Event: The Fantastic Tavern – The Twitter Effect

Date: Thursday 30th April 2009

Time: 6pm until bar shuts

Venue: The Leather Exchange, 15 Leathermarket Street, London SE1 3HN. It is 5 mins walk from London Bridge Station. Come to the back of the bar and head to The Upstairs Lounge.

Put your headphones in and lets start here…

On April 1st, the Guardian launched a spoof news article that suggested that it was moving to the 140 word twitter format as its only form of media dissemination. Funny? I didn’t hear anyone laughing. Why? Because it could have been real and many of us would have just accepted it as inevitability.

There is no denying that social media is a hot topic for us all, not least how do we make enough time for it! The activity of a brand and maybe even its fabric is being challenged. As creative’s guiding brands and creating interfaces with customers, audiences, end users – call them what you like – in mind, we are also having to adapt to change at incredible speed.

Just as YouTube monetarised the platform by offering channels and the Corporates rushed in (how many channels to date), twitter is now experiencing a proliferation of brands appearing as voices on the twit deck. Should they be there? Or more saliently, how should they behave in this new environment. And respond activity in it? What role does an agency play in this osmotic relationship and how do we adapt to the need for speed? How do we prove the business cases for ‘getting involved’ and what new services might we have to provide?

Moreover, arguably we are seeing further evidence for the emergence of personal brands. Superstars of digital communities. And this extends well beyond the reaches of Stephen Fry. Is Robin Sloan’s film, EPIC, being realised? What are personal brands? How do we develop one and what do we need to protect as we do so? And if individuals increasingly become brands, what does that mean to organisations and business as they try to accommodate – or lock us down?

The Fantastic Tavern returns. This time we’ll debate the social media phenomenon that is twitter and consider what it means as part of societal change and its impact on the creative community. The Creative Meister will circle a collection of fine social media commentators to ignite the discourse. The biggest question of the night will surely be will anyone actually pay attention or even turn up when they could experience the whole thing through a thread of tweets?