Twitter is currently in something of a predicament. We personally love it, but unlike Facebook and Snapchat, its team is having trouble determining the best way to turn a crucial service into one that makes money.
Founder and CEO Jack Dorsey sees streaming video as the best way for the network to increase its revenue, but its user growth numbers remained largely flat for the second quarter of 2016. (This might have something to do with the fact that people who aren’t journalists or comedians don’t always like perusing the thoughts of abusive, anonymous trolls, but we digress.)
On the agency front, the company is currently reviewing potential creative partners after ending its short and somewhat uneven relationship with TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles.
That stuff aside, today the birdie network released a new campaign created by L.A./S.F. content studio Portal A. Its purpose is to promote the “stickers” service whereby users can add pre-selected images to their photos.
Here’s the ad.
When you place a sticker on a photo, you #StickTogether with others around the world.https://t.co/sibEWqSM08
— Twitter (@twitter) July 28, 2016
This move pushes Twitter a bit closer to certain competitors by allowing for more manipulation of images within the app. We don’t yet know whether the feature will attract more users (most of whom are probably already preoccupied by Snapchat and Pokemon Go), but TechCrunch is very skeptical.
The company’s other recent ads, which seem to have been created in-house, focused more on its key selling point: it is the best place to go to figure out what people — or at least a certain influential group of people — are talking about at any given time. It’s also very good for breaking news.
See what’s happening: https://t.co/ChbWRrSJyKhttps://t.co/r9AZd9rzI3
— Twitter (@twitter) July 25, 2016
Also, politics:
See what’s happening — politics on Twitter.https://t.co/xaJo3PmYn5
— Twitter (@twitter) July 25, 2016
The Portal A work was directed by digital creator and director Scott DW, and it’s in keeping with other recent projects from Portal A, which has done a lot of work for YouTube including its annual “Year in Rewind” compilations.
Managing partner Zach Blume says, “This is our first project with Twitter, and we LOVED working with them. We collaborated with the Twitter team to bring the new #Stickers product to life – in real life – casting top influencers on the platform like @Todrick, @ChachiGonzales, @GraysonDolan, @EthanDolan, @AndreaRussert in the video. We worked on the project from brief to launch – on creative, talent, production, post-production, and social. Our goal was to create content that felt felt natural and organic to the world of Twitter.”
We would really like to help Twitter succeed, because we use it every day to the great annoyance of others in our general vicinity. But it’s really not the sort of place where one goes to buy things…