Twitter CEO Evan Williams Fireside Chat

Last night, I had the opportunity to sit front row at a fireside chat with Twitter CEO Evan Williams. The event was put on by Girls in Tech in San Francisco at Kicklabs in the Financial District.

It was such a pleasure to meet Evan and to find out he is just as authentic as Twitter is transparent in sharing public information in real time. He had a few quips I shared through my Twitter handle, @ConsumingPR, I’d like to now share with all of you here:

– Twitter CEO @EV says their T-times, where depts present their work every week, are the linchpin to the company’s success

– Twitter CEO feels that blog posts are better than press releases for announcements (source: @hopmonkey)

– Most successful people are those who are truly themselves. Like Napoleon Dynamite! –  says Twitter CEO

– Why 140 characters? @EV says, It used to be, for SMS, 160 minus user name minus two. But that was too confusing.

– “Just unfollow,” says Twitter CEO @EV to a guy asking what to do when he reads dumb tweets.

– “A lot of things seem strategic in retrospect,” says Twitter CEO. “We didn’t plan the celeb thing on Twitter.”

– “I’m less likely to tweet when I’m drunk,” jokes Twitter CEO

Evan Williams on PR for Twitter

Where Will Twitter Be in 10 Years?

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Currently, I am enrolled in Tiffany Derville’s Advanced PR Writing class at the University of Oregon. This week our class learned how to write shareholder letters. It became particularly interesting to notice differences in the executive’s photographs after reviewing several from Target, Chiquita and Disney.

Each executive had a completely different look to their style of dress and expression. For example, Chiquita’s Chairman and CEO, Fernando Aguirre, looks very accessible with his friendly smile and country-club style of dress in the 2005 annual report. Aguirre makes you feel happy to be a shareholder with his arms down by his side and one hand in his pant pocket. Even his body language gives you the impression that he’ll jump out of the paper and hand over your financial returns on the spot.

Chiquita’s 2005 annual report lends a positive image to the reader with it’s use of bright colors and a happy-go-lucky CEO. Surprisingly, Disney’s annual report gave me a completely different impression than Chiquita. Robert A. Iger’s “paparazzi” photo expresses a boastful attitude; he is almost too good to even acknowledge the shareholders he addresses in the letter. Iger is dressed in a tuxedo on the red carpet looking away from the camera with a smile. I wonder what their public relations team was thinking? Did they have a time crunch at the last minute? Maybe they entirely forgot about a photo and stuck one in before printing? The audience always needs to be addressed in the letter as well as in the author’s picture.

In any case, as public relations practitioners, we need to remember that a picture really is worth a thousand words and evokes emotion. The CEO’s picture can overpower the letter and leave a huge impression even if the shareholder letter is upbeat and friendly.