FNB: I know something important must be happening on Twitter

Gisèle Wertheim Aymés: From the start, we knew that if we were going to engage on Twitter, we had to show a human face to the rest of the world. So we created RB Jacobs. RB Jacobs is a pseudonym used in advertising over the years by FNB. We’ve had good feedback to this persona and we are pleased we resisted the urge to tweet under the name FNB.

SHOOT: Twitter has become even more important than email. ignore it at your peril. Read the anecdote below the fold; expect more of the same.

clipped from www.techcentral.co.za We’ve also had some interesting moments. There was one time when we picked up a tweet from a lady in an FNB branch who was witnessing an armed robbery in a major shopping centre. Her first instinct was to tweet about it, as she crouched down on the floor under a desk. This lady didn’t alert a family member to her potential danger, she told the world on Twitter. The robbery was in fact taking place next door to FNB, so the branch manager did the right thing and locked down the branch to keep customers safe from the rogues outside with AK47s. We were able to contact the branch head office and alert them to the drama unfolding. She broke this story on Twitter and it took news website News24 seven hours before it ran with the story. We felt good that we would have had the correct support in place had something turned bad during this event. I know there are many sceptics who question its use in business, but the sheer number of people adopting this channel to communicate cannot be ignored.