Every Saga Has A Beginning...

This weekend will see Jedi Order PR reach a Twitter milestone, someone somewhere will become my 2000th follower. It's an impressive number, and sometimes I pinch myself and wonder why so many people find my insane Star Wars ramblings interesting enough to read!

The Jedi Order PR story began on the 20th July 2010, a warm summer evening much like any other, except for one thing - I had Twitter on my mind. I had a real life account which I was updating with a tweet that no one would read, (well 9 others would read it to be exact as that was the number of followers it had). I was feeling that Twitter wasn't for me, I didn't quite get it. It seemed that there were the three faces of Twitter: Celebrity Tweeters, Public Tweeters and Comedy Tweeters. The celebrities had followers in the millions, the public in the tens or hundreds and the Comedians (Fake Celebrities, comedy riffs etc) had thousands.

Looking around the Twitterverse it became apparent to me that I wasn't really interested in Kanye West tweeting about the size of his ego, however another account was interesting and caught my attention: @darthvader.

Reading his funny tweets was a revelation - you could post funny material as though you are that person and people can't get enough of it! Twitter suddenly became interesting. Following 'links within links' of 'followers and followed' a number of accounts began to capture my imagination.

I saw some posts about the gulf oil spill from BP, who were desperately trying to claw back some credibility on the world stage using social media, and had formed the 'Official BP' account on Twitter to do so. They had around 15,000 followers. However they were being stalked and lampooned by a parody account calling itself BP Global PR. They had 150,000 followers.

Suddenly things just got really interesting...

Reading the achingly funny parody tweets of @BPGlobalPR was a joy. These guys were funny and they seemed to have an 'endless field of comedy gold to mine from' (if you forgive the pun). Ideas began swimming around my head and I felt dizzy!

Then, I came across an account that was seemingly stalking the BP Global PR one. It modeled itself on the idea of this account. Again it was another comedy tweeter, but this time it was a Star Wars parody of an earth parody of a real account. That account was @DeathStarPR. The idea seemed painfully simple to me - what if the Death Star had a PR Department that saw themselves as the 'good guys', not the bad - that they themselves were misunderstood! Misunderstood bad/good guys with a giant laser of unlimited power - result: comedy gold. Brilliant!

The Tweets of other Star Wars parody accounts scrolled before my eyes like the opening scrawling text from the Star Wars movies. They were all here - every Star Wars character, both major or minor, had an account complete with an army of followers! There were too many to even mention. It was mind blowing!

The next link in the chain came when I discovered another Star Wars parody account that was tweeting responses to Death Star PR, as their opposite numbers. This account was called @RebelAlliancePR (now @RebellionPR). Incidentally, this account would go on to become Jedi Order PR's 2nd follower as we formed an Alliance of our own on Twitter!. Reading the funny, often random tweets of the Rebels is when I had what many would consider the 'lightbulb' moment.

It occurred to me that a piece of the puzzle was missing: there were the Imperials, there were the Rebels but there were no Jedi! It was staring me in the face. The eureka moment was followed by the creative process and soon quickly after @JediOrderPR was born.

It went live that very evening.


Within a week of starting the account it had 200 followers - it seemed the twitterverse had taken to the very idea of accounts representing Star Wars organisations tweeting unique comedy material. Soon there were many, like @SithEmpirePR (now @sithsarcasm) @HuttPR, @TatooinePR (now @Tatooine_) to name but a few. A new one would pop up as soon as someone suggested it (like the infamous @SlaveGirlPR!). As one Tweeter so eloquently put it: "...begun the PR Wars have", and indeed they were so right!

So here we are now, its ironic that my real account still has only 9 followers on it, yet Jedi Order PR approaches 2000. The account has a life and personality of its own, it has this blog and a presence on Facebook too. Other Twitter users send me messages about how I make them smile, 'LoL' and 'LMAO' (Laugh My Ass Off) when they read tweets wherever they are in the world. My day has become timeless in a way, I have messages from all over the world, as Twitter never sleeps even though I have to!

I now understand Twitter, I know how it works, how to make it work and how to make it work for me. Its a powerful thing. However the best thing about Twitter is this...It's just so much damn fun!

May the Force be with you!