Star Trek and X-Men star Sir Patrick Stewart was onstage at Cannes Lions 2014 with Twitter vice president for global brand strategy Joel Lunenfeld to speak on “#Live Storytelling”. The crux of the talk was how online interaction in this day and age was crucial for public personalities, even ones of Stewart’s stature.
“You cannot leave it to PR people,” said Stewart, recounting how his public relations agent informed him of the importance of being (legitimately) represented on social networks. “I had no idea what would work, and I was extremely nervous about my very first tweet,” reminisced Stewart. “In fact,” he added, “I think I consulted more than one person over each tweet to make sure I got it right…I remember the thrill I had when I got my first ten followers, (and) the fact that there were ten people who actually had listened to what I had said and then responded, that’s where the immediacy and the conversation/dialogue element comes in, which I enjoy so much.
In an interview following the seminar, Lunenfeld shared that the allure of Twitter for storytellers and creatives lay in the sheer breadth of the targeted audience that could now be reached.
“There is an instant connection to an audience, and not just an established audience, but the entire influence of where things could be shared.”
Lunenfeld also cited the ease with which one could create a conversation using just 140 characters, making for a very low entry-level barrier.
“I love the quote,” said Lunenfeld, “I think it was by Twain, ‘I’d write you a shorter letter if I had more time.’ Constraint inspires creativity. When you talk to comedians they love it because it makes you say the most powerful version of what you want to say.”
In addition to the immediacy and brevity simultaneously afforded and demanded by the microblogging site’s format, Stewart revealed, “There is nothing artificial about what I tweet. I only tweet things that I care about either because they’re important to me, things I believe in, or I consider them to be socially important or significant. Or simply because I think they’re funny.
Over the two years that I have been tweeting, I’ve learned that there’s a very strong possibility that if I think something is funny, or cute, or charming, others would too. So those things also are worth sharing.”
Certainly, the figures bore the truth of the seminar, with 1218 of the day’s tweets making Sir Patrick the second most popular talking point of the Festival up to that point.
by Mikhail Lecaros
