Scrap Going Viral. Timeliness Is the New Social Superpower.
If marketers around the world can agree on one thing, it’s a mutual disdain for the phrase, “Make it viral.”
We’ve all heard it at least once from an ambitious manager who understands very little about the perfect and unpredictable conditions that make content go viral. Of course, times have changed since this phrase was in its prime.
In 2013, South Korean singer PSY’s Gangnam Style music video reached 4 billion views on YouTube — half the population of the world. Brands got a taste of what truly viral content could do and tried, often in vain, to recreate it for themselves.
Today, in the age of memes and TikTok tracks, virality has taken on a different meaning. The social media cycle has become so fast that a meme can achieve virality and subsequently lose relevance in just 24 hours. Timing is everything.
It seems that today the most viral content is that which happens in the moment. A recent example is the absolute dominance of the image of Bernie Sanders in a folding chair wearing a pair of homely mittens during the 2021 Presidential Inauguration. In a matter of hours brands of every shape and size were posting their version of the Bernie meme to varying degrees of success. One day later, Buzzfeed posted the top 50 iterations, and then the trend began to flame out.
The Timeless Tale of Oreo
What do brands get out of jumping on real-time trends? If you’ve been in a social media war room in the last few years, you’ve undoubtedly found yourself arguing this case. Anecdotally, winners in real-time response get notoriety, free media attention and social media engagement. Those of us working in social everyday know that a well-timed meme can garner a flood of brand love and boost affinity from consumers.
But a recent study in the Journal of Marketing has taken it even further. In measuring the impact of “in the moment” social media content against a business’s performance, researchers found that real-time content correlates to better business performance, enhanced brand awareness, and even higher stock returns for shareholders.
Perhaps the best example of in the moment content is — yes, you know it too — the “Dunk in the Dark” Oreo Twitter ad during Super Bowl XLVII. In fact, the researchers referenced this example in their paper, noting that this ad, which was posted seconds after power to the stadium during the Super Bowl game cut out, leaving millions of fans and viewers in the dark, received 15,000 retweets in under eight hours and garnered 525 million earned media impressions. Not to mention that tweet took home two Cannes Lions later that year.
What makes that Oreo ad such an exceptional campaign? The creative is clever…but not groundbreaking. The copy is simple…but not emotional. The magic is in the timeliness of the content. I watched the Super Bowl that day and remember being stunned by the complete blackout that hit the field and turning to my second screen (my phone) only to immediately be shown a little ad by Oreo that spoke exactly to me in that moment. It was all about timing.
Responding Fast in a Slow System
A lot of social teams are hampered by workflow and process. A recent 1000heads survey found that brands have an unrealistic idea of how prepared they are to act quickly when a real-time opportunity comes up. Eighty-three percent of brands reported having a workflow in place to engage with social media moments, but only 27% of brands reported always responding to social conversations in real time.
Worse yet, our survey found that 17% of brands have no workflow in place to engage with social media moments, memes, or trends in a timely manner and 13% of brands rarely or never respond to social conversation in real time.
It takes immense coordination for brands to take advantage of real-time opportunities. First, they need a community team that is listening and engaging on social, and more importantly that team needs to be empowered to act when they spot a golden opportunity. Then, creative teams, PR teams and media teams all need to be able to work quickly and collaboratively to get the content together and live. In some cases, senior level approvals and legal need to be consulted, but the point of real-time workflows is that brands trust their teams enough to circumvent standard approval paths.
When you look at brands that do this well, patterns emerge. Burger King, Netflix, and Ben & Jerry’s come to mind. These brands are widely seen as the best in social media — and they’ve all worked to put an internal structure in place that allows them to react and move quickly when their team of social experts spot an opportunity.
Moving communications into the fast lane of the social superhighway is as much about systems and processes as it is about attitude. Brands that do it well combine timeliness with a deep understanding of their audience and the cultural moments and trends that speak to them. And then they empower their social teams to take action when opportunities are spotted. It takes a firm grasp of social media and behaviors in the digital age to pull this off, but, as the above examples prove, the rewards are worth it. You might even go viral.
Learn more about setting up your brand for in-the-moment content and the four other principles of a social brand in our white paper: The Social Age of Digital Transformation.
Share your story! What examples of real-time content stand out to you? What workflows does your company have in place to take advantage of opportunities in the moment?