Instant gratification

If real-time marketing is emerging as the shiny new way to break clutter, social media is where all this action will unfold

Most brands want it; some just get it without much song and dance. We are talking about the Kate-effect. The Duchess of Cambridge chooses accessible high street brands over expensive luxury labels. And her preference was no different while posing for the first official family portrait shortly after the birth of her son George. In the said portrait, Middleton was seen clad in a fuchsia dress by maternity clothing brand Seraphine. Within a few days after the release of this picture, Seraphine's £46 Jolene knotted-front dress was out-of-stock. Under normal circumstances, the London-based company would have taken two months to sell the same stock.

For over a century now, most advertising campaigns have taken months to produce results. Now, with the advent of the internet and the social media, advertisers can react to events, breaking news, and completely unforeseen opportunities almost instantaneously.

Indeed, real-time advertising has become a hot topic in recent months, causing fundamental changes in the online display landscape and the media trading industry. Not that India is new to real-time advertising - think of all the Amul hoardings over the decades that have celebrated or decried events that have made headlines for good reasons or bad.

If you are a marketer who wants to leverage events and daily news, it's best to stay away from the traditional media. While designing a tactical print ad or creating a new TV commercial will definitely add to your media cost, it may not ensure higher brand visibility. Anybody who follows cricket on TV will be familiar with the scroll ads congratulating players on their centuries, hat-tricks etc. But how often do you remember them? Social media can work wonders because in this scenario it is important to advertise on a medium where the target group can respond to your communication. For example, see how Proctor & Gamble's Pampers responded to the news of the royal baby with this tweet: 'Every baby is a little prince or princess. Share pics of yours at pamperslovesleepandplay.com'. Starbucks decided to limit their celebratory tweet by using its UK hashtag.

Perhaps the best example of real-time marketing is the one by Oreo during the third quarter of Super Bowl XLVII early this year when a power outage at the Superdome caused some of the lights to go out for more than 30 minutes. The cookie sandwich maker's social media team instantly created an ad on Twitter that read "Power Out? No problem" with a starkly-lit image of a solitary Oreo and the caption, "You can still dunk in the dark." To celebrate the birth of George, Oreo tweeted, "Prepare the royal bottle service!" The specially crafted promo featured a bottle of milk and an Oreo cookie on a royal pillow with the caption "Long Live The Creme."

Of course, the Super Bowl outage and the birth of the royal baby are not in the same league. The reaction to the first event was completely spontaneous while in the case of the second, the brand had at least nine months to prepare its message.

That said, even in markets like the US and the UK where internet penetration is higher and social media platforms are widely used by brands, real-time marketing is a sporadic activity. In India, examples of brands leveraging news or events for a quick repartee are few and far between. Experts say this is a direct fall-out of the way social media is generally viewed. Most companies do not have an in-house social media team to begin with. All the new media work is sourced out to a new media agency. Even when a company has a social media team in-house, it is mostly to glean through the social media conversation in a somewhat passive manner. Yes, you need an expert outside agency but rely on it for its execution capabilities, not necessarily for ideation.

Second, go with simple messages. Since real-time marketing works on the principle of virality, one has to create content that is easy on the eye and easy to spread around. Exciting and unique content can begin to go viral which can result in massive exposure. Both Facebook and Twitter offer sponsored ads if a brand wants to grab eyeballs; brand stories can emerge from 'Likes', comments, and sharing content.

For brands that are able to leverage this effectively, there are huge returns to be reaped.