It
was a year and a half ago that the team at Oreo sent their game-changing
SuperBowl tweet – a tweet that would eventually win them both a silver and a
bronze Cannes lion.
Brands
scrambled to follow their lead, to prove their cultural relevance and ingenuity
by tailoring their ads to real-time events. We saw a legion of royal baby
real-time spots, of which very few were truly successful or original. Charmin
won big with a Thor tie-in which remained news long after the tweet was
(presumably due to copyright) deleted. Every savvy British brand jumped on the
Andy Murray win, again with varying degrees of success.
But
let me ask you something. When was the last time you saw a real-time advert,
successful or otherwise? Not in 2014, I’ll bet. It seems as though the real-time
revolution has fizzled to nothing and nobody seems to know, or care, why.
What
happened to this supposedly game-changing practice? Essentially it was
unrepeatable. The Oreo moment was fantastic. It was novel, witty and
intelligent entirely because there was no way they could’ve known there would
be a blackout. It was REAL real-time. Subsequent copycat “real-time” ads
couldn’t capture that Oreo magic because all the events reacted to, royal baby,
film release, and even sports results, could be prepared in advance. The baby
was always going to be born, the film would always be released, and Murray had
to win or lose.
If
social media has taught us anything, it’s that consumers like to think of brands
as friends – Oreo seemed like our quick witted buddy. Unfortunately, nobody
laughs at the joke that was prepared days earlier, and that is where
‘real-time’ advertising fell down. What we as marketers should take away from
this is that band-wagons are dangerous, and we need to think before we jump
aboard.
