why pay attention to twitter bedecarre

8/14/2019 Why Pay Attention to Twitter Bedecarre

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From Media140, London

Why pay attention to

Twitter& real-time

Social Media?Tom Bedecarré

@tombed

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about:George http://bit.ly/aboutgeorgeblog



➡ Nothing like being the early-morning “wake up”

speaker after a long flight.

➡ Fun topic for a conference. Looking forward to

engaging with people.

★ Single most common client

question: “Why should I care

what you had for breakfast,

Tom?”

➡ How many Twitter haters are in

the audience? How many Twitter

lovers? How many are Twitter–

curious? [Ed–largely lovers]

➡Fascinated by Twitter haters.

Endless number of journalists

actively looking for the chance

to give Twitter a bad press. If

you aren’t selling papers, bitch

about Twitter.

➡ Ashton Kutcher has pushed Twitter to the foregroundof the traditional media. “It’s engendered a huge

pool of Twitter haters.”

★ Journalists hate Twitter in

particular because it’s a

threat to their sense of

journalism.

➡ So what is the point? Why

do people care about these

mundane things?

➡ Once asked a multinational

CEO: “Do you use social

media?” “No, I don’t have time.” There’s the attitude

that people got Facebook, and they’re outraged: “Now

I have to do Twitter too?!”

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“Journalists hateTwitter in particular

because it’s a threatto their sense of

journalism.”



➡ Client meeting example: found that an in-house

marketing team were all using Facebook/Twitter but

weren’t following each other. “We just work

together.” They tried to hire AKQA to do their social

media but they weren’t social together.

➡ Haters are particularly interesting. Best way to get

a headline is to do a study into Twitter being

completely pointless.

★ Widely reported study: 40.55%

of all Tweets are “pointless

babble.” Question reflects

the prejudice of the study.

Do people measure telephone

conversations and text

messages? Conversations in

the street? What proportion

of these would be “pointless

babble”?

➡ Interesting that these studies get so much traction.

Teens not using Twitter is another one.

➡ Any time people find a tiny piece circumstantial

evidence that Twitter might be a fad, the print it.

40 million users almost overnight gets swept under

the rug. People enjoy beating up on Twitter.

➡ Some stats: 11.30am is the top pass along timeslot,

and Monday is the top day. Put out your tweets then!

News is heaviest at 2pm.

➡ So why Twitter? What’s the point? It’s enjoyable.

➡ Specifically: As CEO of six offices, on the road a

lot, it’s a great way to keep up with people, send

short messages, and make connections with people

online who you don’t have time for normally.

➡ More broadly: Stay in touch with the industry as a

whole. Follow people in the industry and split them

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“40 million users almost overnight gets swept under the rug.

People enjoy beating upon Twitter.”



off from the “bff list.”

➡ Even more broadly: Zeitgeist. Can stay in touch with

news and top trends. Can tell when Kanye West is

dead, and when he’s alive again.

➡ Why don’t more agency people have time for it? It

helps @tombed understand the Real Time Web.

★ Shows that AKQA is authentic and authoritative. When

people ask about Twitter, the CEO knows.

➡ Tweetfreak blog singled out @tombed as a person to

follow: “Tom is the rare agency CEO who comes acrossas somewhat normal on Twitter.”

➡ Proud to be ‘somewhat’ normal.

➡ I’m not going to tell us anything new about what

people are using Twitter for. That’s what the other

panels in the day are for. And the articles, the

books... there should be a Twitter film.

➡ Pace of development: There’s a book that came out a

few weeks ago that’s already out of date. It said

that Comcast had a full-time Twitter manager. Not any

more. Now they have a team of twelve.

➡ Hollywood is in love with Twitter because it’s free.

They’re trying to find new ways to promote films on

Twitter.

➡ Ashton Kutcher has 3.88 million followers. He tweets

to promote his films (which is good because can you

remember the last one he was in?)

➡ Who’s in the audience? [Ed–a few publishers, some

media, some client people, overwhelmingly agency

folks.]

➡ How can brands and advertisers and publishers deal

with consumer adoption of Twitter? How do you engage

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with people as a brand?

➡ Looking forward to crowdsourcing discussion from

Unilever. The ethics of using real-time media. How do

we listen and who do we listen to? Who is in charge?

➡ Nothing like seeing the blood sport of agencies

fighting over a scrap of new business.

➡ Convergent agencies all staking out a claim for who

will manage social media. How are clients going to

figure out who to assign it to?

➡Of the 40 million Twitter users, estimates that 35 million are social media experts.

➡ Today is about reflecting on innovation. The

challenge is to form what the right questions are,

not getting answers.

➡ People are starting to solve

things. Still a lot to do.

Measuring the effectivenessof a campaign–there isn’t a

tool to provide clients with

ROI on Twitter.

Q&A SESSION:

Q: Do you think that the majority of your clients are

trying to engage you in social media campaigns, or

are you having to bring it up as an option for them?

A: Social media is the number one thing that clients

go to AKQA for. Everyone is asking about it; clients

& prospective clients too. The media are also asking.

It’s taking over the conversations. On the one hand

there are a lot of things that AKQA do which aren’t

social media, so there’s a lot of conversation but as

much money through the door, but social media isbeing intertwined into everything that we do. GAP

hired us for the Back to School campaign. For 20

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“The challenge is to

form what the right questions are, not getting the right

answers.”



years that would have been TV work and some outdoor

placements. This year we did some bus shelters, but

the rest of the campaign was built on Facebook. Born

To Fit (borntofit.com) took you to a Facebook page &

experience. It was all about people sharing their own

ideas about fashion. There was an iPhone applicationthat tied into it also.

Q: Generally, how do we as an industry tackle clients

who have managed their brands more traditionally? How

do we turn them from pushing to engaging? Allocating

spending. How do we change perceptions?

A: Clients struggle with change. Got to be careful assome clients are in the room! People don’t spend

their lifetime on a brand in marketing. They are

caretakers. They get an assignment for a year or two

most. They want to make sure they do a good job based

on historical factors so that they can get their

next, better, assignment. You start with what was

done before and tweak it a little. Hard to get people

to make the shift. FMCG brands aren’t the largest

online advertisers, they’re tiptoeing into that. Goodnews is that whatever is new and interesting gets a

lot of attention. Last year everyone wanted an iPhone

application for their brand. Then people wanted a

Facebook page. What are we going to do with Twitter?

How do we get involved? Twitter is more confusing

because it’s about dialogue, it’s not something

static. Who owns it? Corporate communications

department? Brand team? Client meetings are complex:

PR people, corporate communications teams, brand managers... lots of overlapping people. AKQA

evangelise on social media.

Q: Can you provide some feedback on the GAP campaign?

A: Too soon to tell. Send me an email and I’ll get

back to you.

Q: What are the emerging standards for how to measure

social media?

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A: This is something that people will be talking

about all day today. I don’t have a ‘single’ answer.

You can measure followers and fans and Tweets...

clients want to measure sales, but increasingly there

need to be links between immeasurable activities to

sales. People who were on top of Twitter early onhave received millions of dollars of free publicity.

Dell’s attempts to use it as a Customer Service tool

in particular. Should we use Twitter as part of our

CS dialogue? How much does it cost to put one person

on it full-time? If there’s just one person using

Twitter and just one solitary success story comes out

of it, then it’s worth the expense.

Q: What are the limits of Real Time Web and Social

Media? Don’t they shift the focus so we become

reactive?

A: What would people

have thought the

limits of Facebook

or Twitter or iPhone

were historically?We’re in an exciting

era where technology

and dialogue are

being taken over by

people. It’s people

powered. That’s why

I’m here in London.

Groups like Media140

will keep raising thebar.

Q: How do you make sure that AKQA have their own

strategy right? How much time do internal teams spend

on this?

A: I’m only “somewhat normal” remember! We’re having

the same discussions everyone is. Most of AKQA’s

engagements and client teams involve social media.

Lots of internal dialogue. Should we have a dedicated

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social media team or should it be a part of all

groups? No answers yet, that’s something we’re

working on.

Q: Twitter is used very differently by the super-

followed and the normal user. Does this impact the

platform as a whole?

A: The uses for the platform are just beginning to

blossom. There are interesting start-ups everywhere.

San Francisco bay company called StockTwits, sending

out Real Time stock information. Up-to-the-minute.

One of the fastest growing applications of Twitter.

People are creating business opportunities usingTwitter. Everyone will find a use for it that fits

their needs: that’s the exciting thing about it.

That’s also why I don’t understand Twitter haters.

All you have to do is look around and see blossoming

business opportunities. Twitter is 100 people and

they are turning down billions of dollars. People who

don’t care about Twitter: Google cares about Twitter.

Facebook cares about Twitter. They are scared

shitless. That’s why they want to write cheques tobuy it. They want Twitter on their side. It’s

inevitable that the platform leads to great ideas and

great business opportunities.

Finally: please follow @tombed so I can hit 5,000 users.

Also please tweet what you had for breakfast with the

#media140 hashtag, just to piss people off.

Tom Bedecarré is CEO of AKQA. You can find him on Twitter

as @tombed.

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why pay attention to twitter bedecarre

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