six figures or seven figures when internal budgets had already been set. It wasn’t the economic environment to go to your CFO and ask for an extra $500-1m to spend on something that wasn’t tried and tested. Not in my industry it wasn’t anyway. So year one was undercooked and from there it became pretty fashionable to kick it instead of try and build it. I kept going to the business to try and find a way to make it work but the issue was that there weren’t the results to show the investment was worth it.
Either NSW Gov or TEG but off more than they could chew and then gave the team ridiculous targets to hit and no time to do it.
I feel sorry for the TEG team, Simon and Lauren in particular who gave so much to it and were always positive despite the big ask made of them.
Well done to so many that tried to make it work. Sadly I think Sydney isn’t the best place for it anyway. Melbourne maybe at a stretch but probably not Australia at all to be honest.
So interesting that you mentioned Sydney Festival First Night from Fergus’ era as Creative Director. It really stands in my mind as some of the best moments of ‘meeting people where they are.’ Sydney is a diverse cultural city, we are not America by any stretch of the imagination.
Whilst Sydney is one of the most expensive cities in the world, it doesn’t follow that the people who live here have a high amount of disposable income to spend on things that may not contribute to their quality of life.
When attending conferences and talk festivals, much of the quality of the event IS the discussion and activity that happens around the the event, so denying that fact is to any event’s detriment I feel.
Could not agree more with this Matt.
Good take on the shortcutting. I wondered how much of that was driven by the SXSW rights holders back in the US.
We had the same experience with SXSW Syd – they actually made it difficult to give them money or value.
Btw – how do I get my full autobiography at the bottom of an article like that?
This makes a lot of sense to me. Matt highlights why SXSW failed to ignite support and to connect with a readymade community, eager for connection and inspiration. A great pity.
Great read Matt.
SXSW. Through my eyes, it simply lacked guts (value). Lacked buy-in. Lacked drive to bring ‘everyone’ (the industries) together at the numbers required to deliver on what was being sold. It failed for its financial partners, especially the NSW government. It’s now gone. Forget ‘brand’ for a moment. How about ‘value’?
Built slower over time and not hosted annually as Australia’s creative market does not have the consumption needs of such regular stimulation, while offering ‘truly-calculatable’ benefits to the people and businesses who exhibit (pay), perform (get paid) or just want to be involved, SXSW Sydney missed the mark. Good idea, proven format but lacklustre delivery. It was financially over-geared, benefits over-sold and show-values were under delivered.
Unlike building a brand alone which in itself isn’t easy to be fair but only requires a single focus, event businesses by design require quite the diverse group of financial partners and sponsors to make the numbers break-even, let alone deliver profit. It’s not an easy task to conquer multi-million dollar outcomes on projects once the base sales team get past the ‘I know this person or went to school with that person’ phone call. No talent in that. At some point the ‘team’ or at least some of them need real relevant skills to open opportunities and present a real solid sales case with flexible financial buy-ins so they can secure partners, from the industries SXSW support but much more importantly from outside of it too.
OK. How I hear you say. You have to get off your butt and ‘create’ demand! If the product offering is conceived wrongly, you will fail. At the end of the day, it’s simple economics (create demand) but sadly few executives don’t understand how to pitch business, how to drive business. They lack raw skills, energy and a get-the-job-done mentality … at-all-costs.
Australian greats like Dainty, Chugg, Van Egmond, Bohm, Medcalf, Gudinski, and there are more, knew what it took to create opportunity. It wasn’t about attending Tim Tam meetings. They pioneered the entertainment industry. In many cases they made things up on the road. Their house or fairy-investor on the line if they failed. As said to me years ago by a mentor, you only get to drop Elton John’s piano once. This was invaluable conditioning for a 19 year old.
The modern corporate platform has no accountability. It has real limits in delivering results far too often and I suspect TEG’s failure on SXSW is one of group-think standards being employed coupled with give-them-nothing mentality as opposed to a director-driver mentality who has conviction, is personally engaged, knowing they must leave something in the game for all that support them. Think Musk & Jobs. Unlikeable by many but outstanding in deliverables.
I personally spent part of my career as an events specialist, money man and logistics expert, too often brought in at the last minute (six months to go) to fix other people’s inabilities to deliver. Staff & management. Obviously to do this, you are without doubt going to upset someone which today’s market sees as a negative. Team. I worked in teams and never had anyone in my team upset with me. But our targets of low standards and excuses disliked me and my team. Either you are accountable or you’re not. SXSW Sydney operates in this environment, as do most corporates. So their task to perform was their Achilles heel.
Matt hints at a lack of depth in presentation and approach. I agree. SXSW was formatted and sold as it was. Not adapted and conditioned to local environment, be it size, creative or project break-even financials. TEG I suspect also failed the client (industry) empathy test. This is why the industries didn’t buy-in to the level they hoped. Every product must have value otherwise demand won’t be there. Don’t test the market for what you want to get, test the market of what it needs and refine your business plan to deliver .. at a profit. TEG and no doubt SXSW USA owners got too greedy. Like a child, let it crawl, before it walks, before it runs. Your partnership was worthy but your timing and nurturing didn’t work.
For those who don’t know. Michael Chugg gave us PCMC (Pacific Circle Music Convention) in 1997 which I attended and was also placed on a music industry panel. The list of industry heavyweights from local and global promoters and artists who attended was nothing short of impressive, their access availability and general attitude towards everyone who attended was genuine. But this event only ran once and is noted as failing for similar reasons. In short, lack of buy-in. It was a costly exercise and maybe, just maybe, a smaller concept every two years, with ‘value’ quantifiable benefits set over ten years might still would be in-play today.
I might spend $500 on a ticket to a gig but the question remains, would many do the same? In SXSW’s case, it seems the answer was no. The problem was not the punter. The problem was not the industries. The problem was the product and it’s pricing. TEG and its American partners simply failed to capture demand expectations they created and the NSW government rightly pulled the plug. Knowing what I know, I also suspect they packaged big requests with low deliverables. The outcome last week best sums up the answer to this position.
Steve Hanford
Retired – Kiwi living in Queensland since 2003
Hi Matt,
I couldn’t agree more – I have been loath to comment negatively about SXSW as there is a bit of a culty feel about it.
I paid to attend the first Sydney one, went to a couple of great sessions and some really uninspiring ones, and chatted to some peeps that I have known for a long time, but I agree that there wasn’t a hub to it all. I also agree that they tried to make it massive and do a wide coverage of many things, which took Austin decades to cultivate, instead of doing a couple of tracks unbelievably well.
If you were a live music person (and >30) it seemed great, and obviously all of the big media and agency groups had their tribes descend as a team.
thx for your article!
M
Sydney might be the problem, with it’s vast distances and disconnected pockets. Try SouthStart in Adelaide. It’s delivered the last few years and definitely has a vibe.