Brand value increases across categories

Thought Leadership Speed Kills: How Brands Can Move Fast
SPEED KILLS:
HOW BRANDS
CAN MOVE fAST
To capitalize on cultural opportunities
Shane Atchison
Global CEO
shane.atchison@possible.com
SOCIAL MEDIA has given brands something they’ve
never had before: the ability to respond in real-time to
things that happen in the world. As we’ve seen over the
last year, some brands have had dazzling success with
fast reactions.
Oreo practically owned the 2013 Super Bowl advertising
competition with its inexpensive “dunk in the dark”
tweet, which played off the sudden blackout during the
game. With 140 characters it generated more publicity
than brands that spent millions of dollars to create ads
for the event.
At POSSIBLE, we call this phenomenon—“cultural
opportunity marketing.” Done right, it offers a
substantial new approach for brands to connect with
their customers in a meaningful way.
There is a caveat, however: Timing and quality matter.
The cost of sending out a fast tweet or Facebook post
may be insignificant; but success requires planning.
Brands have to position themselves to react quickly
and effectively, or they risk missing or misfiring on their
opportunities. So what are we talking about?
1. Create a cultural opportunity budget
Traditionally, brands have planned their marketing
spend months in advance and kicked off their campaigns
according to a set schedule. Cultural opportunity
marketing doesn’t work this way. For example, let’s
say you are a small beverage brand that suddenly lands
in the spotlight because an A-list celebrity is seen with
one of your drinks at a highly publicized event.
This actually happened to one of our clients—and
it would have made for a great quick campaign. But,
unfortunately, the brand had already allocated its
entire marketing budget for the year and had nothing
left to spend. And so, brands should reserve a certain
percentage of their total budget for cultural opportunity
marketing (we typically advise 5 percent, but it depends
on the size of the budget).
2. Set up a response team
Without real-time intelligence, you won’t have real-time
opportunities. Brands should establish a response team
that contains every functionality (copy, design, media
buying) necessary to pull together a very fast campaign.
The team also should include people who keep up on
the latest developments in the marketplace and look for
openings to exploit. Keep this team ready on deck to
seize the day and make the opportunity come to life.
3. Enable creativity by making roles
and responsibilities clear
To move fast, everybody on your team needs to know
what he or she is empowered to do. Brands should be
unambiguous about who will make decisions, who
will manage the response, and so on. While you may
think this is a little regimented for a creative process,
its purpose is to free your team members to work fast,
without concerning themselves with rules and structure.
4. Practice makes perfect
Real-time opportunities come up randomly, so a
brand’s cultural opportunity marketing team needs to
have experience. Not just by doing things live, but by
practicing responses to unexpected events. Brands should
conduct “fire drills” occasionally, where everyone has to
drop everything and think about a response to something.
If it’s not practical to create an actual response, you
should at least spend an hour discussing what you might
do. Then allow outsiders to evaluate your response and
make sure you’re on the right track.
5. Incentivize cultural opportunities
Want your response team to be razor sharp? Give them
a reason to be out there hunting for and executing ideas.
Incentives should be small, but meaningful.
6. Reward failure
Success in fast, real-time efforts often depends on things
outside a brand’s control. Cultural opportunities play
out in the real world, where real news happens. A brand’s
response team may come up with a terrific message, but
simply be overwhelmed by a bigger story that breaks
that day. So reward effort not outcome.
Obviously, cultural opportunity marketing is more of a
methodology than a specific plan. Brands should adapt
it to their unique circumstances and communications
challenges. But by planning well and enabling a team to
be creative fast, you can realize an outsized return on a
minimal investment and grow the brand’s value.
POSSIBLE is a digital agency with global presence,
specialized in creative, technology, ideas and insights,
performance marketing and interactive touch.
www.possible.com
130 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2013 131