The New Rules of Influence: Insights from SXSW London
A few weeks ago, Rory and Tori had the opportunity to represent Zeno London at SXSW London, the second European edition of the global festival celebrating music, film, technology and culture.
In true London fashion, there were plenty of umbrellas, no shortage of orderly queues, and even an appearance from a member of the Royal Family. Talks, panels and events were spread across venues around Brick Lane, with the week packed full of future-focused thinking, bold ideas and innovations centred around a simple idea: how do we shape the future?
Below are some of their top takeaways from their week at SXSW!
Is your anchor now a creator?
The media world has splintered into a thousand little camps. People are no longer just asking, “Who’s the most credible?” They’re asking, “Who sounds like me?” That’s why creators have taken off as they feel closer, more human, less like a voice booming down from a newsroom balcony.
But creators didn’t appear out of thin air. A lot of what they react to and explain still starts in traditional newsrooms. In that sense, news anchors and creators are beginning to overlap as both trade on personality, familiarity and trust. The difference is that anchors wear the badge of a newsroom, while creators often feel more like the friend in the group chat who happens to be very good at explaining the news.
Trust is the messy bit. Mainstream media has been bruised by scandals, accusations of bias and political attacks, especially from leaders who gain when people stop believing the press. Still, when something huge happens, people often come back to the big screen. Creators may own the daily scroll, but for the biggest news moments, traditional media is still where we gather.
Is attention the next true currency?
We used to worry that social media was stealing our attention. Now the game has levelled up. Generative AI is not just competing for our eyeballs, it is learning how to mirror our moods and simulate emotional connection. In 2025, companionship became the top use case for gen AI, which says a lot about where we are heading. People are not just using AI systems. They are confiding in them and building relationships with them.
That is where things get slippery. If social media was industrialised attention, AI could become industrialised behavioural engineering. In others words, technology that does not just distract us, but nudges how we feel, choose and relate to other people. The risk is not that machines suddenly become human. It is that they become good enough at intimacy to make human willpower feel like a weak defence.
So the next era of technology is really about choice. Do we drift into a world where our agency is slowly chipped away by smarter, stickier systems? Or do we push back and build technology that protects the core capabilities that make us human, like attention, judgment, patience, relationships and self-control? Innovation does not have to mean handing over the steering wheel. The challenge now is to build software that moves us forward without quietly training us to stop choosing for ourselves.
It’s not just what you say - but what you said before it, too
Two people can say almost the same thing, but it can land completely differently depending on how they’ve positioned themselves beforehand.
At one panel, a speaker monopolised the microphone, making a series of unsubstantiated claims and dismissing the contributions of the fellow panellists. By the time they shared their final - and arguably most important - insight on the power of karma, nobody wanted to hear it. Their credibility had left the room long before their audience had.
A few hours later, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s, took to the flagship SXSW London stage to discuss building one of the world’s most loved ice cream brands. Cohen was funny, humble and proud of his company. He told the story of how Ben & Jerry’s has grown and discussed the social justice campaigns and principles that have sat at the heart of their company since they were founded in 1978.
When Cohen then talked about his belief in a spiritual side to business, describing Ben & Jerry’s as “karma in action” and stating, “as you give you receive, when you support the community, they support you”, the same message that was easy to dismiss earlier now carried weight.
The idea was the same, but what had differed was what had come before. Whether you agreed with him or not, Cohen had established himself as someone worth listening to. When we’re trying to land a message in comms, it may be worth considering that likeability and authenticity can matter just as much to an audience as truth.
