7 August 2014

Social Media

And That's How The Cookie Crumbles

The public love to be informed of what is happening in the world. We read, watch and tweet news and current affairs, ranging from serious global debates on the Gaza strip to what ethnicity the new child Angelina Jolie is adopting. It is inbuilt in most of us, this desire to be in the know. When the news hits it has almost become second nature for the public to tweet to the masses their opinion (usually negative) and to see who is talking about it. Everyone loves a hashtag trending. Companies have realised this potential to raise awareness of their brand by jumping on tweet-nation bandwagon.

Getting the timing right

For an impromptu tweet to be a success, it needs to be done extremely quick and be full of wit. The topic may not even be slightly related to your product/service, but a good pun to relate it back will suffice. Oreo were pioneers of this real-time tweeting. The ridiculously fast tweet during the Superbowl blackout was so effortless and witty that it completely won twitter. The tweet consisted of an Oreo cookie shining through a black background with the clever line “You can still dunk in the dark.”

(Photo courtesy of Forbes)

The irony of this simple tweet was that companies spend millions on poaching out the Super Bowl game. The game is a lucrative deal, with a huge amount of viewers to market their products to. Oreo swooped in unintentionally, knowing that twitter would be overloaded with fans tweeting about the blackout. People retweeted because it's unexpected that a corporate entity should react in such a human way to real time events. They weren't the only companies to jump on the trend, here are a few of the best.

(Photo courtesy of Sonny Gill)

(Photo courtesy of Static 6 Business Insider)

(Photo courtesy of Static 2 Business Insider)

Real Time Marketing the new way to engage a brand personality?

Oreo and many other companies real time marketing during the Super Bowl blackout was genius, but this was only because of a fluke accident during a spectacular event that was already buzzing in the media. The TV viewings were still massively higher than the amount of people tweeting, meaning that TV is still a solid investment in terms of marketing (perhaps for those who have unlimited budget!).

However Twitter may trump TV in some aspects. It engages customers on a personal level, they can retweet, respond and get a feel of the brand. Many companies respond to tweets and this does help to create a relationship between the two, so perhaps real time marketing could be something that leads the way forward in digital marketing. Just make sure you have a dedicated and witty social media team!

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