Real-time marketing is just marketing

1. needstoknow OCTOBER 2014
Real-time marketing
is just marketing
The term ‘real-time’ is putting too much focus on speed - causing brands and agencies to lose focus on
the message and reaching the right audience. We need to stop talking about real time marketing as a
discipline, and instead look at how we can improve our marketing strategy to allow us to be more agile
with our messaging.
Conventional Wisdom
Real Time marketing is about jumping onto the
back of ‘buzzworthy’ social moments as quickly
as possible, resulting in maximised earned media
and brand exposure.
Our POV
Brands who think about how reactive they can
be to conversations are limiting their potential
in the new space in which we play. The most
effective real-time marketing is built on
consumer insights, a long term comms platform
and is largely pre-planned.
monthly BRIEFING
1
Early in 2014, the World Cup in Brazil was being
touted as a battleground for real time marketing.
Football brands such as Adidas and Nike – and
brands with a long term football/sports strategy
such as Heineken, Samsung and Paddy Power –
had fantastic results. But apart from those brands
there were very few ‘real-time’ successes which
cut through the football conversation clutter.
The missed opportunities of the ‘real time’
World Cup demonstrate the struggle brands
and agencies have with the space. Emphasis is
placed on being ‘in the moment’, rather than in an
ongoing conversation: being reactive is considered
to be more effective than being pre-planned or
strategic.
In short, the idea of ‘real-time’ is hurting our ability
to be truly ‘real-time’.
Prediction
The brands who work towards a long term ‘always
on’ approach (grounded in audience learnings) will
come out triumphant in this new world. They will
not jump on events and landmark dates because
they will have huge social buzz – they will think
‘always on’ and speak when they have to. These
brands will think outside of Twitter – they will
think about dynamic display and content as well
as traditional media. They will learn as they go
and modify their approach accordingly.

2. 2
Get the right message to the right audience at the right time and place
Digital media has allowed us to be more agile
than ever. We can change creative on the fly, with
no set creative deadline or approval process. We
can buy media at the click of a button and have
campaigns live in minutes – and that timeframe
is shrinking.
We now have a better opportunity than ever to get
the right message to the right audience at the right
time and place.
However, the term ‘real-time’ focuses on
technological advancements of digital media in
Speed is not a measure of marketing success
needstoknow monthly briefing OCTOBER 2014
regards to speed, and not how that helps
tailor the message and thereby reach the
right audience.
The classic ‘Oreo #DunkInTheDark’ tweet
was not a one off – it was part of an ongoing
daily conversation around cultural moments
(Oreo Daily Twist). Yes, it was pushed out very
quickly around a buzz-worthy sports event. But
speed was the facilitator for cultural relevancy
– it wasn’t the primary reason why it was so
effective. In fact, most of the retweets came well
after the blackout moment.
Much of social media work is still done manually
– so the quicker you need to post, the more
corners you need to cut. Time is the enemy
of quality.
The solution is to pre-plan as much as possible.
The reality is that there are some things we can’t
plan for, so we create ‘digital war rooms’ to cover
for those moments. The consumer doesn’t care
about your war room – but they do care about its
output. And if the output (the message) doesn’t
relate to them (the audience) then the speed
(timing) of the tweet post doesn’t come into play.
The most buzz-worthy ‘reactive’ post during the
Luis Suarez biting incident (above) came out a
full sixteen hours after the event. The time gave
Specsavers’ creative team the breathing space to
craft great content – their authenticity established
from their long term platform of humorous tactical
advertising – and their media agency set up a
cross-media buy, whilst still being in the moment.
Yes, if they published the content within minutes
of the event, it might have been more successful
– but it would have likely been at the expense
of the message quality, and that’s what the
consumer recalls.
The Brand Conversation Curve
HOW BRANDS ACT HOW BRANDS SHOULD ACT

3. 3
The successful real time brands during the
World Cup had one thing in common – they
were football brands or they were brands that
had established credibility in the sports/
football space.
Successful ‘non-football’ brands, such as SMG
client Heineken, have been establishing their
credentials well before the World Cup started,
with football sponsorships, sideboard advertising,
and many more. They may have appeared to
score real time success with ‘reactive’ campaign
#sharethesofa – but the process was anything
but reactive. It was a conversation built over the
long term (and continues now). And that ongoing
conversation leads to sales in and after the event
– a +9% increase in purchase intent following
the event.
The Moment of Opportunity Map
needstoknow monthly briefing OCTOBER 2014
When we use the word ‘real-time’, it implies
that to be successful, we must be ‘unplanned’
and act in the moment. When in fact there are
conversations going on all the time – and that
opportunity is far bigger and can be more easily
pre-planned for.
Nasal spray brand Otrivine (SMG client) wanted
to raise awareness of its product to those
suffering from the effects of cold and flu. We
monitored everyday conversations around colds
and reactively pushed humorous pre-created
content around the topic (tailored using insights
on the audience) to consumers on Twitter.
The tailored content was pushed at the right
moment to the right audience – but appears
reactive to the recipient. It is part of an ongoing
conversation, looking at consumer signals for
triggers rather than jumping on big social buzz
moments. Tools like SMG’s Community Igniter can
help understand these passion points, what the
audience talks about, with whom and how often.
A brave new world awaits
We are greatly limiting ourselves by thinking that
agile marketing begins and ends with activity
on Twitter. We can take the concept of ‘real
time triggers’ and apply that to other creative
mediums. Take the humble digital banner. We
can change display creative far quicker than
before. For example, SMG product DOT (used
by Heineken in #ShareTheSofa) allows you
to remotely alter live copy without the need
for re-trafficking. Down the line, this could be
automated, using social moments and other
external trigger signals to change messaging.
And advancements in digital out of home mean
we can use live data and other technology
to alter creative in real time. British Airway’s
#LookUp billboards are a great example of this –
using GPS and flight data to change the creative
as their planes flew over.

4. 4
One of the most impressive World Cup real time
campaigns was the Phenomenal Shot project
created by Nike & Google. Ads would change in real
time based on signals from matches – if Neymar
scored, all Nike Football banners running across all
devices would change in an instant to feature the
Brazilian striker, with appropriate copy to match.
Let’s talk about being more agile in our marketing
By Liam Brennan
Digital Strategy Director, Starcom
needstoknow monthly briefing OCTOBER 2014
The Phenomenal Shot project represents
the future of agile marketing – creative is
altered due to external signals (little human
involvement) and is amplified by a platform-agnostic
media buy, targeted at the right
audience. Importantly – technology is the
enabler of putting a relevant message to the
consumer. It’s not about using technology to
speed up an old process.
We should stop talking about real time marketing as a discipline, and start talk about how we can
improve our marketing strategy to allow us to be more agile with our messaging. We should be using
new technology to create stronger connections with consumers via relevant messaging, not letting the
technology dictate our marketing strategy.