It’s no secret that the growth in social media has led to an increase in real-time marketing. But ever since Oreo’s highly popular on-the-fly Super Bowl Twitter ad, companies and advertisers have jumped on the real-time marketing bandwagon. Companies and advertisers have gone as far as hosting “corporate watch parties,” where executives and creative teams are on-hand to conceptualize, create and approve social media posts in response to a memorable moment in a highly watched live televised event — like the Super Bowl blackout in the Superdome in New Orleans.
When you consider that the Grammys, the Presidential State of the Union Address and the Oscars soon followed after the January Super Bowl, that makes three live televised events in the month of February, all guaranteed to draw big audiences and to bring memorable moments that would have people talking. Until several months ago, companies that capitalized on such moments were “ahead of the curve.” Now, capitalizing on memorable moments through social media posts will be a standard practice. This new standard will leave companies and advertisers to find ways to stand out from the pack — to differentiate themselves from the competition.
The issue will no longer be who capitalized first on a memorable moment from a live televised event or who was the fastest to create social media posts — which contributed to Oreo’s successful Twitter ad during the Super Bowl blackout. Now, companies and advertisers will have to get extra creative and develop posts that are not only memorable, but also engaging enough to garner many “shares” and “retweets.”
In essence, companies and advertisers will follow the same approach as they do for a full ad campaign — except, instead of having months for planning, they will only have minutes for planning. Naturally, a lot of mistakes will be made, both in the “Oh, wow, they totally misspelled that” sense and in the “Oh, wow, that was a lame attempt” sense. Paradoxically, those duds will also be memorable — albeit, memorable mistakes will not be the intended purpose of the company or advertiser.
Overall, while this change to real-time marketing may lead to a slew of generic advertising posts now littering your social media feeds during live events, it will also lead to many engaging and memorable ads that can skyrocket a brand’s recognition and reputation literally within minutes — even for brands with a poor social media reputation.
