Every time something happens in the world it takes on another form of life on Twitter, it’s a place “where culture goes to pop”. The platform has grown into something much more than 140 characters of text, it’s exciting and unpredictable. Our communication needed to act in the same way. We wanted to show this side of Twitter to the world and what better way to do it than through the users themselves. Whether they built intricate looping gifs or badly photoshopped memes, it’s all a piece of a giant story that gives that small moment depth.

We needed to reach a broad audience that had very few intersecting interests. It had to be the right cultural explosion, and the answer came in the form of a man in a fun hat. We zeroed in on the Pope’s visit to America. Nobody could have anticipated the reach and impact the Pope’s visit had. It was a natural example of a cultural explosion. On top of that he’s the most influential user on Twitter. We started working with the Twitter community and gathered pieces of user-generated original content all talking about his stay in the USA. From there it was artfully crafted together into a fast paced spot showcasing Moments, the user and the Pope. That’s a win, win, win.

The ad made an impact, reaching 60% of our target age group. It generated 8,909,913 mostly organic views on YouTube with relatively low TV exposure. More importantly our own people on Twitter liked it, raking in 1,072 likes and 552 retweets. More than 70% said it had a positive impact on their perception of Twitter, while 75% said they were more interested in exploring Moments. We even got nearly 40% of non-Twitter users saying they’re interested in signing up. And to quote Twitter CFO Anthony Noto, "Monthly active users acquired through the campaign are performing better from a retention standpoint". That means the agency and the Pope didn’t just help people pay attention to Twitter, we got them to like it better, come back to try a new feature, and then share with their friends who ended up being really good Twitter users.