How the comedy gold of #ScottishTwitter stole the show at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Twitter is a different experience to different people. You might hear about Twitter every day and use it frequently yet feel indifferent to it.

Our objective was to remind people what they love about Twitter.”

The strategy

Those who are part of highly interconnected conversations, tend to have a great Twitter experience.

Our strategy was to highlight one of those interconnected conversations: #ScottishTwitter. Real people, sharing raw, unfiltered, hilarious observations about daily life, in a Scottish accent:

“honestly last night someone asked me if crabs think we walk sideways n a havent stopped thinkin about it since”

“Noticed there was a fly on our flight and it full on blew my mind. That lad has no clue that he’s full on emigrated. Will never see any of his family or pals ever again”

So where better to celebrate this than at the Edinburgh Fringe, the Scottish home to one of the world’s largest comedy festivals?

We needed to enter this incredibly busy environment and say to Fringe-goers: you want proper comedy? You’re looking in the wrong place, pal. It’s on Twitter.

The campaign

Visit #ScottishTwitter: a loving parody of the tourist visitor centres we’ve all been to, open for five days in the centre of historic Edinburgh, celebrating over a hundred Tweets from Scotland’s greatest keyboard comedians.

The Fringe audience was in Scotland but missing out on authentic Scottish comedy. We fixed this. We took the resolutely offline format of the visitor centre - staid, traditional - and inverted it, clashing the tropes of rural holidays against the cutting edge of online humour.

The result was an unexpected, unusual, and hugely shareable physical experience that felt nothing like what you expect from branded experiential.

● Visit our art gallery, to see - in oil on canvas - the images conjured by Tweets such as:

“Wanting a 2L Capri-sun that a can hang above ma bed n just slurp f*** oot it lit a big 6 foot hamster”.

● View Scottish Twitter’s geographical variety on our map:

“still creasing myself that the goths/emos in stirling are called argoths cos they stand outside argos”

● Hear Scots Tweets translated into a foreign language (English) through our educational touchscreen experience:

Tweet: “Barber could staple a picture ae yer maw getting shagged tae yer heed but when he holds up that wee mirror ye’d still be like ideal mate cheers.”

Translation: “The hairdresser could affix a photograph of your mother having sexual intercourse to the back of your head but when he holds up the mirror to display his handiwork you would still say to him I say sir, what a splendid job you have done”

● Visit our recreation of a Gran’s flat: a shrine to the matriarch of the communit y, the queen of our hearts and the maw ay oor maws, featuring cross-stitched Tweets such as:

“Told my Gran she needs to write an invite list for her 80th party: “Aye that’s fine son I’ve got the list for my 70th through there, just cross off the ones that are deed”

● Marvel at the stained glass window of the patron saint of #ScottishTwitter, Lewis Capaldi:

“I'm fine with Lewis Capaldi being Scottish, 4 years younger than me and a massively successful singer because that was never on the cards, but him having twitter patter is too fucking far, get out my lane you bastard”

● Immerse yourself in our multisensory magic area, inhaling the sweet scent of shower milk while reading:

“F***ing class having a shower at your girlfriends. Using stuff like a charcoal facial scrub and a pomegranate & mango shower milk, I’ve came out the shower smelling like a fresh fruit market on a hot summers day, feeling like a brand new woman. 13/10 would recommend.”

● Watch a welcome video featuring Scottish comedian Fern Brady, ruminating on such philosophical observations as:

“A twirls just a flake wae a jacket oan”

● And, of course, pick up a souvenir at our gift shop. How about a postcard saying:

“Mental your nipples are older than your teeth”.

(And also t-shirts, tote bags, pencils, key rings, stickers, fudge and shortbread).

We even crowned a greatest #ScottishTwitter joke, as judged by Scottish comedians, to draw press attention against the annual Best Joke of the Fringe press release. Wanna hear it?

“wis walkin home n someone threw a block of cheese oot their windee n it hit me on the head, i turned n shouted that wisna very mature wis it”

Fancy interactive whizzbombles, augmented goggle-induced high realities or 5D printed realtime branded socials? We had none of that. Visit #ScottishTwitter is about giving non-professional comedians their time in the spotlight. The experience needed to put them on a pedestal - then let them be funny.

This campaign was fully integrated, with a video and social campaign on Twitter and full social takeover of @TwitterUK, billboards in stations and roadsides, ads in the Scotsman and a 2m tall advertising tower that read out the Tweets in Bristo Square, the centre of the comedy zone.

The results

Visit #ScottishTwitter took off online. Our welcome video made it organically to the Reddit homepage with 39k upvotes. “This is beautiful. Brought me to tears ”.

Overall the video received 10.7m views, 23k views and 4k retweets.

Photos of the centre took off on Twitter, with leading tweeters in the #ScottishTwitter community popping down to pose by their installations.

Twitter recorded an overwhelmingly positive response (98% positive sentiment*) in the Scottish Twitter community, with their own takeover adding 10k followers and 23m impressions. #ScottishTwitter started trending, with 1688% increase in use. Scottish brands like Tennents, Irn Bru and Scotrail joined in the fun, and @LewisCapaldi himself retweeted the stained glass window.

Our PR reached a cumulative audience 3.06 billion, with 177 pieces of coverage including:

● almost complete range of Scottish news outlets: Scottish Sun (full page with photos), Daily Record (full page with photos), Scotsman (twice), Herald, and BBC Scotland, STV.

● UK National and international press, including Metro, MailOnline, Guardian, Times, i-newspaper, BBC News online.

● comedy-focused outlets like The Poke and Chortle.

● Wire stories through AP landing in local newspapers across the UK.

An estimated 3000+ people and a goat (it’s the Fringe!) visited the Centre over five days, contributing a constant background hum of giggles and guffaws.

“Visit #ScottishTwitter redefined how we think about marketing. Not only did the team smash our targets, we succeeded in creating an experience that was genuinely loved and celebrated by people, authentic to their voices and the platform, and true to the conversation.

“I’m so proud that the team was able to make a such a bold statement, and create an activation that broke through the incredibly crowded environment that is Edinburgh Fringe!” - Leslie Berland, Chief Marketing Officer, Twitter