The ‘Mutual Respect’ That Results When Consumers and Brands Collide
Shailesh
Rao, vice president of Asia Pacific, the Americas and emerging markets for
Twitter, sees himself as an educator and an evangelist. He did not know how
much he would fit into this role until he arrived in India in 2007 as Google’s
head for that country and discovered lack of understanding about the Internet.
According to eMarketer, India is set to become Twitter’s largest market after
the U.S. with a projected 40 million users by 2018, up from 17 million this
year.
Twitter,
says Rao, is powerful. It is a platform that enables a specific kind of
communication and exchange, which is real time, public and conversational.
Everybody on the planet is able to get value and use Twitter, he adds. “It is
almost like we are tapping into the collective consciousness of humankind and
able to see it reflected back to us.”
Knowledge@Wharton
spoke with Rao about Twitter, social media trends and his leadership journey
during the Wharton
India Economic Forum in
Philadelphia in February.
An
edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Knowledge@Wharton: Lots of people woke up to the power and
potential of Twitter during the Arab Spring, which some people call the Twitter
Revolution in view of the political changes that it brought about. In your
experience, what has been the most dramatic demonstration of Twitter’s power?
Shailesh
Rao: That is a difficult
question to answer because, having the privilege of being inside Twitter, we
see examples of the usage of the platform that are so diverse. They are from
all parts of the world — and even outside the Earth because we have seen
astronauts tweet from space and the Mars Rover tweet from Mars. I would go back
to a story that for me, in my early days at Twitter, was the most powerful.
I had traveled to Rio
de Janeiro in the process of helping the company establish its presence in
Brazil and I was interviewing Brazilians who were power users of Twitter. I met
one young man who lived in a favela. A favelais the
Brazilian name for slum. This boy told me the story of using Twitter. At that
time I think he was 14 or 15. He was 12 when he used Twitter for the first time
to communicate with the outside world [about] the military exercises that were
being conducted in the favelas and what he was seeing.
Unfortunately, at
times some of the people in the favelas faced poor physical
treatment in the process of trying to use the military to clean them up from
drug trafficking. And this young boy — using the power of Twitter — became the
voice of all worldwide media news services as to what was actually happening
inside the favelas. His voice became so prominent that the
government had to pull back and rethink the program to come up with an approach
that was more considerate of the community and its members. And he was only 12.
I met this man close
to his favela — his home. Having him tell the story about how
someone so young — living in poor circumstances — could have such a powerful
voice was an amazing reminder of what Twitter is all about. It is the
democratization of access to a platform that allows anyone in the world — who
has a mobile phone and access to SMS — to have a voice and be heard. The young
man went on to become the flag bearer for Brazil at the Summer Olympics two
years ago. He is now something of a TV celebrity. It was wonderful to see his
own personal journey in building his confidence and lifting himself and his
family out of poverty.
Knowledge@Wharton: In many ways Twitter is a force for
good. A dramatic example came after the Sydney terrorist attacks when the “I’ll
ride with you” movement was born in response over Twitter. But sometimes the
opposite also happens where the crowd seems to turn against some poor victim
through public shaming or harassment. There was a
story in The New York Times Magazine recently about that. What is Twitter’s policy
about such incidents? When does Twitter intervene?
Rao: As with any technology service, we have terms
and conditions that govern what is appropriate use of the platform by our
users. When people incite violence, indulge in hate speech, impersonate … these
are all violations of our terms of service. When the community on Twitter
submits complaints, we take appropriate action. Twitter is not an environment
that is completely without rules. As with any platform or any tool, you will
always have misuse. If you believe as I do that more people are good than bad,
the majority of users of the platform are really inspiring, uplifting and
ultimately productive for society.
Knowledge@Wharton: Can you give an example of a time when
you had to intervene?
Rao: Well, it is hard to give a specific
example, but I can tell you that we get requests all the time from our users
saying [a particular account] is an impersonator, that it is not in fact the
individual that they claim to be. In those instances, we have removed the user
or the account from the platform.
Knowledge@Wharton: How many users does Twitter have now and
in which parts of the world is it growing the fastest?
Rao: That is a bit of a complicated question
because, if we look at today’s Twitter, we have more than 288 million monthly
active users. We also have more than 500 million monthly visitors to the
Twitter website; they may not be logged in, but they are using the service.
They may have done a search on Google, seen something on television, and they
come to Twitter to explore that content further. Then we have one billion unique
mobile devices that we touch with our MoPub exchange service. MoPub is the
largest mobile ad exchange in the world. It touches one billion unique mobile
devices. So the number depends on which perspective you have on Twitter.
Knowledge@Wharton: Especially in the emerging markets,
people access Twitter primarily through mobile phones. How has the Twitter app
been optimized for mobile use?
Rao: Well, just to correct you, we are not
only in emerging markets. We are a mobile service. We were designed from inception
with SMS as the context. That is why we have 140 characters as the constraint
for the Twitter message. Today, more than 80% of our users access the service
over mobile. More than 80% of our revenues come from mobile advertising. So we
are a mobile service, not just in emerging markets, but all around the world.
Knowledge@Wharton: Since you referred to people watching
television while tweeting, there is some interesting research at Wharton where
we refer to the fact that Twitter is often used as a second screen when people
watch television. Do you see any advertising potential here? The researchwe
published recently said that second
screening can distract people from actually clicking through to buy something
in some cases.
Rao: We have done research in-house that shows the
opposite. We outfitted an audience with sensors and tracked their emotional
state — their perspiration, their heart rate — to measure the level of
engagement. One group was given their mobile device with access to Twitter.
Another group — a control group — was allowed to watch the same sporting event
but was not allowed to have access to their Twitter service during the match.
What we found was that
the audience that was watching television and was using Twitter to have a
conversation about the program were significantly more engaged. On the face of
it, it seems that people may be distracted because they are looking at their
phones. But people are much more emotionally and intellectually engaged with
what is happening on the television screen because they are talking about it.
They are trying to formulate opinions, react and respond to opinions.
Twitter is essentially
a platform that enables a specific kind of communication and exchange, which is
real time, public, and conversational. So it is natural that Twitter becomes a
companion to television. This extends beyond television to any phenomenon in
life.
We see a significant
commercial opportunity in this. We have a feature called TV targeting, which
allows advertisers to target audiences that are talking about a particular
television show and then introduce the brand into the conversation. A logical
example would be if you are a company that is advertising on television during
a certain program, you may also want to extend your advertising to Twitter to
the audiences that are talking about that program and presumably watching that
program. Now your advertising is able to cover audiences across television and
Twitter in an integrated cross-media fashion.
Knowledge@Wharton: That leads to a question I was about to
ask about your advertising. Twitter’s fourth-quarter [2014] revenues grew 97%
to $479 million, which is much higher than analysts had predicted. How was this
achieved? Can you give examples of companies that are using Twitter to build
their brands?
Rao: There are so many examples from around
the world. But the fundamental reason that we are seeing this kind of success
is because the product works. The average advertising campaign on Twitter is
seeing a 3% to 5% engagement rate. That means that of the people who see an
advertisement on Twitter, 3% to 5% are engaging with that ad in some way, To
put that in context, the engagement rate is 30 to 50 times better than [it is
in] traditional digital advertising.
We are seeing that
kind of success because our advertising approach mirrors where we are today as
a society. Users want relevant content as advertising. As a result, the
distinction between advertising and content is going away. All that really
matters to a user — whether it comes from an advertiser or from another source
— is relevancy. We have algorithms that are able to look at who you follow and
those accounts on Twitter that you find the most valuable. We use that to make
sure that the advertisements you see are the most relevant to you.
Secondly, the service
allows for what I would call mutual respect. Traditional media has been
broadcast, which implies one way. One of the defining characteristics of
Twitter is that it allows for conversation. This ability to have a two-way
dialogue has two interesting effects. The most obvious one is it allows the
audience to respond. But the more subtle one, which I think is more powerful,
is it forces accountability on the part of the brand, which means it is more
authentic and genuine.
As a brand, if you are
going to talk to an audience that you know can respond, the likelihood that
what you say is true and authentic is much higher. This is why our advertising
approach is working. That, of course, leads directly to revenue success.
There are so many
examples of companies that have done amazing work on the platform. During the
World Cup last year, Coca-Cola created what we would call a live studio “war
room” to make sure that as the matches were unfolding, their conversation on
Twitter could incorporate real-time information so that the conversation
Coca-Cola was having with this audience could be relevant and timely.
Knowledge@Wharton: How would you compare Twitter’s
advertising approach to that of other social media platforms, say, like
Facebook?
Rao: It is hard to compare. I do not know how
Facebook is thinking or what their strategy is. But I can say that any kind of
advertising is not just relevant to the advertiser, but also relevant to the
user. In that sense, we view advertising as content.
Another distinguishing
feature of Twitter’s advertising is that you see the promotions in the
timeline. By putting it in the core timeline, we take on the responsibility
with the advertiser to make sure it is as relevant, if not more so, than the
rest of information in your timeline on Twitter.
The third point is we
are mobile. More than 80% of our revenue comes from people viewing ads on
mobile devices.
The last one is that
for a long time there has been a narrative that has been developed that digital
is fighting traditional media, that digital’s gains are traditional media’s
losses. Twitter bucks that narrative. We see ourselves as an amplifier. We amplify
traditional media; thereby we believe that we make traditional media better and
we are a natural partner for traditional media.
Knowledge@Wharton: When you think of traditional media and
social media, what in your mind is the most important metric to focus on?
Rao: Well, different metrics are important for
different situations and different companies have different KPIs (key
performance indicators). But if I had to boil it down to one thing, I would say
engagement rate. If you know your audience is engaged with what you are
publishing and what you are saying, everything will take care of itself.
Everything else is downstream from that.
Knowledge@Wharton: Evan Williams (former Twitter CEO)
recently remarked that Wall Street does not get Twitter. Do you agree? What do
you wish Wall Street understood about Twitter?
Rao: When you are working in a company that is
offering a new technology service to a new market or a new population of users,
your job first and foremost is education. All of us inside the company see
ourselves as evangelists or educators to help the world understand how to get
the most value out of Twitter.
As long as we do that
and we stay focused on the goals that we have, we will be fine. Whatever may be
happening, you know, is noise in the outside world. We remain committed to a
strategy we put in place a long time ago and we are just executing it as our strategy,
and we are very excited about the progress that we are making.
Knowledge@Wharton: Mark Cuban recently described Twitter as
the best search engine, bar none, to get real-time information. In view of your
previous role at Google, I wonder if you agree with him. What makes Twitter
different — for someone looking for information — from Google?
Rao: Both are great companies. I have a lot of
respect for Google and what they did. Google did a great job indexing the web.
But Twitter indexes the web directly down to the individuals who are publishing
that content. Because of the format being 140 characters, we have an ability to
capture real-time information. So, both provide valuable services. But
everybody on the planet is able to get value and use Twitter. When that
happens, think about what the net result is. In essence, we would be able to
have a view into the pulse of the planet and the moods and the thoughts and the
feelings — the aspirations and the anxieties — of human beings around the world.
It is almost like we are tapping into the collective consciousness of humankind
and able to see it reflected back at us.
We have examples of
pharmaceutical companies that have told us they were able to discover a side
effect of a drug that no clinical trial was able to reveal. [The company said,]
“We learned that one of our drugs was causing headaches and we were able to do
it because we analyzed the conversation on Twitter about our drug, and we saw
that people were citing this repeatedly. We were able to improve our drug and
eliminate that side effect.” It gives you just one small example of how
different companies and organizations can leverage this insight into the
collective consciousness of the world to make things better for people.
Knowledge@Wharton: I have a couple of final questions about
your personal leadership journey. If you were to think back on your career,
what would you say is the biggest leadership challenge you ever faced, how did
you overcome it and what did you learn from it?
Rao: I am too young to be thinking about writing
memoirs. So I do not have a ready rank ordered list for you.
Knowledge@Wharton: Pick any one.
Rao: Two examples come to mind. I will talk about a
couple because they are different and perhaps they are relevant to different
people. When I arrived in India to run Google in 2007, I was not aware how much
a lack of understanding there was about how the Internet functioned and its
role in that society, that culture. For the first year, while I was there to
build a business, I realized that my job very quickly became a sort of
ambassador for Google in India. So the amount of time I spent with government
officials, with law enforcement officials, with educators and with leaders in
civil society to play this kind of role was surprising. It highlighted for me
the important role of being an educator and providing a translation function
between the people who sit in Silicon Valley, who think that you just build
products and people automatically use them, and corners of the world and
society where there is friction in these information asymmetries.
A second kind of
evolution in my career was moving from providing leadership when you have
direct access to the people you lead — an immediate team that may be in your
office or within close reach — to a different kind of leadership that is
distributed or remote. How do you impose an agenda or enforce a set of
parameters on teams that may be thousands of miles away from you, operating in
offices that you may only get to visit once or twice a year?
That was a long
learning process when I moved from running India to running Asia Pacific for
Google and now at Twitter. It is running a broad swath of international markets
— from Brazil to Russia to Australia and everything in between. It takes a
tremendous amount of clarity on what is important, repeated communication of
that prioritized list of objectives, and the use of remote communication tools
to stay engaged with people. You have to create structures that ensure that the
relevant voices and pockets of the organization have access so you do not end
up in a bubble and an echo chamber of people just telling you what you want to
hear.
Knowledge@Wharton: What role do yoga and meditation play in
your life?
Rao: They play a significant role. I am a big
believer that you can only grow as a professional, as a human being, and as a
leader if you make yourself available to moments of serendipity — sort of
tangential or non-linear thoughts, ideas and views. So reading good fiction,
meeting interesting people for coffee, traveling and pursuing your hobbies can
all help you in unintended ways.
Before I moved to
India, I read Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Now it
is famous because Barack Obama has adopted it as his informal textbook. But I
adopted it in 2007 when I was traveling to India. I was reading it because one
of my degrees is in history and that is still a passion of mine. Ultimately,
that book was about managing change. It was so powerful. I did not pick up that
book to make myself a better manager, but simply out of interest.
Coming back to yoga, I
think it is very powerful. To call yoga an interest or a hobby is
under-appreciating what it is. To me, yoga — in its ultimate form — is a
lifestyle. I have been an off-and-on practitioner for seven or eight years. It
has been an eye-opening experience. It has benefited me tremendously because it
helps me understand how I can use techniques to bring focus in my work every
day.
Knowledge@Wharton: One last question. How many times a day
do you tweet? And how many Twitter followers do you have?
Rao: A modest amount. It all depends. It is all
relative. I think I have 11,000 followers from around the world. I take pride
in the fact that as an international person I have followers in Brazil, in
India, in the U.S., in Japan and in Korea. It is exciting for me because I
travel the world and I like to meet and talk to lots of different people. I
should probably tweet more.
Twitter is great
because so many people publish content. It is a truly democratic publishing
platform. But there is nothing wrong in people who want to consume that content
and use it almost like their personal newspaper. Checking in real time — in the
morning, at lunch, and in the night — about what is going on about the things
they care about.
Knowledge@Wharton: It is like your personal news feed.
Rao: That is an absolutely appropriate way to use
Twitter and one that we would strongly encourage people to explore to help them
get over the intimidation of feeling that they have to tweet to use Twitter.
That is a fallacy I am trying to dispel.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/why-twitter-thinks-mobile-first/
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