Customer

Twitter UK

In 2020, the global pandemic came with a wave of news stories, changing regulations, and uncertainty - and the conversation around it was seen on Twitter.

Overview

Launched in 2006, Twitter is an online news and social networking service. Twitter is a primary source of local, regional, and global news.

Goals

increase value to marketing clients

improve brand recognition across markets

improve research collaboration

Business Challenge

When the COVID-19 virus first hit and lockdowns were enforced across the world, brands were unsure of what to do. Questions around whether or not they should even continue advertising were being asked through the Twitter hub. Brands that did want to keep speaking to their customers were faced with the challenge of figuring out what the right tone to communicate was, and what exactly was needed and wanted from them. This was especially difficult to pinpoint during a time when news and feelings were constantly changing.

Solution

Twitter Insiders, the company's insight community built on Alida’s platform, helps Twitter and its clients react to what the platform itself is best at—what’s happening.

Twitter Insiders both in the US & in the UK became the beacon of help for Twitter's advertising clients. Twitter partnered with Sparkler, a Digital Insight and Strategy Consultancy, to run two studies per week over the course of lockdown asking people on Twitter how they were feeling, what they wanted to see brands doing, and what tone they wanted brands to use.

Because of how quickly insights could be turned around in the communities, Twitter was able to continuously arm their account teams with fresh data that was reflective of people’s changing feelings based on the latest news and information about the virus. This meant that account teams could keep an open and ongoing dialogue with brands, and really position Twitter as a resource for how to communicate during this unprecedented time.

Results

Ultimately the COVID-19 research connected brands to their audiences on Twitter, and helped contribute to revenue brought in by Twitter advertising sales teams in both the US and UK over the course of the 12 weeks the research ran. Twitter’s account teams also noted that the research improved client perceptions of working with Twitter.