The Real Winners of the Superbowl

It’s no joke what social media has done to the Public Relations and overall communications industry. It has dramatically changed the way companies interact with its publics. It can either unite a community of followers to hate on your brand or it can create serious communication opportunities for the brand to be on top of things and engage in insightful conversations with its followers. This is called “real-time marketing”. 

Many brands have been using real time marketing in social media to manage crisis. Yet, real-time marketing goes way beyond crisis management. Real-time marketing can be used to seize or create unseen opportunities to be creative and increase brand awareness. This is the case of Oreo. 

During the third quarter of Super Bowl XLVII when a power outage at the New Orleans Superdome caused a blackout for thirty-four minutes, Oreo’s social media team jumped on this opportunity, tweeting an image of an Oreo and the caption, “You can still dunk in the dark.” The message was in instant success, getting more than 15,000 retweets and more than 20,000 likes on Facebook.

In an interview with Wired magazine, Sarah Hofstetter, president of digital marketing agency 360i, which handled game-day tweeting for Oreo, confessed that they had a social media team ready to respond to whatever happened online during the Super Bowl, whether it was an outstanding play or a blackout. The team consisted of copywriters, a strategist, and artists ready to react to any situation in ten minutes or less. Now, this is what I call being proactive. 

Mrs. Hofstetter capitalized on their strategy saying “Once the blackout happened, no one was distracted — there was nothing going on. The combination of speed and cultural relevance propelled it the forefront”. Talk about capitalizing on an opportunity! 

And since being an effective communicator involves jumping from one opportunity to the next, Oreo yet again proved their team is on top of things when they released another on-the-fly ad celebrating Justin Timberlake’s return to pop music at last night’s Grammy Awards. The ad, which didn’t cause that much commotion or steal the blackout ad’s spotlight, was very timely and clever. 

In an time where advertisers spend millions to run an ad during the Superbowl or an important award show, having a brand engage with their users using real-time techniques on social media is a clever way to reach people on smartphones and computers. This said, companies have to stay on their toes on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media channels to stay relevant. And companies like Oreo keep reminding us that social media is here to stay and the key to scoring a publicity touchdown is being proactive and a little bit clever.