2.5 Minutes With Ross McLean

From March 11 through 15, genConnect.com was on-site in downtown Austin, Texas conducting personal interviews with speakers slated to appear at the innovative South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference in Austin’s Convention Center.

We were at the event as credentialed press, hosting “2.5 Minutes With genConnect” in the Chevy Volt ReCharge Lounge during the conference.

Ross McLean, Executive Vice President of Draftfcb in Chicago took some time to sit down with genConnect’s Kelly Hayes. See our video interview below to hear Ross discuss how consumer human nature factors into building brands, how people, ideas, and technology are connected, and his speech at SXSW:

RUSS MCLEAN: Well, it’s fundamental to it. You really need to understand the audience that you’re talking to and that you want to connect with, and the deeper understanding of what the truth of life for them is and what they value and how they spend their time and how they want to interact. The better you understand that, the more meaningful conversation you can have with them, the more useful you can make a brand to their life and how they live it.

KELLY HAYES: People, I think, conceive South by Southwest Interactive sometimes as being a technology conference, but it’s really more about human interaction, isn’t it?

RUSS MCLEAN: Yeah, absolutely. I think ultimately just about everything is about human interaction and that’s why this place is so interesting to me. I mean, I’m a geek at heart. I love this stuff. But I think that understanding human nature and figuring out why we’re doing the types of things that we’re doing in this space and why people are sometimes hesitant to perform certain activities on-line or adopt things or change their current patterns– it’s very important to understand that. To make all of the ideas and all the wonderful work that goes on here actually connect with human beings.

KELLY HAYES: Speaking of connections, you talked about the intersection, the connection between people, ideas, and technology. That’s something that you talked about in your speech yesterday.

RUSS MCLEAN: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, to me, that’s how we have to view the space that we’re working in, because just about all of the wonderful ideas and wonderful businesses that people are bringing here and trying to make better and build up ultimately come down to, how do people interact with them, and how valuable and useful do they find them? Are they going to make them part of their life? So you really have to be able to understand, OK, what’s motivating people? What are they going to want to do? What are they going to be afraid to do? So that you can build something that fits into their life properly.

KELLY HAYES: Well, I can only say, Ross, that I think the people whose brands you’re working on are fortunate to have you taking a look at human nature and consumer behavior. Thanks so much for coming to South by Southwest.

RUSS MCLEAN: Yeah. Very kind of you. Thank you very much.

genConnect Heads to Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference

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Tags: Austin, Chicago, Draftfcb, genConnect, human nature, Kelly Hayes, Ross McLean, SXSW, technology, Texas

Category: SXSW2011, Videos, Views on the News