Feature: Twitter Australia’s Blue Room gets picked up globally

11 months into the lifespan of Twitter Australia’s Blue Room, and with more than 55 Blue Rooms under the local office’s belt, the unique concept has been picked up globally.

Jennie Sager, who heads up Music and Entertainment, spoke top TMN at the launch of Twitter Australia’s new office opening in Sydney yesterday.

Sager came up with the idea for Twitter Blue Room in the first week that she joined the company in September 2014. It launched last March with a recorded Q&A with American alt-rockers Imagine Dragons and has since hosted Q&As, performances and meet-and-greets. The day after its launch on March 15 Sager’s inbox had over 50 email enquiries, with many from from the teams behind some of music’s biggest names.

Now, the Australian exclusive has been adopted by Twitter Paris – who recently launched their Blue Room with David Guetta – as well as Twitter Korea and Twitter Italy. In the coming months we’ll see Blue Room launches in Canada, the US and Japan.

“I was just surprised that we didn’t have a space to honour the VITs (Very Important Tweeters) and the top partners that we work with, and the talent around Australia,” said Sager from the new Blue Room yesterday. “I just wanted to give them a space that was welcoming and comfortable.”

Jennie Sager at Twitter Australia’s opening party on February 4

The Twitter Blue Room was always intended as a space to accommodate the top users of the platform, and while it’s hosted largely music talent, it has also become a space used for prominent figures like cricketer Brett Lee, and actors Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell.

“I think the biggest win for me is when talent comes to the room for the first time, the look on their faces,” says Sager. “[…] They’re instantly relaxed, they’re just different. It’s not the way that they are when they go to like a TV studio, or a junket interview. They’re 100% different the second they walk in the door of this room.”

Sager should know, with a background in broadcast journalism, she has worked for the NBC, CBS and MTV in the US and when she moved to Australia the first time in 2003 she worked for Channel 9.

Because the original Blue Room was housed in a serviced office space in the Citigroup building (Twitter now has its own level in the building), it fast became too small to accommodate the influx of talent requests. Cody Simpson’s Blue Rooms last August had to be hosted at Sydney’s X Studio and Sky Point Tower on the Gold Coast to accommodate an intimate crowd of 300.

Simpson is the most-followed Australian person on Twitter with 7.67m followers. After his Australian visit in partnership with Twitter, his follower count increased by approximately 15,000.

“He didn’t have a tour scheduled in Australia for that album,” says Sager. “[…] We really wanted to bring him back to Australia and connect him with his fans back home.”

Sager says that while she is constantly in talks with labels and artists, as well as film studios, to plan Blue Rooms, Twitter Australia doesn’t have a long-term partner in the music industry and works on more of a case-by-case basis.

Make no mistake, the Blue Room isn’t just for the talent with the most followers on Twitter, Sager says it’s also a platform to grow emerging artists. Case in point: ARIA Award winner Conrad Sewell.

“He came in last April and he had 5,000 Twitter followers. We couldn’t do a Q&A because he wasn’t going to get enough questions,” Sager laughs. “We had him perform three songs, which he distributed via his Twitter account, and then we had him back in on the day of ARIA nominations and he did a Q&A. He’s got 34,000 followers now.”

Melbourne pop band Masketta Fall, who performed at yesterday’s launch, is one act Sager has been following closely. She compares them to bands like Little Sea and Short Stack who landed record deals based largely on their social media following.

“All these bands, they got signed yes, because their music is good, but also because they have a really big Twitter following and really engaged fans. The labels are watching that now, the agents are watching it. I get asked all the time about talent and what their engagement’s like.”

Sager says she has plans to take the Twitter Blue Room on the road, and will host more live performances in the office’s new 300-capacity entertaining space which has views of the Harbour Bridge.

“I always think bigger, so to me it hasn’t gone big enough,” she laughs. “We’ve done a couple mobile Blue Rooms recently and I’d love to do more of that so it’s not just locked down to Sydney in Australia.

“[…] Also the Cody Simpson shows we did were so successful that I’d like to look into doing Blue Room tours. I think the possibilities are endless.”