YouTube is now cultural infrastructure

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Day 1 at SXSW London surfaced a clear throughline: the rules are being rewritten — for brands, content, and GTM playbooks.

Google’s Vanessa Kingori reminded us that curiosity still drives everything.
Common Room’s Linda Lian showed why your GTM strategy should start with signals, not sales targets.
And on stage after stage, it became clear: in an AI-saturated world, human insight is your edge.

Here’s what else we learned 👇

At SXSW London, Vanessa Kingori OBE took the stage to share what she’s learned leading cultural icons like Vogue — and now helping the UK’s biggest brands partner with Google and YouTube at a turning point for tech and media.

Here’s what stood out from the session 👇

🔍 Search is still the internet’s deepest mirror
Vanessa framed Google Search as “the deepest window into human curiosity”. It doesn’t just track intent — it captures how people think, what they feel, and how trends emerge in real time. For marketers, that’s insight gold.

📺 YouTube has become infrastructure for culture

YouTube powers education, music, identity, and entrepreneurship for entire generations. And the brands winning on the platform? They’re building creator relationships for the long haul, not one-off campaigns.

⚙️ Digital transformation isn’t optional
Vanessa didn’t sugarcoat it:

Real transformation means rethinking legacy structures, empowering creators, and adapting to platforms as they evolve — not after the fact.

🧠 Curiosity beats category
From high fashion to big tech, Vanessa’s journey proves one thing: success follows those who stay curious.

🧠 Rethinking Consent
For years, regulators leaned on the concept of user consent. But in the world of AI, predictive systems, and embedded tech, “informed consent” is becoming meaningless.
→ “How do you meaningfully consent to a black-box algorithm?”

Richmond-Coggan argued it's time to shift focus to outcomes: who’s harmed, who’s helped, and how those effects are distributed.

Privacy ≠ Protection
Data protection has become too focused on privacy checkboxes — not actual rights or risks.
📌 The challenge? Emerging tech exposes people to harms that aren't always data-related. Think emotional manipulation, exclusion from services, or the right to challenge automated decisions.

⚙️ Hard laws for soft power

Richmond-Coggan warned — one that regulation can’t fix alone.

What’s needed:
🛑 Pre-deployment safeguards, not just after-the-fact remedies
👥 Democratised oversight, including civil society input
🔍 Regulation that sees tech not as neutral — but political

🧩 Fragmented frameworks
He stressed the risks of siloed, national frameworks. Fragmentation leads to loopholes.
➡️ The call? “We need globally coherent principles, even if the enforcement is local.”

Forget the playbooks. According to Linda Lian, the age of AI isn’t just changing how companies go to market — it’s forcing them to rethink why they go to market the way they do in the first place.

Here’s what stood out from her session:

🔍 Start with user signals, not pipeline targets
Traditional GTM motions are being flipped. Teams now listen for intent before activating sales, not the other way around. Common Room uses AI to surface these “digital hand raises” — signals like job changes, product mentions, or community activity — long before a buyer ever fills in a form.

🚀 Sales is no longer waiting in the dark
AI doesn’t just find leads—it hands the right ones to reps with context and timing. As Linda emphasized, sales teams can now engage based on real, observable buyer signals—not stale lists or ads.

That’s where platforms like Hive Perform fit in seamlessly. They consolidate CRM data, call notes, and digital interaction signals to surface real-time buying intent. Reps receive AI-powered prompts on what to say, when to say it, backed by deal context and deal-stage cues. Meanwhile, sales leaders get clear, actionable dashboards highlighting pipeline health, rep performance, and coaching opportunities.

With solutions such as Hive Perform’s Perform Agent and Perform Intelligence, companies turn raw signals into precision GTM execution—helping sales teams not just work harder, but smarter. Better intel, faster closes.

🧠 Human context still matters
Linda stressed the need for human judgment to interpret AI outputs. It’s not about handing the wheel to a bot — it’s about giving humans a clearer map.

🛠️ The next frontier: intent-rich ops
The future GTM engine, Linda argued, will be built around signals, not stages. Tools like Common Room are already helping teams aggregate signals from GitHub, LinkedIn, Reddit, and beyond — turning noisy intent into clear action.

A few live takeaways the team shared on LinkedIn during the event — straight from the floor.

Also, Venture Spotlight first semifinal is at 4:05 pm on Truman Stage One

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Thanks for reading today’s issue — we’ll be back tomorrow with more fresh insights, key takeaways, and behind-the-scenes moments from the floor.

The Unofficially SXSW Team

Independently Created. Not affiliated with SXSW.

Unofficially SXSW is a ClickZ Media publication in the Events division