How Twitter embraced a challenger mindset
Twitter HQ in downtown San Francisco.
Matt Derella, Twitter’s Global VP of Revenue & Content Partnerships, and Meg Haley, Head of Revenue Product Specialists, talk to eatbigfish partner Chad Dick about how a challenger mindset helped the social network harness its superpower and provided the platform for a return to growth.
What was the situation facing the company in 2017 and why did you decide to change strategy?
MATT DERELLA: I’ve been at the company since 2012 and seen its incredible rise. The first chapter of Twitter is one where everything it does works. It just continues to grow. We then build a commercial business on top of the great usage that’s happening all around the world. The second chapter is when we go public. The pressures of being a public company start to bear down, and we begin to have some challenges. We see some short-term decision making related to usage leading to some difficulties. We see our commercial business is affected because of that. And, with the return of Jack Dorsey as the CEO, it was an opportunity for us to get clear on who we are and who we want to be when we grow up. So, when we started engaging with eatbigfish, it was at this pivotal moment for our customers team to think about and get clear on what we stand for, who we are, and who we want to be. We partnered with eatbigfish to help us get clear on those answers. And ultimately to get clear internally, so that we could be clear externally.
MEG HALEY: 2016 was just a tough year at Twitter. We were questioning and grappling with our role in the marketplace. We had internal questions in terms of our teams, our profitability, what we stood for. And we saw that come back to us from our top partners with marketers, agencies and publishers wanting to understand that role. That moment in time galvanised us to say; we aren’t like everyone else. From how we work, to our culture internally, and our role in the wider industry, it made us stop and ask the questions of who did we want to be? And what was the value that we brought? And so, that was the beginning of our challenger journey.
How would you summarise the identity and offer that you came up with?
Twitter's Global VP of Revenue and Content Partnerships, Matt Derella.
MATT DERELLA: For us, it meant getting down to the most fundamental unit of Twitter, which is the people on the service and how they’re using our service. We wanted to celebrate the fact that they use the service in a way that is entirely different from the way they use other services. The power our audience has and the things they challenge on the service was at the heart of us believing that we were on to something incredibly special here. We’ve always been the scrappy underdog in many ways. The people that use our service are often using our service to bring voice to the voiceless. It’s part of who we are as a company, and it was a huge unlock to get super clear on that, and embrace that challenger mentality as we go to market. It meant we no longer felt the need to apologise for not being the largest player in the business, because we don’t necessarily want to be the largest, we simply want to be the best. And when it comes to the people that are on our service, we believe we have the best. We have the most valuable. We have the most receptive. It was very much a culling away of all the other distractions and getting super clear on what our superpower is.
“We believe that quality matters more than quantity”
MEG HALEY: We decided to challenge the status quo that ‘reach’ is all that matters. We’re in a marketing industry led by the history that came from TV where reach was the only measure of success. But this idea that reach for reach’s sake is enough is just not the philosophy that we have at Twitter. We believe that quality matters more than quantity and that the right connection and the right conversation between folks is really what brands and marketers need to make a difference in the world today.
What has been the impact of going through the challenger process? What results can you share?
MEG HALEY: One of the most significant benefits of the process was defining who we are and how we want to behave. First it was about changing how we work to always think from a customer-first perspective. That customer may be internal, it may be external or it may be your peer. But how do we always think from this customer-first perspective and deliver against that. It also led us to the idea of being a driver. Being a driver means being bold, asking questions, and not just being satisfied with the status quo. And it’s been a remarkable change to see people pick up that spirit of being a driver and see how fast that’s helped them on an individual, or a team, or a company level, really change the trajectory of Twitter. And finally, our ethos is about our ‘Love Where You Work’ culture. A culture where people want to work and develop this culture across our teams. Those three elements of being drivers, care more, and love where you work, is the cornerstone of what we’re doing here at Twitter within the customers organisation. We see that come to life, day by day, across many different efforts our teams are making.
MATT DERELLA: We’ve had accelerating growth, and our business has never been stronger. We have attrition that is below 10%. We are a profitable company in the S&P 500. And most importantly for me, it’s the consistency and the clarity of the identity and culture we’ve created: people are clear on it. It’s on the wall, it’s in the emails that go around the company, it’s how we treat each other, it’s in the hiring process, and it’s in our performance ratings at the company. We’ve transformed the company and we’ve laid a foundation that’s going to help us sustain this growth and this success.
What’s it like working with eatbigfish?
MATT DERELLA: The recognition that we were not alone in this situation was very powerful. There are many companies that find themselves in a position where they’re going up against better-funded, larger competitors and it can feel like, how are we going to compete on the playing field with these bigger players? And what really inspired us was learning from the community of customers that eatbigfish has worked with, to see how they’ve changed the game, by changing the field they’re playing on.
MEG HALEY: We wouldn’t have got as deep of a commitment to our ethos or our value proposition without the eatbigfish process. There were times at our midpoint check-in where I thought we’d solved everything. But going that final step, going those next six to eight weeks to really unpack our ethos, we got a commitment and an alignment from a breadth of leadership and diversity of teams that would not have happened otherwise. And that is what has sparked us to continue to drive that change forward through the organisation, even when times get tough.
What advice would you give to someone considering going through the challenger process?
MEG HALEY: I think it’s essential for brands and companies going into this process to ask themselves what level of change they want to make? And what kind of challenger do they want to be? Because this could just be a brand narrative or a great marketing story. Or, this could change the foundation of your team and your company. We had some people initially who thought it was just about a narrative, but by the consistency and diligence in driving that change, it’s made a world of difference here at Twitter.
MATT DERELLA: I would tell them to let go of some of the doubts that have crept into your organisation, and get present and be open-minded to what’s possible. Be open to exploring your company, its culture, and its history, so that you can get clear on what your superpower is.