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With the Cannes Lions Festival happening now, where creativity takes centerstage, IAB and Firefly Millward Brown embarked on the breakthrough study, “A Mobile Manifesto: Creative Leaders on the Art of Successful Mobile Brand Messaging.” Our goal was to identify best practices in mobile creativity. We endeavored to identify proven methods for success that would help and not harness creative thinking in order to fuel the continued growth of the young medium. To do this, we leveraged earlier research by Dynamic Logic that identified mobile advertising best practices as defined through consumer data on over 100 mobile campaigns. We then brought those findings to the attention of advertising creative powerhouses - including judges for the Cannes Lions Awards and the IAB MIXX Awards, as well as mobile innovators from agencies such as Chiat Day, Draft FCB, JWT, R/GA and Digitas. And then we asked them to respond.
At the most fundamental level, creatives agreed with the best practices gleaned from the consumer research - but the creatives also provided additional input to make the principles even more relevant to their work.
This high-level agreement between both the data and the creatives’ own actual, in-use best practices may indicate that there is a considerable level of experience with mobile among all participating parties. We had a large enough database on mobile campaign performance to find reliable trends in effectiveness; and we found ample creatives with significant experience working with mobile.
While individual comments varied, the creatives largely agreed with these broad notions identified through the ad impact data:
• Clear and persistent branding is important for building brand awareness
• Short, focused messaging plays well in mobile’s small format
• A striking color palette can drive ad recall, but legibility is paramount
• Consumers respond to mobile ads that give them something back
The advertising professionals also brought to the fore a new definition of context. It was found that on mobile context doesn’t just refer to the context of the ad on the screen, but the context of the consumer when they encounter the ad, including where they are located, what they are doing, and what they might need help with at that moment. Context now refers to the consumer’s life, not the accompanying article, video, or ad placements.
The creatives also highlighted a key area for improvement in the mobile creative lifecycle. Mobile is incorporated into the campaign creation process late, more as an addition to a devised campaign instead of being central to it, most respondents said.
My hope is that this study helps elevate mobile beyond this downstream role to play a greater role in multi-channel campaigns. To aid that cause, the report’s findings will be discussed on-stage by top-tier creatives and other industry leaders at the upcoming IAB Cannes Lions session on “Liquid Creativity,” keeping in mind that the potential of mobile has always been there, and that the screen consumers carry with them has now long been a reality. But today, we now have agreement on what works. Today we have experienced creatives and consumer data to back them up. We have found a way to walk the tightrope, letting a delicate stride turn into a big leap forward for mobile.
About the Author
Sherrill Mane
Sherrill Mane is SVP, Research, Analytics and Measurement, at the IAB.
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“What keeps us coming back is that this event opens an opportunity for us that we don’t have on our own. Yes, we could call and make an appointment with someone in Congress, but we wouldn’t have the same impact. Secondly, this is a chance for us to network and get together with people who do similar jobs as us, and that’s very rare. There are a lot of long tail publishers, but not a lot of community amongst them. There are a lot of best practices and lessons learned that doesn’t get passed on. This gives us a chance to get input from other people in the industry and network on a personal basis.” |
Last week, more than 50 small publishers came to Washington D.C. to meet with 27 House and 9 Senate offices, representing 24 districts and 11 states plus the District of Columbia. Small publishers converged on DC to highlight the importance of the advertising-supported internet empowering small business growth in America.
Now in its fifth year, the IAB Long Tail Alliance Fly-In brings small publishers to Washington, DC to educate
Congress about what digital advertising means to them, their employees and
their families. Small publishers, known as the “long tail” of the internet, have been created and transformed in massive numbers across the U.S. with the
advent of the ad-supported internet. Providing information and resources on a
diversity of topics ranging from baking to politics, these small publishers
represent the very best of the new economy of the internet.
The digital media landscape is not just about the larger
players in the marketplace, but also the diversity of smaller voices seeking
success on their own terms and scale. This annual trip to Washington for small publishers
is part of IAB’s commitment to make sure that Capitol Hill does not overlook
this crucial base of the internet economy that is powered by digital
advertising.
Providing an opportunity for small publishers to speak
directly to Congress is the best means
to bring to life the very real threat posed by ill-conceived legislation that
would disproportionately impact small publishers. These small
publishers are the new face of ‘mom and
pop’ shops. They represent a diversity of voices that simply could not exist
without interactive advertising.
The Fly-In also included a full day of training sessions and roundtable discussions created specifically to address the business interests of small publishers. Small publishers, ad networks, and media executives shared actionable insights on how the community of small publishers can improve their businesses. The two-day event also served as a unique networking opportunity for small publishers, who, for the most part, work from their homes and have limited opportunities to meet other small publishers like themselves.
About the Author
Alison Pepper
Alison Pepper is Senior Director of Public Policy, Interactive Advertising Bureau.
“Native advertising” is one of the most confounding phrases to captivate mind-share in the digital marketing arena. We all know that marketers are excited about it, but the ecosystem has yet to come up with a concrete definition of this buzzworthy approach to interactive advertising.
The confusion has reached a fever pitch, with Rob Macdonald, Vice President of Business Development at m6d finally writing down the words that so many have wanted to say…
“Please Obi-Wan Rothenberg, you’re our only hope!”
Rob really did include that line in a comment he wrote on a recent Digiday piece - but in all seriousness, the sentiment is in keeping with a widespread outcry from our members.
Native advertising is gaining in popularity, but stakeholders need to coalesce around definitions and best practices, if we’re going to be able to drive the native movement to scale. The confusion and chaos must be eradicated, and the first step in IAB forging a path in this direction is the development of a new IAB Native Advertising Task Force.
The group had its first meeting earlier this week and a number of key concerns were immediately raised:
• How do we distinguish between native web advertising and its mobile brethren?
• Is native allowed to be disruptive?
• How can we clearly delineate between native ad content and pure editorial?
• How do we define measurement and metrics surrounding native?
• Where do ad creatives fit into the native mix?
Even with disparate voices in the room - many of them in senior leadership roles - common goals quickly began to take shape.
First and foremost, the task force will aim to establish a framework for the native advertising space by putting forth a prospectus that clearly lays out today’s “native” landscape. This prospectus, targeted to advertisers, publishers, and ad tech providers, will need to be clear enough that the industry has a guiding light and broad enough that it can expand over time—while also providing a basis for further IAB initiatives in this space.
And, speaking of further efforts in the space, IAB has also kicked off a new Content Marketing Task Force, which may—or may not—be seen as an umbrella for or a cousin to the Native Advertising group.
So, light sabers aside, IAB is jumping into the fray. Debate, consensus and more debate are surely to follow, but we plan to be at the center of the conversation, providing a clear road ahead for these two vital advertising concepts to evolve into strong players in the digital marketing arena.About the Author
Susan Borst
Susan Borst is the Director, Industry Initiatives at the IAB focusing on Social Media, B2B, Games, Content Marketing and Native Advertising. She can be reached on Twitter @susanborst.
In response, we’ve added seven new categories to this year’s IAB MIXX Awards to make sure the best, most forward-thinking work gets noticed. Through the global IAB MIXX Awards, the IAB recognizes the talent that crafts this innovative, leading edge and high impact creative. The new categories give the digital industry more opportunities to showcase how brands and agencies move their business - and the advertising industry - forward.
Branded Utility A successful branded utility campaign has the power to embed the use of the brand into consumers’ everyday behavior—Nike+ FuelBand, the 2013 IAB MIXX Awards Gold winner in Digital Integration—is the perfect example. David’s Bridal recently got media attention for its app that lets brides make wish lists, interact with bridesmaids, keep track of their bridal purchases, plan the wedding party, show her current mood through an icon, upload images, log-in via Facebook and send invites to friends through the social network. Those newlyweds might then move on to using the Chip It! app from 2012 IAB MIXX Awards’ “Best in Show” winners Sherwin Williams and McKinney that lets you match real world colors with paint colors.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is increasingly recognized as a new channel for brand marketers. At least two major agencies recently announced new units devoted to helping clients with content marketing development. American Express is well known for its “OPEN” Forum dispensing advice of all kinds to small businesses. Lincoln Motor Company’s “Lincoln Now” site features content that celebrates design, technology and art, and in the process, the company’s 90-year history of making cars.
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality campaigns take advantage of consumers’ addictive smartphone behavior by creating often game-like apps that communicate brand messages in clever ways. How do you get an adult audience to rekindle their love of Lucky Charms cereal? This year Lucky Charms agency Saatchi and Saatchi created an augmented reality app that sent customers on a “Chase for the Charms,” complete with a $10,000 “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow.
Custom Mobile Rich Media Display AND IAB Standard Mobile Rich Media Display
With mobile advertising skyrocketing by 111% in 2012 as reported in our recent study, brands are out to take advantage of the landslide shift of eyeballs to mobile. Major publishers like USA Today, New York Times, ESPN and more are hosting rich media ads on their mobile apps, and platforms like Google, Twitter, Facebook and Pandora are drawing huge mobile audiences. Last year the IAB established its first-ever mobile ad standards — the Mobile Rising Stars. Agencies are expressing great creative ideas through these new formats with great consumer and business effect. For example, Dunkin’ Donuts and Celtra used Facebook for a mobile ad using rich media and HTML5 to let users customize their perfect drink.
Clicks-to-Bricks
Retail brand marketers are using interactive in significant ways to drive traffic to their brick and mortar stores. Macy’s created an all-purpose Black Friday app last November that enabled shoppers to preview and get push notification on Black Friday specials, create lists to share with friends and family, direct shoppers toward local store specials and preview exclusive items. The app’s debut coincided with Macy’s holiday broadcast campaign featuring spots with Justin Bieber, Carlos Santana, Martha Stewart and Taylor Swift. The IAB MIXX Awards honor not just creativity but impact and nowhere is ROI felt more immediately than in a retail environment
What’s next? We’ve added one final category to find out:
Can’t be Contained! - Any execution so experimental and innovative that it defies categorization in the IAB MIXX Awards!
Technology is moving fast, and cutting edge agencies and brand marketers are keeping up with it. “Can’t be Contained” offers agencies and brand marketers the chance to submit their campaigns using the latest most experimental, groundbreaking technology. No doubt there are even more forward thinking digitally savvy campaigns on the horizon.
Learn more about the global IAB MIXX Awards at iab.net/mixxawards.
Peter Minnium
As
the Head of Brand Initiatives at IAB, Peter Minnium leads a series of
initiatives designed to address the under-representation of creative
brand advertising online. He can be reached on Twitter @PeterMinnium.
At the IAB’s Social Media Agency Day last month, held in the beautiful offices of AppNexus in New York City, I had the honor of moderating the sports marketing panel. The event’s title, “Social: Planning for the Real Time,” was apt given that sports is a highly conducive venue for real-time marketing. That is especially the case with social media marketing, which, increasingly, requires marketers to be constantly on their toes, ready to take advantage of any important moment — or relevant opportunity within or around a sporting event — in which their brand could potentially benefit or add to the evolving story of that game, match or event. In short, the combination of sports, social media and real-time marketing are a potent elixir for savvy markets and brands wishing to tap into consumers’ insatiable demand for smart, visually appealing content. I led a discussion with three distinguished panelists. We discussed a number of topics related to real-time sports marketing, but first, we had to get the obvious out of the way: Oreo’s now-famous Super Bowl blackout ad. While the Oreo ad featured prominently in much of our discussion about how social media and real-time marketing are changing sports marketing — for better and worse — the panelists quickly made it clear that the ad shouldn’t live in a vacuum. The reality of real-time social media marketing in sports is that it’s not just the big, epochal moments that make for great marketing opportunities for brands. It’s what you do to integrate your brand within the broader context of the sporting event between the pitches, between the downs and after the whistle blows that sets the digitally savvy brands apart from those that allow themselves to be bystanders.
I asked each sports marketer to reflect on what real time marketing means to their organization, how social fits into the equation and how success is measured. Below is a synopsis of each of their thoughts on how real-time social media marketing is altering the sports marketing landscape, with some of their favorite examples.
Marla Newman | Senior Vice President of Sales | Fox Sports Digital
.@deseanjackson10 doesn’t want taunting fouls to offset against illegal use of hands penalties. #ChangeTheRule twitter.com/MikePereira/st…
— Mike Pereira (@MikePereira) February 1, 2013
In terms of inserting ourselves within non-obvious real-time marketing situations, it’s important for us to extend the relationship they have with our brand and our talent on-air and deepen that relationship. It’s important for us to be relevant to their sports experience, which enables us to be considered the go-to source of info and continue to make sports fun.
What does success look like? I don’t think anybody has cracked this code yet. We can only look to show increases in the number of our fans engaging — tweet, re-tweeting, taking any form of action then we are heading in the right direction.
Jonathan Perelman | Vice President of Agency Strategy and Industry Development | BuzzFeedSocial media is all about real-time. I think real-time marketing is quite simple: it’s capturing a moment in a natural and organic way.
Tricks don’t work in social; the consumer can see right through it. To be good in real-time social media marketing, brands need to capture a moment and evoke emotions.
The concern is that marketers will try too hard and will want to turn every event into a real-time marketing opportunity; that simply won’t work. I love a BuzzFeed example in which we worked with MLB 2K13, the video game that launched around the start of the 2013 Major League Baseball season. 
Another good example with BuzzFeed is work we did with the NHL around the playoffs in 2012. Leveraging known tent-pole events and allowing great content to find its audience served both brands well. 
As for a non-obvious situation, I’m impressed with the Tide newsroom. Tide quickly took advantage of a crash at the Daytona 500, where the crew used Tide to clean the crash site. Tide aggressively used a spontaneous moment and filled the social Web with organic, timely content. Success on the social Web is about sharing. A key metric in that respect is how often a piece of content is shared/reproduced on the social Web. It’s very difficult to simply make something go “viral.” Creating shareable content that captures the moment and evokes emotion is what works on the social Web. These qualities are what make sports so much fun to watch and talk about.
Patrick Albano | Vice President of Sales | Mobile and Innovation, Yahoo! Sports
We have taken a few interesting approaches to real-time marketing that have helped brands scale this concept. Brands reacting quickly and pushing content or commentary out over social channels is attractive. But we find it’s difficult to scale and sustain this strategy. We have developed ways to help brands understand the stories that are going to go viral before they do and have been able to attach a brand to that content as people start talking about those topics and sharing relevant content. Imagine if we could have told the Oreo team there was a blackout coming and allowed them to prep their integration ahead of time? A good example of this was the work we did with a wireless service provider for last year’s NCAA tournament. Our editors created “bundles” of content in real time based on the major sports stories in the new. We integrated the brand into the story that day, so all of the discussion and sharing that occurred around the story included the brand.
Another great example is our Smart Ads program, which a large beer brand took advantage during the 2012-13 fantasy football season. The actual ads within the game updated in real time with the names of teams and scores from the previous Sunday’s fantasy match ups, sparking smack talk sponsored by the brand.
Success for these campaigns comes in the form of engagement and earned media. We see up to 20 times the engagement lifts with the real-time personalized ads. By attaching to content that’s already being shared and discussed the brand “rides along” and earns media without having to have a news desk or clever social media manager. We’ve also seen 2-3 times the lift in purchase intent and brand favorability based on the brands being able to relate in real time. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
This is the third in the blog series that provides an overview of discussions from the April 3, 2013 “Social - Planning for Real-Time” Agency Day including ways that Travel, CPG, Sports, and Auto have planned social for real-time to make their marketing dollars work harder, and is also a part of IAB Social Media Committee member initiatives focusing on the intersection of Social with Paid, Owned, and Earned Media Best Practices. For more information, contact Susan Borst, Directory Industry Initiatives, IAB - [email protected]. #iabsocial #iabpoem
Keith Trivitt
Keith Trivitt is the Director of Marketing and Communications at MediaWhiz where he focuses on strategy, brand, partnerships and the company’s narrative. He is a member of the IAB Social Media Committee and can be found on Twitter at @KeithTrivitt.
- Emily Culp, Director, Social Strategy & Emerging Platforms, Unilever
- Dina Freeman, Senior Manager., Social Programming & Blog Editor, BabyCenter (a division of Johnson & Johnson)
- Greg Goodfried, President and Co-Founder, EQAL Media (a division of Everyday Health)
This is the second in the blog series that provides an overview of discussions from the April 3, 2013 “Social - Planning for Real Time” Agency Day including ways that Travel, CPG/Food, Sports, and Auto have planned social for real time to make their marketing dollars work harder, and is also a part of IAB Social Media Committee member initiatives focusing on the intersection of Social with Paid, Owned, and Earned Media Best Practices.
About the Author
Phil Ripperger
Phil Ripperger is Vice President, New Media Solutions at IRI. Phil focuses on driving partnerships with Tier 1 publishers, ad networks, and digital media research companies to create breakthrough solutions for CPG and retail companies. He is a member of the IAB Social Media Committee and on Twitter at @RipperP.
- Focus on implementing SafeFrame on high-value properties first
- Consider working with your sell-side ad server to implement SafeFrame to simplify implementation so that all you need is a JavaScript tag you can distribute to your sites that in turn implements the SafeFrame
- IAB is developing a testing tool vendors can use to test their SafeFrame-enabled tags
- Create tags that work with the SafeFrame API and test them in IAB’s testing tool when it’s available
- Publishers should implement SafeFrame as soon as possible and begin collecting data to show what they can measure with SafeFrame
- Vendors should use SafeFrame tags with publishers who have implemented SafeFrame and begin collecting data that they can compare with publishers
- Select publishers and vendors should consider working with 3MS and the MRC to re-run pilot tests that establishes comparative benchmarks to those gathered in the aforementioned MRC viewability tests
- Publishers: Help the IAB define a “Publisher Onboarding Guide” for the industry to use as they work toward SafeFrame implementation
- Vendors: Create tags that work with the SafeFrame API and test them in the IAB’s testing tool when it’s available
- Publishers and Vendors: Contact MRC about participating in a round of viewability testing where SafeFrame is used. Particularly useful in these tests are companies that have already participated in earlier rounds of testing where SafeFrame wasn’t used
Steve Sullivan (with contribution from Katie Stroud)
Steve Sullivan is VP of Advertising Technology at the IAB, and on Twitter at @SteveSullivan32.
A room full of top mobile thought leaders gathered
at the 5th annual IAB Mobile
Marketplace yesterday. The IAB Mobile Marketing of Excellence was honored to lead the full day of
keynote speakers, workshops, and town hall discussions on leveraging opportunities
in mobile marketing. The time to act on those opportunities is now.
Inspired by an awesome event, I put together a
list of 10 tweets from the event highlighting the power of mobile. Don’t hesitate
to retweet them out!
1.
Anna Bager: Mobile Ad Revenue has more than tripled and more than 50% of Americans have smartphones. #IABMB
— iab (@iab) April 11, 2013
2.
Thomas Fellger: There are now more mobile phones than toothbrushes. #IABMB
— iab (@iab) April 11, 2013
3.
Fellger: Mobile isn’t trying to change behavior. It enhances normal behavior. #IABMB
— iab (@iab) April 11, 2013
4.
Car manufacturers don’t sell cars anymore, they sell mobility. A great way to integrate mobile in their products. #IABMB
— AmandaMDA (@AmandaMDA) April 11, 2013
5.
Mobile first is no longer a strategy — it’s a reality. #IABMB
— Dani Rosen (@DaniRosen) April 11, 2013
6.
@roviohq taking over the world. Started with heavy eyebrows on a red bird ball in the App store. That’s the power of “mobile first.” #iabmb
— Nelly Arnold (@NellFerragamo) April 11, 2013
7.
You can’t just say trust us, the numbers are good. #guidelines for #mobile #measurement are needed and the @iab is working on them. #IABMB
— Quantcast (@Quantcast) April 11, 2013
8.
Video on #mobile is consumed as both content and #ads. That’s a huge opportunity. #IABMB
— Mojiva (@Mojiva) April 11, 2013
9.
Takeaways for brands looking to max mobile presence? Mobile’s a team sport, launch & always learn- @pynhead @eweisberg @moeysantos #IABMB
— JWT New York (@JWTNewYork) April 11, 2013
10.
Paskalis: The perfect compliment to TV watching is the mobile device. #IABMB
— iab (@iab) April 11, 2013
About the Author
Anna Bager
Anna Bager is Vice President and General Manager of the Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence at the IAB. You can tweet her @AnnaBager.
Peter Minnium
As the Head of Brand Initiatives at IAB, Peter Minnium leads a series of initiatives designed to address the under-representation of creative brand advertising online. He can be reached on Twitter @PeterMinnium.
In the past few years, the conversation around social media has expanded from engagement, to listening and now to social planning for ‘real time.’ As eMarketer has cited, real-time marketing “…goes far beyond simply posting a timely tweet or status update… businesses are expanding their use of social analytics to do so much more.” This includes using social data for enhanced targeting and content creation. Brands are also anticipating social conversations to actively inform creative execution and media planning decisions for both digital and traditional mediums. It is clear that planning social media ‘for real-time’ has become an increasingly important part of the paid, owned and earned media equation.
To a packed and Twitter-trending house at the IAB Social Media Agency Day held in NYC yesterday, Peter Greenberger, Director of Political Advertising at Twitter, kicked off the three hour event with a talk on what brands and marketers can learn from the politicians during the 2012 Election. His talk is recapped below:
Politics & Madison Avenue: Lessons for brands from #Election2012
There is a long history of political advertising influencing Madison Avenue. The earliest brand television commercials borrowed from pioneering political consultants. In more recent years, McCain 2000 proved the Internet could be used to fundraise; the 2004 Howard Dean campaign introduced blogs and Meetups to mainstream America; and the 2008 Obama campaign nudged social networking forward.
In 2012, Twitter drove the narrative of the presidential campaign. It allowed millions of citizens to participate in the political conversation and enabled the campaigns to engage voters more directly than ever before. One of the more exciting discoveries from the 2012 election (kicked off with Romney’s now famous “Big Bird” debate comment) is the way brand marketers have begun mimicking the real-time marketing activities developed by political advertisers. Below we’ll explore how to prepare for, and execute, successful real-time campaigns - and explain how real-time marketing (RTM) came of age during the first #TwitterElection.
Prepare for real-time
Being real-time is not easy. The campaigns can provide valuable lessons to brands on how to prepare for and capitalize on real-time opportunities.
1. Listen to the community by monitoring Twitter conversations.
Before you can join or influence a conversation, you must take some time to listen. Both campaigns monitored chatter on Twitter to determine how their paid TV spots were resonating with the intended audience and also as an early warning system for potentially negative memes. The Romney campaign watched the Hilary Rosen comment on CNN about Ann Romney’s work experience explode on Twitter and capitalized on the moment by having Mrs. Romney launch her own Twitter handle to join the discussion.
The Ann Romney (@anndromney) / Hilary Rosen (@hilaryr) story peaked at 10:48am ET yesterday. Updated chart: twitter.com/gov/status/190…
— Twitter Government (@gov) April 13, 2012
2. Build your community by growing your followers in a targeted way.
The campaigns created customized handles for specific audiences and goals. For example, the Obama campaign set up different handles geared towards students (@Students4Obama), Latinos (@LatinosforObama) and voters in key states such as Ohio (@OFA_OH). The campaigns tweeted out exclusive content including behind the scenes photos, contests and offers to build a loyal following on Twitter.
We will finish what we started because of you. twitter.com/Students4Obama…
— Students for Obama (@Students4Obama) November 7, 2012
3. Engage the community with compelling content and real-time interaction.
Twitter is an engagement platform and both campaigns created compelling content in real-time to encourage users to respond. They prepared Tweets and calls to action before convention speeches, debate nights and leading up to Election Day. They asked for feedback using planned hashtags (#dontdoublemyrates and #40dollars), encouraged Retweets to show support and jumped on trending news and current events.
Taxes will go up for 160 million Americans by the end of this month if Congress doesn’t act. What does #40dollars a paycheck mean to you?
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 14, 2012
4. Move the community with effective persuasion and clear calls to action.
Ultimately, you have to move votes to win an election and the campaigns used Twitter as a powerful persuasion and Get-Out-the-Vote tool. @GOP tweeted videos with their party’s closing message on Election Day (“watch this before you vote!”); the Obama campaign urged voters to #StayInLine with Promoted Tweets targeted to mobile devices in key states experiencing long lines at the polls. And the Obama campaign specifically used Twitter to drive registration and early votes in key states.
Please WATCH this Video Before You Cast Your Vote: youtube.com/watch?v=pI5qjA…
— RNC (@GOP) November 3, 2012
Nevada, pass it on: Polls close at 7pm PT. You can vote as long as you’re in line before then. #StayInLine
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012
Colorado: Today’s your last chance to vote early for President Obama. Get it done now: OFA.BO/RVEsLL
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 2, 2012
Real-time marketing comes of age for brands
On February 3, more than halfway through Super Bowl XLVII the lights went out in the New Orleans Superdome. This unexpected moment was when the game began for Oreo and their now famous, “You Can Still Dunk in the Dark” real-time marketing response. Their agility was universally praised - and their Tweet received 16k+ Retweets.
Power out? No problem. twitter.com/Oreo/status/29…
— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013
Just ten days later, another brand had a moment when Republican Senator Marco Rubio paused during his rebuttal to the President’s State of the Union address to take a drink from a bottle of Poland Spring water. Poland Spring did not respond in a timely manner and missed an opportunity to connect with an engaged audience.
(The Senator, meanwhile, continues to engage and is now using the incident to help one of his favorite charities.)
What does this mean for the advertising industry in general? In the span of just ten days (between the Super Bowl and Senator Rubio’s rebuttal) real-time marketing moved from a brilliant tactic when done well, to a glaring mistake when missed.
The lesson from the #TwitterElection is clear: If you are not reacting in real-time (and planning for real-time) you risk being left behind.
—
In the upcoming weeks, this blog series will provide overviews of other discussions at the “Social - Planning for Real-Time” Agency Day including ways that Travel, HBA/CPG, Sports and Auto have planned social for real-time to make their marketing dollars work harder, and is also a part of IAB Social Media Committee member initiatives such as Paid, Owned, and Earned Media Best Practices.
About the Author
Susan Borst
Susan Borst is the Director, Industry Initiatives at the IAB focusing on Social Media, B2B and Games. She can be reached on Twitter @susanborst.
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