Twitter Tweaks Its Annual Best Brand Tweets List to Reflect a Tough 2020

This year, Twitter took a different approach to #BestOfTweets2020, its annual nod to brands that use its platform in the most creative ways throughout the year, mainly because 2020 was such a different year. Instead, the platform updated the categories to include more relevant criteria befitting of 2020—for instance, swapping the best brand launch category with the best campaign for driving positive change. Senior director of brand strategy Ryan Oliver told Adweek, “brands supported and entertained people throughout a chaotic year. This is an ode to brands that were worth remembering from a year we’ll never forget.” The social network changed the criteria from the 2019 and 2018 editions of the list. “We created categories to reflect craziness of 2020,” Oliver said. Twitter wrote in its introduction, “If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve likely thrown your fair share of 2020 marketing plans out the window: scrapped shoots, delayed launches, ever-shifting budgets, Zoom this, Zoom that. These challenges have really pushed marketers creatively, leading to some incredible work on Twitter. From epic watch parties to crucial campaign pivots, marketers brought all the feels and really got to the heart of what Twitter’s all about—connecting with people.” Brand strategy team Twitter Next and Twitter ArtHouse, a global team working with artists, influencers and producers to develop content for brands, hand-selected the most creative brand campaigns of 2020 as brands stepped up and took action to inform, support and entertain people during one of the toughest years for marketers. Twitter's list for 2020 included these categories: Best campaign for quenching our thirst for sports With live sports brought to an abrupt halt by Covid-19—Oliver called it “foreign, uncomfortable and boring”—The Last Dance, ESPN’s 10-episode documentary series on Michael Jordan’s last season with the National Basketball Association’s Chicago Bulls, served as a viable substitute for five consecutive Sundays. Gatorade was not an official sponsor of The Last Dance, but it took advantage of its relationships with the NBA and Jordan, teaming up with OMD, TBWA\Chiat\Day, Optimum Sports and Swift to stream game six of the 1997-98 NBA Finals—Jordan’s last game as a Bull, in which he hit the title-clinching shot—on Twitter in its entirety and host a live watch party. https://twitter.com/Gatorade/status/1262216892980310016 Best campaign for driving positive change Driving was an appropriate word here, as Uber, a company known for helping people get around, was forced to deal with people being encouraged to not get around due to the pandemic. Oliver called Uber’s #MoveWhatMatters campaign “a creative way to not just take their ball and go home because their business was severely altered,” with Uber instead delivering 10 million free rides and food to front-line workers, seniors and people in need. Uber’s in-house creative group teamed up with Wieden+Kennedy and MediaCom on #MoveWhatMatters. https://twitter.com/Uber/status/1245094816809021440 Best brand speaking out and standing up The phrase “unprecedented times” was used excessively to describe the early stages of the pandemic, but even for brands known for being prolific on Twitter, a step back to determine the proper course of action was seen as a prudent move. Ben & Jerry’s, however, dove right in to what it called tough yet necessary conversations, taking to Twitter to discuss issues such as white supremacy and the gender pay gap. The ice cream brand followed a path taken by other companies under the Unilever umbrella, and Oliver said, “They wanted to do what was right, not what was comfortable. We all need more ice cream, and the world needs more brands like Ben & Jerry’s.” https://twitter.com/benandjerrys/status/1273646907689140226 Best campaign for connecting us from the couch People couldn’t head to the movie theater to see Trolls World Tour, so Universal brought Trolls World Tour to their homes via premium video-on-demand. The movie studio further engaged fans by hosting a live watch party on Twitter and having some of the film’s stars interact with fans and discuss what turned out to be Universal’s biggest digital release ever. “It was a good family event,” Oliver said. “Families came together to watch the film, and it had this other element to it. They felt connected to other people watching the film through the power of Twitter.” https://twitter.com/Trolls/status/1248302285693825029 Best campaign for redefining home entertainment Going to see live music was not an option for most people this year, either, so Verizon brought the live music to them with its Pay It Forward Live campaign, featuring eight weeks of livestreamed concerts and gaming events. Dave Matthews kicked off the series, which led to an unprecedented 100% net positive brand sentiment for Verizon, the highest ever to result from a Twitter livestream or a brand on the social network. “Verizon wanted to bring back a sense of community,” Oliver said. “It realized people were looking for different sorts of entertainment.” https://twitter.com/Verizon/status/1245114181680009216 Best campaign from the future While most people were likely focused on getting through 2020 in one piece, HBO’s Westworld thought much further ahead, giving fans of the science-fiction show from Brazil, Mexico and the U.S. a peek at what their lives will be like in 2058. HBO tapped IBM Watson’s Personality Insights service to analyze people’s most recent tweets and determine what their fate will be 38 years from now, matching them based on personality type to old and new characters from the show. “It gave people who weren’t big fans of the show a reason to gravitate toward it,” Oliver said. https://twitter.com/WestworldHBO/status/1238503706875891722 Best campaign for making us nostalgic Twitter moved from the future to the past, recognizing Airbnb for giving people the chance to spend the night at the one remaining Blockbuster Video store, in Bend, Ore. “Remember ‘Make It a Blockbuster night?’ This brought people back to the popularity of Blockbuster,” Oliver said. The @blockbuster handle’s first tweet in six years helped set the campaign in motion. https://twitter.com/Airbnb/status/1293200334832021512 Best campaign for making missing out memorable While most graduates were not able to walk down the aisle with their classmates, Chase helped fill the void by teaming up with VaynerMedia to ask the class of 2020 to #ShowMeYourWalk. “Graduation is a memorable event,” Oliver said, “this year for a different reason.” The financial services giant hosted a two-part livestreamed graduation event on Twitter and other social platforms—one for high school and college, and the second for historically Black colleges and universities—and the Twitter livestream drew 44 times more views than any other platform. “Chase gave them a moment to shine, accept their diploma and have something memorable,” Oliver said. https://twitter.com/Chase/status/1254866412847448065 Best campaign that rallied their community It probably comes as a surprise to see a Twitter account with fewer than 8,000 followers crack the list, but Manny’s Deli in Chicago managed to pull it off. Like many family-owned businesses across the country and the world, Manny’s Deli was struggling due to a pandemic-induced loss of business, and it teamed up with social media management provider Fresh Content Society to deliver that message in an honest fashion. A single tweet drove a 1,500% increase in sales, 20 million media impressions and 500,000 engagements across all channels and media pickups. “We saw a lot of people rally the community about leveraging the power of Twitter,” Oliver said. https://twitter.com/mannysdeli/status/1286365250816806912 Best campaign for pivoting when it counts Imagine preparing for a massive undertaking that occurs once every 10 years, and then having 2020 be that year. That was the challenge faced by the U.S. Census Bureau. It teamed up with agencies Reingold and Culture One World on an effort to use Twitter’s takeover ad offerings to drive awareness of the 2020 Census, giving it access to the coveted top spot on the social network’s timeline for 24 hours. The Census Bureau also enlisted the help of influencers to help drive home the importance of the Census among younger audiences and people in underrepresented communities. The organization is “not on the list of usual suspects for award winners from us,” Oliver admitted—but, then again, neither was Manny’s Deli. Such is life in 2020. https://twitter.com/MsPackyetti/status/1280651887059009536