Like many other companies, Twitter uses the Cannes Lions festival to showcase its product offerings. Unlike others, it’s adopted a “feed-first” mantra as opposed to mobile-first.
At this year’s festival, Twitter will spend a lot of time talking about the value of experiences, how it’s doubled down on live streaming and what it takes for brands to create a value exchange with the platform’s users, the company’s Director of Brand Strategy, Stacy Minero, explains in this interview with Beet.TV.
“We talk a lot about how you can creative feed-first content,” says Minero, who joined Twitter three years ago following stints on the buy-side at Mindshare and ZenithOptimedia. “Everybody’s talking about mobile-first and we’re focused on feed-first.”
Some of the best work done on the social platform by brands involves designing memorable experiences. “We know that consumers skip ads but they don’t skip experiences,” Minero says.
Foremost among these are brands becoming live broadcasters, the increased use of 360 video and harnessing the power of bots. One example she cites is when fast-feeder Wendy’s teamed up with Twitter during the NCAA final four playoffs, which enabled fans to create their own team brackets on the rails of Twitter, as ADWEEK reports. “It was a really interesting way to capitalize on that heat moment but to bring consumers into an experience that was more immersive,” Minero says.
The company’s feed-first approach is based on the knowledge that “people are more likely to scroll or to swipe than they are to stop on content.” Among its suggested best practices for brands are “having a bias to short form,” engineering the front end to create stopping power and adding captions to content.
To create a value exchange with users, brands need to understand their mindsets and motivations, but also their need states “so that you can either deliver entertainment or some type of utility.”
Twitter has “doubled down” on live streaming because while people are attracted by content, being part of the conversation keeps them engaged. It’s the result of the “first screen” and “second screen” melding together for shared experiences.
“There’s a lot of opportunities for brands to not only draft off of live streaming and be a part of it but to actually create their own live stream content,” says Minero.
This segment is part of the Beet.TV lead-up to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. 2017. The series is presented by Storyful. For more from the series, please visit this page.
