Future is LIVE at #TwitterUdaan

Friday, 6 May 2016

#TwitterUdaan, our first business leadership summit in Asia, launched in India and brought together Twitter executives with C-suite leaders, top advertisers, marketers and brands over thought-provoking panel discussions, stimulating dialogue, and engaging insights.

#TwitterUdaan: Future is Live, Future is Content, Disruptive Innovation, Future is Data driven, Future is Media First

Future is LIVE at #TwitterUdaan

Brands and agency leaders are growing their Twitter influence by transforming how they reach, engage, and listen to their core customer base — while tapping into new audiences. The first #TwitterUdaan Summit, targeted at marketing leaders from brands and agencies, themed #FutureForward, explored the big trends in business leadership and marketing in the digital world. The key themes included live, video, disruptive innovation, content marketing, data, and media-first content.

The summit’s opening keynote on “Future is Live” by Parminder Singh (@parrysingh), managing director of Southeast Asia, India, Middle East & North Africa at Twitter opened up the floor for engaging conversations with his presentation on Twitter’s live connection to culture.

This was followed by an engaging fireside chat between Shailesh and Santosh Desai, MD and CEO of FutureBrands India on how brands need to build authentic relationships with their customers.

Future is LIVE at #TwitterUdaan

Jean-Philippe (JP) Maheu (@jpmaheu), vice president of global brands and agencies walked the audience through content best practices in “Future is Content”, and provided insight on how to engage a customer, hold their attention and why video and media-rich content always wins on the platform.

Future is LIVE at #TwitterUdaan

Steven Kalifowitz (@skalifowitz), Asia Pacific head of brand strategy challenged advertising norms, showcased case studies and ideas that stood out of the clutter, and asked brands to think out-of-the-box using innovative, disruptive strategies in “Disruptive Innovation”.

Future is LIVE at #TwitterUdaan

Guest speaker Lakshmanan Narayan (@LuxNarayan), CEO and co-founder of Unmetric, presented on a data-driven future, how brands can use data to drive social media accountability and business outcomes. Video, insights, and the evolution of demands on a medium, were among the key industry trends he highlighted. He provoked an interesting debate on quantifying the value of a follower versus the value of a TVC viewer, landing engagement metrics as a focal point for digital and recommending the use of medium-appropriate metrics.

The future is media-first, says Twitter’s Maya Hari (@maya_hari), senior director, product specialist, Asia Pacific and emerging markets. She presented on how we are now living at a time where media is increasingly live, interactive, and visual. An image speaks a thousand words, but a video equals a thousand images. Everything starts and ends in media, finishing the day with a thought-provoking panel discussion on how being media-forward is not an option anymore.

The event was attended by close to 200 industry leaders including representatives from FutureBrands, HDFC Life, OLX, PepsiCo, Vodafone India, Yes Bank, Yu, Tata Motors, Unmetric, Ogilvy & Mather, Group M, Omnicom Media Group & Madison India Starcom.

The rise of digital influence: launch of #TwitterInfluencerIndex

The summit was punctuated with the launch of Twitter’s first-ever #TwitterInfluencerIndex, an index that measures how influential the world’s top executives are on Twitter. The Index seeks to understand the effects of C-suite engagement, who the top CEOs on Twitter are and what constitutes their success on our platform. The study finds that CEO participation on Twitter leads to better communication, and India accounts for nearly 50% of Asia Pacific C-suite executives listed in the #TwitterInfluencerIndex.

Business leaders on Twitter have the power to affect change with a single Tweet, use the platform for recruitment, transparency, crisis management, brand perception, and ultimately for cultivating deeper customer relationships. The Index highlights how CEOs develop their digital influence and their ability to create an effect (good or bad), change opinions and behaviours, and drive measurable outcomes using Twitter.

The #TwitterInfluencerIndex looks at the reach, relevance and resonance of the world’s top executives on Twitter:

  • Reach: How far information in a Tweet has traveled across the social continuum and reached those who have in turn interacted with it. Top CEOs with high #TwitterInfluencerIndex scores have mastered techniques to make their content go far and captivate the attention of a large audience.
  • Relevance: Alignment to interests of the moment is key. Relevance is situation and context sensitive; CEOs on the #TwitterInfluencerIndex know what to Tweet and when to Tweet it, to generate interest and relevance to their audience.
  • Resonance: Like information, popular Tweets have a ripple effect. What differentiates CEOs on the #TII from others is their ability to create engagement. When people feel compelled to offer their opinion, engage, comment, and share a CEO’s Tweet, influence is gained.

The #TwitterInfluencerIndex highlights the 100 top C-suite executives on Twitter from around the world. Asia-Pacific leaders occupy 15% of this pie, out of which seven Indian leaders have made it to this index for their success on Twitter:

  • Anand Mahindra, Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra Group (@anandmahindra)
  • Uday Kotak, Executive Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Kotak Mahindra Bank (@udaykotak)
  • Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO, Zomato (@deepigoyal)
  • Sachin Bansal, Executive Chairman and Founder, Flipkart (@_sachinbansal)
  • Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder and CEO, Olacabs.com (@bhash)
  • Kunal Bahl, Co-founder and CEO, Snapdeal.com (@1kunalbahl)
  • Naveen Tewari, Founder and CEO, InMobi (@NaveenTewari)

The inaugural #TwitterUdaan Summit was a success, thanks to our speakers, partners, clients and everyone else who invested time to attend the event. We look forward to continuing this dialogue with business leaders on the platform.