Twitter and M&C Saatchi Indonesia curate 270 tweets to create book for writers festival

Twitter Indonesia and M&C Indonesia have partnered to launch a book titled #TheThreadStory for the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. As the name suggests, tweets from the same thread were pieced together to form the story in the book. The social media campaign saw Twitter users in Indonesia contribute with stories in a single Twitter thread. The team later handpicked 70 contributors and curated over 270 tweets to create the book. The campaign also saw several personalities, such as West Java Province Governor Ridwan Kamil and Indonesian author Desi Anwar, join in on the thread. 

The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival has been running for 18 years and aims to engage with the younger audience and create interest in writing and reading among Indonesians. The festival found that Indonesians do not read enough, with The Program for International Student Assessment ranking Indonesia 72nd out of 77 countries when it came to the scholastic performance of 15-year-old students. Additionally, a study by Central Connecticut State University ranked Indonesia as 60th, among 61 countries, in terms of reading interest. Hence, the theme for this year's festival was "Mulat Sarira", which means "self-reflection". MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out for additional information.

Dwi Adriansah, country head, Twitter Indonesia, said its collaboration aims to help reignite people’s passion for literature, especially story writing. "Twitter is where people gather and share information about various topics - one of them is literature. Through #TheThreadStory, we encourage people to share their creativity in creating a book using a new way, which is through Threads. We hope this initiative helps people to rediscover their passions in literature," he said.

Anish Daryani (pictured left), founder and president director, M&C Saatchi Indonesia, said that today's youth have been deprived of the pleasure of reading life-changing stories due to the emergence of streaming content, social media, click baits, and microblogging. "At M&C Saatchi Indonesia, we decided to change that by getting under the skin of today's youth. We harnessed the popularity of microblogging and asked netizens to contribute their stories in a single thread on Twitter. We hope #TheThreadStory may have inspired many young netizens to pick up their first book and fall in love with reading," he added.

Janet De Neefe (pictured right), founder of Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, said that #TheThreadStory is its latest initiative to inspire more young Indonesians to appreciate writing and reading and for the festival to reach a larger audience.

"The value of reading, writing, and education cannot be underestimated, and we know that a community that observes these pillars of knowledge flourishes in many ways. Drawn from a local philosophy, this year's theme is the spiritual principle of examining our actions, thoughts, and values to ultimately build the deepest sense of self-understanding, wisdom, and interconnectedness in pursuit of Dharma, the truth. #TheThreadStory delved into the heart and soul of this theme from thoughts and relationships to Ubud and the impact of COVID-19 that resulted in a moving collective memoir for this year," she added.

Asia is contributing some of the best social media work in today's marketing and as such, MARKETING-INTERACTIVE is pleased to present Hashtag Asia to you. As Asia’s first dedicated social media award show, Hashtag Asia seeks to honor and recognise the best social media work from Asia. 

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