Dubai: Think social media is already everywhere? Twitter is launching a new initiative that could allow social media to follow you into the elevator in your building.

A marketing campaign by Twitter called #ElevatorTweets, part of a new global initiative called #StartWithThem, will expose potential advertisers to Tweets on screens of the buildings they occupy.

Carla Al Maalouli, head of business marketing at Twitter Middle East and North Africa, said that they will be working with advertisers and media agencies to promote it.

“Saudi Arabia is one of the key markets for many UAE-based businesses and Dubai is the hub for media companies. We are demonstrating the power of Twitter and its audiences for the people based in the UAE. They can know what is happening in Saudi Arabia without going there,” she said.

Twitter has selected the elevator that hosts Publicis Media, as the first building to demonstrate it in.

According to a recent survey by Twitter, 91 per cent of Saudis read other users’ opinions about products and services on Twitter while 88 per cent of Saudi users say that Twitter is the right place for them to learn valuable things and 82 per cent of Saudi users engage discuss and ask questions to brands directly on the platform.

“We created real-time conversation on a screen in an elevator to the floor you are going go. The server pulls out the relevant content and insights to the floor you are going to. We want to catch the attention of people without forcing them to read or get insights from a mobile device,” she said.

After a lot of research, she said that Twitter came to understand that people spend a lot of time in the elevators.

“We developed a blend of bespoke software and custom-made hardware to bring a canvas of related tweets to life, in real time, inside an elevator. A team of moderators, collecting and curating tweets which features specific hashtags from a predetermined list,” she said.

Once tweets are approved, she said that they are sent to a server and accordingly sent to the screen inside the elevator based on which floors are selected by the users.

“Through this activation, what we are looking for is to encourage every single marketer to think and to keep the consumers at the heart of this campaign,” she said.

Twitter is also planning a second campaign soon and that will be a presentation event in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

“The event will be for users to talk about their experiences on the platform and about the regional communities that are big on the platform,” Al Maalouli said.

When asked whether the new initiative is part of a new revenue stream, she said: “Our main message is educative the people and after this, we need to see the results behind the campaign.”

How does it work?

When a user enters the elevator and presses a button, the screen will know which button the user has pressed. Based on the floor chosen, a server will send the appropriate content to the screen in the elevators.

Every office floor opens the doors to a map of what’s happening in Saudi Arabia relevant to the business of the organisation. For example, through a specific hashtag, employees of an automotive company will be shown everything they need to know about the industry and competition in Saudi Arabia, while an agency representing a travel operator will find the latest news about the industry in the market and so on.

The hardware in the elevator features both infrared and RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology to understand the journey that the elevator is making.