Huge's @Irene Becomes the Voice of Hurricane Irene

In the midst of Hurricane Irene, HUGE Senior Product Strategist Irene Tien found her Twitter account more active then ever. Last week Irene, the owner of the @Irene Twitter account, began receiving messages directed at the hurricane.

On Thursday, in response, she posted "Btw, tweeting @Irene doesn't deliver any messages to the hurricane. Sorry." Friends began retweeting the post and by Friday morning it had been shared more than 100 times. In retrospect Irene says “I didn't really think that much of it, or what the implications might be, but I monitored my @ replies throughout the day to see what people were saying.”

Later that day HUGE Associate Creative Director Ross Morrison and HUGE Copywriter Bjorn Larsen, who contribute to writing for HUGE’s official Twitter account, noticed the activity and pleaded with Irene to hand over her account to allow them to live blog the hurricane.

“They wanted to give the "@Irene"-tweeting masses exactly what they wanted, an accessible personification of the hurricane herself. But impersonating a hurricane is different than impersonating an escaped cobra. And I certainly wasn’t going to lend my account to any effort that was insensitive to anyone who might truly suffer as a result of the storm,” says Irene. She recounted her early reservations in an article for The Wall Street Journal “the thing is it’s a hurricane, it’s sensitive, it’s potentially dangerous and horrible. I really didn’t want to be posting that much.“ Initially apprehensive about the idea, Irene soon conceded to their lobbying after another plea from HUGE’s Executive Creative Director Joe Stewart, seizing the opportunity to use the account to provide a central resource for updates and warnings about the hurricane.

The undertaking was a full time job that Ross and Bjorn took seriously. They spent their weekend trolling official sources like CNN, FEMA and the mayor’s office, staying abreast of the most accurate information as the hurricane moved up the eastcoast. The team even liaised with FEMA and offered to give them access to the account if they should need it as the storm developed. In addition to news updates Ross and Bjorn added humor and personality and garnered the account over 11,000 followers.

On Monday morning, by the time the storm had developed into a tropical storm and left the country, the account was turned back over to Irene. The account continues to receiveextensive attention from the media including WSJ, The Hollywood Reporter, AdAge, ClickZ, WPIX, MSNBC, The Daily Mail and more. The initiative serves as a case study for successfully using social media to inform the public during an emergency.