Since the Super Bowl, real-time marketing has endured a celebrity news cycle of sorts, with pundits building it up to hero status and then just as swiftly tearing it down. As Oreo’s digital agency since 2010, we’ve seen the “dunk in the dark” tweet held up as everything from the watershed moment that legitimized real-time marketing to the thing that triggered a deluge that is ruining social media.
But many of real-time marketing’s biggest cheerleaders and loudest detractors are missing the bigger point by equating it to a need for minute-by-minute marketing for every brand in every situation. Instead, the real-time revolution is a much broader call-to-arms for brands to evolve their entire plan to marketing in a real-time world.
To meet this challenge, brands today require a fundamentally new go-to-market approach in order to stay relevant in the eyes of their consumers. This requires a shift in both marketing mind-set and structure. Brands and agencies must reconsider how they are organized, how resources are allocated, the frequency of planning cycles (yearly planning is no longer sufficient) and the speed at which decisions are made.
There are certain key questions that we must always ask ourselves if we want to remain relevant to consumers in the digital age:
1. Why should they care?
2. Will they be inspired to share?
Success today requires positive answers to both questions, and a well-laid strategy and plan. Our recommended formula for success can be distilled down to what we think of as the “three Ps”: planning, process and practice.
Continue reading this article in Ad Age.
