Learning Real Time Marketing From the Commentary of Netflix, Oreo, KitKat and Asos

In pursuit of catching up with the hype-cycle, brands are always on the move with real-time marketing.

When implemented right, RTM can actually captivate a brand’s target audience better than any marketing strategy. 

It also helps them cope up with the speed of news cycles as they get shorter and shorter. But your brand can achieve all this, only when your RTM messages are not only clever and on-point but also fast as light.

Real-time and responsive marketing never fails to strike marketing professionals with awe and wonder with the potential contained by it. 

Many a time, all it takes is a post by a brand, over some current event or in a response to another post, for the people to go berserk with the share or retweet button. 

These posts have a knack for injecting themselves into social media conversations regarding the event and hence make your brand name explode. 

When brands react to events happening in the present or give out responses to posts, it gives them a human appeal and puts them at the centre of a chain of dialogue on social media.

Let’s get a little deep into what real-time marketing is and how you can use it the right way.

Real-time marketing is generally referred to by marketers as the “on-the-fly” mode of marketing. It basically exploits any current event happening in the present to market any product, brand, website, etc.

For instance, Luis Suarez while playing for Uruguay bites Giorgio Chiellini, one of Italy’s defenders, during a FIFA 2014 match and the netizens are frenzied over it. And then if you utilize this event to market one of your products as Netflix did, it would be a perfect example of successful real-time marketing.

Before social media, having a successful jab at real-time marketing wasn’t this easy because by the time the marketers could look into current trends to exploit them, they were over. Hence the real-time marketing was more surrounded around targeting singular users by collecting online user information and data, including personal trends and spending history, and showing them instant ads accordingly. This was done through search engine ads, banner ads, email campaigns, text messages, etc.

Then came the social media boom and made it all too simple. Now, marketers were able to get to know current trends as quickly as possible and could leverage them to market their products and brands in little or no time.

Real-time marketing has also evolved a lot during the past few years. Gone are the days when RTM used to revolve just around the latest trends or current events. It now takes the available customer data into account too, in order to exploit it for experimenting with different ways to reach out to the audience.

Real-time marketing can also prove to be marginally cheaper than traditional marketing campaigns. But the room it leaves in cost, it trades off in research and vigilance. Good research and alertness can pay off with a substantial surge in your brand popularity, whereas shallow research will only result in a failed attempt at RTM.

Real-time marketing is about conveying the right message to a suitable audience at the right moment. But, what many marketers forget is that the message will be left untransmitted if the content isn’t engaging. Hence, for the RTM messages or posts to explode, it is extremely important for the content to be engaging and entertaining.

Now, Let’s delve into some examples of successful RTM and what we must learn from them.

The post from Oreo’s twitter account during the Super Bowl 2013 power cut is, without doubt, the biggest exemplar of successful real-time marketing. During a Super Bowl 2013 game, New Orleans faced a 34-minute power cut and Oreo posted this:

What marketers need to learn from this post is the low reaction time of Oreo’s marketing team over that event, which was a major reason for Twitteratis going berserk over it. Having successful shots at RTM requires this level of vigilance on current trends and events.

Back in 2014, Twitter users were basically reduplicating posts about the flexibility of the iPhone 6. Hashtags like #bendgate and #bendghazi were trending at the top. Kitkat sensed an opportunity and tweeted this that left netizens giggling:

This witty remark then became the most retweeted brand tweet of all time. In several instances, Kitkat has created witty and engaging content that leaves the users doing their marketing for them. What marketers need to take from Kitkat’s successful RTM coups is that the messages weaved in engaging pieces of content is wildly accepted by the audience.

Online fashion brand ASOS, when printed a batch of 17000 bags with a typo, “online” spelled as “onilne”, took a dig on themselves and handled it this way:

This set out a frenzy among the twitter audience because they acknowledged their mistake even before the customers could react or roast them over it. The pay-off was free publicity. This is an unconventional example of an RTM event because in this case the event was set by none other than the brand itself.

To wrap up, Real-Time Marketing is one of the best ways you can market your services. It throws your name in the air better than any method of marketing if implemented right. All it takes is proper market research and content that engages and appeals to your target audience.

If you liked this post, be sure to check out our posts on marketing and growth strategy at the ContentNinja Dojo.