SAN FRANCISCO: After spending years trying to build up its user base, Twitter is seeking to position itself as the social media network with a social purpose.

The microblogging service recently won the Cannes Lions Outdoor Grand Prix for a campaign based on billboards that featured no copy, but instead used hashtags and Twitter logos alongside news and pop culture images.

Twitter also unveiled a new campaign at Cannes, carrying the tagline #SeeEverySide, with the aim of showcasing the diversity of its users' conversations and opinions.

According to Jayanta Jenkins, the company's Global Group Creative Director, the campaigns highlight Twitter's capabilities as a forum for open debate.

In an interview with Campaign, he said: "The takeaway that hopefully comes out of a Twitter experience and that we want to build on is that we're making the world a closer knit, more emphatic place to be."

Jenkins, who has been in post since August 2016, also expressed confidence that Twitter's mission will resonate, especially as the platform allows all points of view.

"Because Twitter is an open platform and real time, filter-bubbling becomes more of a choice than an algorithm," he said. "I hope our work creates a sense of discovery and curiosity."

Referring to the award-winning hashtag campaign, he said: "You've not being told how to think, you're just being asked to participate. Twitter is a brand that shows sides and doesn't take sides.

"That was an important thing that came out of all those executions, and it started to inform a high-level strategic point of view which has now manifested itself into 'See Every Side.'"

He explained that the outdoor campaign was intended to "humanise the brand" and "reaffirm its place in popular culture", while the new work, which includes a TV ad featuring Chance the Rapper, aims to convey what Twitter stands for.

"I don't think it's a question of people knowing what Twitter is, the question is the 'why' – why do I need to have it on my phone? Twitter previously hadn't done a great job of articulating how to use it or the why of Twitter."

Data sourced from Campaign; additional content by WARC staff