A few weeks ago during the Superbowl, Cheerios tweeted this picture.

Cheerios tweet

The photo was posted seconds after an impressive goal line interception by Malcolm Butler for the New England Patriots, and the image immediately went viral. At present it has 887 re-tweets and has been favourited 875 times.

The practice is called real time marketing and by interacting with current and popular, real world events companies are able to ‘jump on the bandwagon’ of a large audience at no extra cost.

Oreo made this strategy mainstream with the ‘dunk in the dark’ post during the 2013 Superbowl, where at one point, due to a technical failure, the stadium lost power and all the lights went out for about 5 minutes during play. During this time, a team of marketers working together in a ‘battle room’, exclusively to live tweet the match managed to conceptualise, create, and post the brilliant tweet below.

Oreo tweet – You can still dunk in the dark

This image was shared 20,000 times on Facebook, was retweeted 15,000 times and received 525 Million media impressions (5 times more than people who watched the game!) It also received 14 marketing awards and positioned Oreo as a leader in real time marketing (360i, 2015). Not bad for an unpaid ad right? Especially when considering 30 seconds of airtime during a Superbowl commercial break will set you back $4 Million! (On Marketing, 2014)

So agreed – Real time marketing can be great if its done right, but after witnessing the successes that I have just talked about, all sorts of companies are trying to get in on the action, unfortunately with forced, badly written and irrelevant posts which add little to no value to the brand. Take a look at these examples below.

Gap tweet

charmin tweet

Both Gap’s attempted exploitation of Hurricane sandy and Charmin’s slightly vulgar oscar tweet are completed un related to the events in question, nor do the events stand for any of the brand values. It comes across as if they are trying to shoehorn their brand and it is totally transparent to the customer.

Based on these right and wrong examples of real time marketing, I have established three questions that any marketer should ask themselves before embracing in the activity.

1. Is this post relevant to the event?

The number one question that a marketer should ask themselves before trying to involve themselves with a real world event is, is my post relevant? It is no good creating something and at the last minute trying to tie it into a real world event. This is ‘Real time’ marketing after all. The clues in the name! Real time marketing posts should be created with a specific point to address, and if you cant make that fit around one of your brands core values or products – just leave it, there will be other chances.

2.does the post set the right tone for the brand?

Gap and hurricanes are far from similar, but more and more brands are trying to get in on the buzz surrounding international events, even if it has nothing to do with the organisation in question, and more worryingly, even if it is a sensitive subject. What should be remembered in these situations is weather you want your brand to be associated with a certain topic. If a topic is very sensitive it is probably best to stay away, as trying to profit from a disaster or negative incident is never perceived well in the eyes of the consumer. Take for example the 9/11 memorial tweets by Verizon or Build a Bear (images below).

Build a Bear tweet

AT&T Tweet

These tweets received severe dislike from users of social media, and although it is respectable for a company to pay their respect for disasters like this, it is certainly not a place to stamp your logo, product or hashtag. Research done by Jansen, B. et al (2009), found that 33% of mentions of brands on twitter were negative or critical towards the company, and giving your customers a reason to be critical, especially on said platform is suicide.

3. Will my post add value to the customer?

Whether it increases brand awareness, entertains the audience or offers the customer something they want exactly when they want it, it is very important to make sure that your post offers some kind of value to customers. Would your customer get any benefit from seeing your post on their feed is a good question to ask yourself. Adding value is important and should be considered with regards to all social media activity, and if you haven’t yet nailed adding value on the most basic level, it might be worth going back to basics before attempting real time marketing.

There is still a lot to be learnt from real time marketing, but it will take time to truly understand how the customer reacts and responds. Is real time marketing here to stay? For now, most certainly yes. Its an impossibly cheap and effective way to increase brand awareness. However, my personal opinion is that people will soon get fed up of having their personal social networks, cluttered with what is essentially advertising. This will most certainly separate the boys from the men and brands that can not add real value to customers can expect a huge decrease in brand interaction as well as possibly loosing touch with their customer.

References

360i, (2015). The Oreo Blackout Tweet. [online] Available at: http://www.360i.co.uk/work/oreo-super-bowl/ [Accessed 17 Feb. 2015].

Jansen, B., Zhang, M., Sobel, K. and Chowdury, A. (2009). Twitter power: Tweets as electronic word of mouth. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(11), pp.2169-2188.

On Marketing (2014). Yes, A Super Bowl Ad Really Is Worth $4 Million. [online] Forbes. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2014/01/29/yes-a-super-bowl-ad-really-is-worth-4-million/ [Accessed 17 Feb. 2015].