Infoshare 2014: Ali Jafari (Twitter) - #MarketingInTheMoment

Thank you for the introduction, and thank you for having me here. Um, at the conference. It's great to be here with you all today. My name is Ali Jafari, and I oversee the European business at Twitter. And what I'd like to talk to you about today is to think about Twitter as something more broad than a social media platform, and to think about it as a communication platform and a listening platform, and ultimately as a marketing tool. And where I'll start the talk is with the basic building blocks of Twitter, the tweet, which is 140 characters of text. And what we've heard is, is 140 characters of text a rich enough canvas to tell a story? But throughout time, some of the most memorable quotes have been told in 140 characters or less. "Be the change that you wish to see in the world." Gandhi, 48 characters. "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." Albert Einstein, 117 characters. "And if you can't feed 100 people, then feed just one." Mother Teresa, 55 characters. But anyone can spark a conversation on Twitter. Here's a recent example of Prime Minister David Cameron, who sent out a tweet to President Barack Obama saying that he'd been in contact with President Obama about the situation in Ukraine. Comedian Rob Delaney responded and said that he was also on the case. Sir Patrick Stewart piled on, holding a can of wet wipes, saying that he was on the case as well. And then comedian Michael Moreno, holding his dog to his ear, also said that he was on the case. And users have the opportunity to discover content like this, as this user did, capturing the entire conversation. But ultimately, Twitter brings you closer. It brings you closer to your interests, be it politics, sports, or entertainment. This is a picture of JFK taken on election night in 1960. The photograph was taken by their family photographer, Jacques Lowe, in his home. A real intimate moment of a future president sitting around with his family awaiting the election results. The photo wasn't actually discovered until earlier this year. When Jacques Lowe had passed away and his family discovered the archive of photos that he had taken throughout his life. So what the world didn't see until now is we've evolved into a place where content discovery is instantaneous. This is an iconic photo of Barack Obama embracing his wife Michelle on Election Day in 2012 when he was reelected as president. The president into his second term. It had up to that point been the most popular tweet on Twitter with 800,000 retweets and 300,000 favorites. Let's take a look at a more recent example. These are two pictures of the papal conclave. The top is from 2005 and the bottom is from 2013. And in just 8 short years, you can see how we've evolved from how we consume information. In the 2005 photo, people are standing around listening, maybe a few people are taking pictures. In 2013, you have a sea of smartphones and tablets with people taking that, capturing that moment, and using platforms like Facebook or Twitter to share that information real-time. This is a photo of Pope Benedict signing up for Twitter in 2010, one of the most institutional organizations in the world taking to social media to communicate with their followers. But despite all the technological advances, the way that we consume and the way that we share hasn't fundamentally changed. The tools that we use have evolved, so we've gone from radio to television to digital, And from a sharing perspective, we've gone from mail to telephone to mobile. And these two last advances, digital and mobile, are the underpinnings for how Twitter was evolved and how Twitter was concepted as a product. So in reality, we've gone from closed-circuit communication, where we sat around campfires telling each other stories, to instantly being communicated with people who are having the same conversations as us, and we think of the hashtag as the modern-day campfire. This is an early sketch of Twitter by our founder, Jack Dorsey. He envisioned it as a tool that will allow people to give their status updates. So what started out as a simple communication tool is now something that instantly connects the world. This is the very first tweet sent out by Jack. It read, "Just setting up my Twitter." To a more recent communication that he had with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani had taken to Twitter to communicate with the citizens of Iran, and it was unclear to us whether Twitter, which had historically been blocked in Iran, was accessible to the citizens. Jack sent out a tweet asking him if people could see the tweets, and Rouhani responded in the affirmative, saying that people could. Two conversations— or one conversation with two very iconic people, and it's happening in a public forum. and we all have front row seats to it. Let's take a look at a more local example. There's a city in the province of Granada called Jaén, and we call the city Twitter Town because the mayor encourages all of the citizens to use Twitter to communicate and to resolve problems. City workers have their Twitter handle stitched onto their uniforms, and police cars and ambulances have Twitter handles painted on, which invites users to use Twitter to communicate with civil workers. Here's an example of an everyday citizen seeing exposed telephone wires around where children were playing. He sends out a tweet to the mayor along with a picture. The mayor adds in the town electrician. And the town electrician comes and fixes the problem on the same day and takes a before and after photo, which he emails out to the entire town. So a real efficient way for a community to interact with each other, using Twitter, uh, to do so. So let's talk about Twitter today. We have 255 million, uh, monthly active users worldwide. An active user is anyone who logs into Twitter at least once per month. Via mobile or web. 1 billion tweets composed every 2 days. Just a massive amount of conversation on things ranging from entertainment to politics to brands, and conversations that brands want to integrate themselves into. I'll show you some examples of how brands have been able to do that effectively in upcoming slides. And 76% of Twitter users are on mobile. This is an important stat for us. Twitter was born as a mobile device. All of our product development begins with mobile. And, and as this percentage increases, overall usage for Twitter increases. We've seen this percentage go up year over year, and over time we expect 100% of our users to be on mobile. But Twitter is ultimately the, the live medium. It's where news breaks. Over 50% of Twitter users say Twitter gives them the latest news faster than any other source. And because Twitter is a public medium, we've seen the evolution of what we call citizen journalists, everyday people capturing newsworthy moments and using Twitter as a way to communicate that, and beating traditional news organizations on what breaks. And because of the virility of Twitter, because of the power of the retweet, information like that spreads quickly on the platform. And that extends to live events as well. In, in the most recent broadcast of the Academy Awards, we saw 19 million tweets with the hashtag #Oscar, which were viewed 3.3 billion times by 37 million people. 40 million people in the US tune in to the Academy Awards. Over 90% of the viewing population was exposed to Twitter during that broadcast. And the broadcast, of course, included what's the most popular tweet of all time, Ellen's selfie, uh, which was retweeted 3 million times and favorited, uh, more than 1.7 million times. What makes Twitter unique is that it's live, it's public, And it's conversational. You can follow anyone on Twitter, and anyone can follow you. And every piece of content on Twitter can be discovered. Let me show you a recent example that builds each of these 3 things in.

Game, set, and match.

Murray defeats Gulag.

6-4, 7-5, 6-4.

This is Andy Murray winning Wimbledon last year and bringing home the Wimbledon crown to the UK for the first time in over 70 years. We saw 3.2 million tweets in the 12 hours before, during, and after that event, with the apex occurring right during that moment. Victoria Beckham moments later sent out a congratulatory tweet to Andy Murray, live. Andy Murray himself sending out a tweet in the moment saying he can't believe what just happened. Fellow tennis pro Andy Roddick congratulating Murray as well, and Murray responding in the affirmative. A good conversational example on Twitter. And the brand Adidas getting in the middle of this, uh, with a tweet that read, "After the hurt, pain, and tears, he came back stronger, faster, better," with the hashtag #AllInForMurray, with a picture that read Wimbledon. A really good example of planned real-time marketing. Adidas knew that Murray was either going to win this match or lose, and they created this piece of content and sent it out within context and saw really good results. But everyday conversations are your marketing moment as well. Here's a chart that measures conversation volume around the hashtag #hungry, and you see a very constant pattern and flow throughout the course of the week. Conversation volume around running, similar pattern with the increase happening in the early part of the week and slowly dwindling down as we get closer to the weekend. And the hashtag #tired. Again, very similar pattern, very predictable pattern. And this, of course, extends to all forms of conversation on Twitter. We can predict these conversations and make them available to marketers who can then in turn target audiences having these conversations. I'll show you an example that we like to show. This is conversation volume around the hashtag #WhyCan'tISleepAtNight, where people were talking about the trouble they have going to bed. The brand Zequal sent out a tweet which read, "Seriously, these tweets will be here tomorrow. Let's go to bed together." The reason we like this example is it's not an ad. Nothing's being promoted here. Nothing's being sold. It's a good example of a brand integrating themselves into a conversation. You can imagine people sitting in bed with their smartphones following this hashtag and then seeing this tweet. So let's shift to TV and Twitter. As we've discussed, real-time moments occur on Twitter, whether it's a sporting event or a live news event, and that of course extends to television. And, and this is something that we've seen evolve naturally on Twitter over time. It wasn't something that we put a concerted strategy around, but because Twitter is live and it's public and it's conversational, it allows something that's historically happened in the living room where people sit around and have conversations about a television show and allowed it to extend, uh, to, uh, to a platform like Twitter. So You can watch a television show or a sporting event and have a conversation with thousands of other people who are experiencing the same thing at the same time as you are. This is a recent football match between PSG and FC Barcelona. The blue line measures conversation volume around the hashtag for the match, #PSGBarsa. The white line is conversation volume around a player named Blaise Matuidi, who scores a goal. And you see an immediate spike in conversation eclipsing the conversation about the hashtag itself. And we see this every day around television programs and around real-time events. So some quick stats on Twitter and TV— 64% of Twitter mobile users use Twitter while watching TV, and 40% of all Twitter traffic around peak time is about TV. And at what's perhaps the most impressive stat, 95% of online public conversations about TV happen on Twitter. And brands have, of course, taken note of this and have extended what they do on Twitter beyond the marketing that they do on Twitter. So One of the most recent trends that we've seen in markets like the US and the UK is the integration of hashtags into television commercials. And not surprisingly, when brands do that, they see a much higher engagement for that hashtag versus television commercials that don't. Really effective way to extend your marketing dollars beyond just the television commercial itself. And to actually— measure the sentiment of users about your brand because you're inviting them to go to Twitter to talk about your brand. Really effective way to capture real-time consumer market— consumer research. So what's distinct or known about a television event? This is conversation volume around a reality TV show versus scripted drama. Um, the top graph is the reality TV show where you see constant conversation volume, versus the scripted drama where you have a peak at the beginning, a lull in the middle, and a peak at the end, probably just as the scriptwriters had intended. Similar graph for the film Shawshank Redemption. The top— the top graph represents an airing in the UK in April, and the bottom graph represents an airing in the UK in August. And you can see an identical pattern. Not only in terms of the conversation volume itself, but in terms of the pattern of conversation throughout the airing. So, it's also key to plan for unexpected TV moments. This is the famous hat that the artist Pharrell wore to the recent Grammy Awards. The brand Arby's, whose iconic logo bears a striking similarity to Pharrell's hat, sent out this tweet which read, "Hey Pharrell, can we have our hat back?" 84,000 retweets, the most popular tweet of the night from a brand or an artist. There's no way Arby's could have anticipated Pharrell wearing this hat. But they had their social media team ready. They were watching the program, following the conversation, and sent out this tweet which drove really good engagement. Pharrell actually playfully pushed back on Arby's after the broadcast and drove further conversation. So let's talk about the next phase of Twitter and TV. As I mentioned, Twitter and TV wasn't something that we put a concerted amount of effort around or behind. It's something that we saw develop naturally over time. But what it's allowed us to do is to actually develop a real strategy around it. But I'll start by showing a photo of Stanley Milgram, who was a sociologist in the early 1900s. He had a theory that the attention of people is driven by the visible crowd. So, as we observe people doing something, the likelihood that we do that same thing increases exponentially. And the way that he studied this is he went out into the streets of New York City and asked people to look up at the sky, and then measured the probability that people would look up at the sky based on the number of people looking up. So if 0 people are looking up at the sky, the probability that you'll look up is 0. But if just 5 people look up, that probability increases to 80%. So attention being steered by the visible crowd, and we see this play out on Twitter and TV every night. This is a recent airing of the show X Factor in the UK. And the audience in white is the total viewing population. And one user, Claire Hardy, sends out a tweet during the airing of the show. And that tweet travels to one of her followers during the window in which the air show— the show airs between 8 to 9 PM.

Ali Jafari.

And throughout the rest of the show, that tweet travels to more of her followers, some of whom, uh, might be watching the show, some of whom might not be watching the show. And even after the show, that tweet travels to more of her followers depending on when they're logging on to Twitter. So if you take that one example, of one user sending out a tweet and reaching hundreds of followers and multiply it by the thousands of people who are watching X Factor, this is the effect that we see: an exponential amount of impressions or amplification to hundreds of thousands of other users who who may be also experiencing the same thing. And we've measured the results. Again, this was an airing of "The X Factor" in the UK. And what we saw were 18 million unique impressions. The majority of which occurred during the 8 to 9 PM viewing window. So we've evolved from a place where people watch television and go to Twitter to have a conversation to Twitter actually motivating people to tune in. We've seen evidence of people logging on to Twitter and seeing people talk about a football match or a television show and then picking up their remote control to actually tune into the television. Real causality. And of course, brands love this because live television viewing outside of sports is something that had essentially gone away for the past 15 years. We all record TVs, television shows, and watch them later or stream them using technologies like Netflix. And Twitter has actually made live television viewing a reality again, which means that people might be consuming television commercials for the first time in many years. So Twitter and TV lets you reinforce, reengage, and remarket. And let me show you an example of a product that we've developed that allows marketers to do this. So across the bottom here, you have the dozens of viewing choices that we have on any given night. And across the top, as I showed in the prior slide, you have the total viewing population. So let's take a look at one show, uh, the television show "Glee," and, um, all of the— all of the amplification and conversation volume that occurs around that show. And underneath that, you have the hundreds of brands who are running television commercials around television programs. And one of the challenges with TV advertising is it's done on a spot basis. So you don't actually know, outside of big broadcasts like the Academy Awards or the Super Bowl, when your ads are actually running. Um, but we've, uh, we've developed a technology that actually allows advertisers to know when their ads are running. So, uh, and against which program their ads are running. So let's take a look at one brand, the brand Volkswagen, who on this night ran a television commercial against Glee for the all-new Beetle convertible. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] And that television commercial was presumably seen by all of the people who are tuned in live, some of whom are having conversations about the television show Glee on Twitter. And what Volkswagen can do is now remarket to those users on Twitter. So real cross-channel remarketing for the very first time. And if you take that one example of Volkswagen reaching users who are watching Glee, and multiply it by the dozens of other brands who are running television commercials, you get an amplification effect of true remarketing impressions, which allow brands to reinforce the message that they've hopefully delivered to users through the television commercial. This is a product that we call TV conversation targeting. And is available in most of the markets in which we have a presence. The key question for marketers, of course, is, does it work? We've run a study with Nielsen to show the effectiveness of Twitter and TV. And what we've seen is a 95% lift in message association, but more importantly, nearly a 60% increase in purchase intent This is the metric that brands ultimately care about. If I deliver an impression to, to my users, what's the likelihood that they'll actually purchase my product? When we ask users why they follow brands, these are the 6 answers that we get most often. They want discounts and offers. They want to hear about upcoming sales. They want brand and product news, but they also want fun and entertainment. They want exclusive content. They want customer service. That's one of the most innovative use cases of Twitter. If you can solve people's problems on Twitter, you can not only do it instantaneously, but you can do it efficiently because Twitter's public, and other people can see that answer and learn from it. So let's take a look at, uh, a few brands that have used our cards platform that allows people to bring more and more content into the tweet rather than driving people off Twitter to accomplish some of these things. This is the brand Puma using our cards platform to spell out the word "goal" around a recent football match. Dove Netherlands, who ran a campaign around women celebrating their bodies and saying, "The only two things that you need to have a perfect suntan are a bathing suit and your body." Burberry, which streamed London Fashion Week exclusively on Twitter using our video card. But two-way conversations are also your marketing moment. This is a tweet that I sent out a couple years ago when my family and I were on a flight on JetBlue. This is our son Charles enjoying the in-flight entertainment. I thank JetBlue for, for making this available. And when we landed, they had responded and said, "No thank you, great pick, way to rock the onboard entertainment." A really good example of a brand taking the time to listen and taking the time to respond. And for me and for my wife, that actually increases our brand affinity for JetBlue. We're more likely to use their product. We're more likely to use their service as a result. So to wrap this up, I think the 3 things that we want brands to take away— and by the way, brands extend beyond just, you know, brands. It's anyone who has a presence on Twitter that wants to get their message across, whether it's celebrities or journalists or bloggers or everyday users. Is to take risks, always listen, and be prepared. I'll show you a recent exchange on Twitter that accomplishes all three of these things. This is a tweet that was sent out by an everyday user named Laura Ellen, which read, "Can tell I like chocolate a bit too much when I'm following both KitKat and Oreo." KitKat, which is a brand that does a really good job of listening, responded immediately with a tweet that read, "The fight for Laura." Ellen's affection is on, and challenged Oreo to a tic-tac-toe match using KitKat bars to form an X. And Oreo, that does an equally good job of listening, didn't take on the challenge. They just took a bite out of the KitKat bar. A really good example of bringing a human voice or a face to brands, and allowing users to have visibility into those conversations. And so I'll close by saying what makes Twitter unique as a platform is that it's a bridge. And it is something that can extend beyond Twitter.com itself or the Twitter platform itself. I'll close by showing an example of a campaign that Adidas ran around the hashtag #TakeTheStage. They invited people in the UK to come into a photo booth and take photos wearing their Adidas gear, and then to tweet about that. And then when they showed up, they had a surprise waiting for them. [SPEAKING FRENCH] Yeah!

Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! How you doing?

Right, nice to meet you.

You all right? Oh my God.

There you go, microphone. No, I've got the rubber duck. You got the rubber duck?

Oh my gosh, can I get in? Yes. Yeah. Oh my goodness.

Hello, you all right? Should we do some pictures?

Wow, that was wonderful! I don't even think that coming. Oh my God, wow! God, David Beckham, eh?

Thank you for your time.