Real-time Marketing Marks the Latest Trend in Digital Strategy
March 13, 2014
OH GHEEZ. Another marketing buzz phase I’ll have to learn and be able to regurgitate sometime again in the future? But hey, what is it exactly?
Maybe you heard all the buzz surrounding Pharrell William’s fashionable but tall brown park ranger hat he wore at the Grammys? Someone on twitter joked that it resembled the hat from the Arby’s logo. Next thing you know the official Arby’s account sent out a tweet during the awards show and asked for their hat back. BOOM. That mention was an instant hit, and at last check it had accumulated 83,000 retweets and almost 50,000 favorites. Not a bad response for a few minutes work.
I’ve got to admit that I recently got swept up in the #HasJustineLandedYet debacle a few months back. If you didn’t hear about it, Justine Sacco was a high profile communications director that tweeted an unfortunate offensive “joke” about contracting AIDS before leaving on a holiday trip to Africa. Someone caught wind of the tweet and it spread like wildfire on twitter and #HasJustineLandedYet became an instant trending hashtag. Essentially the whole world was mad at her insensitive remarks and she didn’t even know it since she was literally in the air during a 12 hour unplugged plane flight. The twitter community even figured out what flight she was on and a journalist awaited her arrival at the airport to try and interview her. In the interim the nonprofit Aid for Africa bought the web domain of her name and redirected it to the donation page of their website. It received so many hits it crashed their website. Brilliant, right?
So how do you do it? Well I would bet that neither of these two companies had these specific campaigns laid out in their marketing plans. What they did have in common was the ability to produce memorable content on the fly. It certainly helps to have a great team in place. It is key to have someone that is comfortable with social media and possibly even a graphic designer that can act quickly (think Oreo ad at the 2013 Superbowl). It’s got to be topical and should connect or be relatable to your brand. Funny always helps but ultimately the message has to be genuine. Obviously these examples are all from well-established brands, but you could easily start with having a conversation about a trending topic. My best advice is just to get out there and give it a try.
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