How To Be Ready for Real-Time Conversations
Consumers Want Relevant
Content and They Want It Now
Perpetual connectivity, driven largely by mobile
and tablet use, has transformed the way people
consume and interact with each other. As
customers spend more and more time online,
real-time engagement has become one of the
most powerful methods of storytelling for brands.
With new digital trends also comes a new set of
expectations. For brands, the two critical consumer
expectations for content are immediacy and relevance.
In order to start a conversation, a brand needs to
understand these two expectations. And to perform,
it’s essential to have the right process in place. Not
every brand will engage to the same level or extent in
real-time marketing or social media, nor should they.
But without building a process or infrastructure for realtime marketing, no brand will be able to deliver on, and
stay ahead of, consumer expectations.
Increasingly, that process looks more like publishing
news than producing a TV spot or print ad. Senior brand
leadership commitment to this new methodology will
ultimately determine the relative success of its real-time
marketing efforts. The reality is: real-time marketing is
coming your brand’s way. The question is: will you be
ready?
© 2014 NewsCred 2
Rethinking The Way We Do
Business in Real-Time
has lead to a slow and cumbersome gauntlet. Real-time
marketing requires the urgency of Broadcast News,
not the slow pace of Mad Men - and all parties need to
In its present state, most agency and brand internal
infrastructure, as well as external processes, are
reimagine the lengthy, linear process and work on parallel
paths with fewer steps across creation and approval.
unequal to the tasks required of real time marketing.
According to DigitasLBi’s Eric Korsh, VP/Group
Director of Brand Content, here are the four things
that need to change. TEAMS –
Broader Expertise with Fewer People
When a period TV series from the 1960’s closely
resembles today’s agency and client staff model,
perhaps it’s time for a change. Agency and client teams
were built to produce campaign work supporting long
gestation efforts such as product launches and brand
positioning. The incremental changes that have been
made over time do not fully reflect the opportunities
created by consumer use of technology. Real-time
marketing teams need to be made up of new, hybrid
roles where individuals have multiple areas of expertise.
That way, you shrink the meeting size and increase the
speed of reaction.
PROCESS
– Faster and Shorter
By that same token, when a period TV series from the
1960’s closely resembles today’s agency and client
working processes, perhaps it’s time for a change.
Long lead times for content development and
publication across limited channels
TRANSLATION –
What are We Doing on Pinterest?
It’s one thing to develop a line of communication
around a sports or movie sponsorship, but a much
more difficult thing to translate brand values, promise,
and efficacy across the terrain of modern channels of
communication. The possibilities are infinite, so the
task is daunting, but understanding how to craft value
in an interactive and always-on environment is critical
to success. In order to turn real-time moments into
long-term success, brands need to be able to translate
their assets into consumer value on everything from
Pinterest to Vine to Twitter.
MINDSET
– Fearlessness and Consumer Orientation
No more navel gazing or, more crudely expressed,
masturbatory messaging. Brands need to focus on providing
value to consumers at every touch point with every statement.
In these real-time channels, brands need to be risk-taking
and authentic instead of conservative and shallow. This
is arguably anathema to our industry and perhaps the
most difficult change to make. All parties involved must
regularly challenge the older ways of doing things, and
work together to keep focus on the consumer.
© 2014 NewsCred 3
Contents
Relevance Has A Deadline:
How To Be Ready for Real-Time Conversations
Chapter 1
The New Creative Team
07 Structuring an Agile Team
08 Streamlining Your Process
11 Monitoring the Space
13 Creating Content That Resonates
Chapter 2
The New Client Relationship and Process
19 Setting Expectations
20 Forming a Cadence
21 Overcoming Creative, Legal and Approval Barriers
Chapter 3
How to Translate - Measurement & Sustainable Success
23 Reducing Risk, Maximizing Opportunities
26 Fusing Creativity and Technology
27 Expediting Client and Legal Approvals
Conclusion
28 So, What’s Next?
© 2014 NewsCred 4
Methodology
For this white paper, NewsCred has worked with global
marketing and technology firm DigitasLBi to compile
wisdom on what it takes to get real-time marketing
right. DigitasLBi was one of the first agencies to adopt
the real-time model with their signature approach,
BrandLIVE. DigitasLBi has done groundbreaking work by
implementing their innovative process for some of their
top clients.
Newscred interviewed six DigitasLBi executives, reviewed
case studies from across the industry, and researched
extensively to bring you a comprehensive, up-to-theminute guide on brand storytelling at the speed of social.
© 2014 NewsCred 5
Chapter One
A new creative
process:
Setting yourself
up for agility
and speed
Real-time marketing has the power to support and drive
the long-term narrative of any brand. It’s not just about
accumulating likes on Facebook, retweets on Twitter,
or views on YouTube. It’s about engaging with your
customers and adding value to their lives at every touch
point. Permanent connectivity means that there are a lot
of opportunities to do so. Each real-time interaction builds
loyalty among customers; consumers who engage with
brands become its most loyal advocates.
But, success in the real-time space requires a total
commitment to new skills and a new creative process: one
in which the rules are evolving at the speed of technology
and regulation, clients and agencies are working as
extensions of each other side-by-side, and the turnaround
time from concept to launch is often compressed to days or
even hours. That’s a massive departure from the traditional
agency-client model, in which each step of the process—
from brief to brainstorm, from execution to approval—is
measured in weeks or months.
So, where does a brand begin? Whether you’re designating
a team to execute real-time marketing regularly or simply
preparing for sporadic social media engagement, the first
step is to put the right people in place.
© 2014 NewsCred 6
Structuring an
Agile Team
“We have to have slightly different
skills than we’re accustomed to,
in that we have to have editorial
orchestration if not actual
editorial creation.”
— John McCarus, SVP, Social Content,
DigitasLBi
“Curiosity. Sense of humor.
Passion for reading. Someone
who wants to be the smartest
person in the room. Someone
who is connected—to the world
around them, culture, and people.
We call them ‘Renaissance
Junkies.’”
—Anne-Marie Kline, SVP, Social Content /
Managing Director, BrandLIVE, DigitasLBi
“Collaborative spirit is a must.
You need an analytics person, a
brand planning person, multiple
creative teams coming up with
ideas, technologists deciding
how to create it, media people
choosing where to deploy it —
and all this needs to happen
in three days. If they’re not
collaborative then the whole
machine shuts down.”
— Norman De Greve, Chief Solutions Officer,
North America, DigitasLBi
“Real-time marketing is new for
everybody, so let’s not claim
we understand it with total
clarity – no one does yet. But as
someone who comes from the
world of publishing, I would say
this is a great opportunity for
publishing people of all types to
leverage their thinking and skills
– working with brands and using
neutral approaches.”
Joining the conversations of the moment calls for
a level of nimbleness and flexibility that have rarely
been applied to brand storytelling before. A new set
of skills is required, one more commonly associated
with newsrooms than with traditional marketing
agencies. The skillset needs to have overlap across
team members – no more copywriter and art director
silos. But what are those skills exactly? And what does
a real-time marketing team look like? While there aren’t
established best practices for this fledgling approach
yet, a few major changes are certain:
Trial and error. Real-time marketing is an ongoing
experiment, and team members must be willing to treat
it as such. The days of developing a single, precious
concept have been replaced with multiple, real-time
social content activations – both niche and at scale. You
need people who can work with minimal oversight and
direction, who are comfortable taking risks and having
their ideas killed. Social network half-life and consumer
expectations for authentic content make for a terrific
Petri dish. It’s no longer just about what is right for the
brand, but what’s right for the channel.
Renaissance junkies wanted. The tools and
processes involved in real-time marketing can be
learned by anyone. But certain innate characteristics,
which manifest in both a deep and broad menu of
interests, should be required of all team members.
From high brow to low brow, technical to fantastical,
team members must be the Benjamin Franklins or the
DaVincis of their agency.
Collaboration – but really. While a real-time
marketing team may have all the same responsibilities
as a traditional one, they should not have all of the
same players. Those ‘Renaissance Junkies’ are Masters
of Many Trades – narrow talent experts need not apply.
These individuals will be woven together more tightly
throughout the process and working together from
the start. In real-time marketing, old siloed activities
blur and everyone has a role to play in social listening,
mining the conversations, and finding relevant places in
which the brand can engage. Formerly linear activities
become parallel paths.
—John McCarus, SVP, Social Content,
DigitasLBi
© 2014 NewsCred 7
Streamlining your
Process
Putting yourself in a position to do realtime marketing effectively, and knowing
when you’re ready for it, takes a lot of
upfront planning. Success starts not with
a single well-timed moment, but a brand’s
day-to-day activity.
Purpose
Before anything else, it’s important to
make sure all stakeholders on both
the client and agency side know the
overarching purpose of the content.
Why are we doing what we are doing?
Without a clear answer agreed upon by
everyone, each piece of new content
will run through an old gauntlet and risk
destruction. The difficulty is in allowing
the purpose to manifest according to
consumer expectations and behaviors
on each channel, and not to force a
preconditioned content structure.
Commitment
Brands looking to build an engaged
audience on social media must publish
quality content on a consistent basis. Just
like musicians or authors, brands can’t
develop an audience chiming in a handful
of times a year for big, publicized events
like the Academy Awards, the VMAs, or
the Super Bowl. That approach will prove
ineffective because you haven’t built any
kind of relationship with your audience.
Publishing regularly sets a strong social
foundation that will help you establish
a cadence with your internal team, your
client, and your readers. It prepares you
for success when the right opportunity
emerges.
Process
Brands and agencies need to understand
that while there will continue to be
forward-looking calendars with planned
content, the high-reward activities are
those which are molded or created in
real-time. This can only happen, and
be approved, with a defined end-toend process, designed with a “how can
we make this happen” end goal. This
requires change-management, and
brands or agencies that treat it less
seriously than that will sit on the sidelines
during critical social moments.
© 2013
2014 NewsCred 8
Understanding Your
Digital Community
Social media audiences for brands – and even TV shows and movies – differ
from offline audiences watching TV commercials or viewing banner and print
ads. They also have different expectations and behaviors on social channels.
For an organically built social following, as opposed to a purchased or bribed
following, they’ve already opted into your content and need a steady diet of
things they love. This often means the interests of your owned community
may differ significantly from your target audience in other media.
“If your brand sponsors “The Bachelor” through a broadcast relationship and
negotiates access to the content, but you find that your Facebook audience is
tech-savvy/geeky, then you should figure out how to utilize and present “The
Bachelor” material in a way that will engage your social audience – but still tie
back to your overall branding. This content plan may be quite different from
the engagement plan you develop for the broadcast viewers of the show.”
— Eric Korsh, VP/Group Director, Brand Content, DigitasLBi
Understanding your community requires an exercise in dissecting your
followers, their behavior patterns and psychographic qualities. You should
align these points with your bigger brand story and social media strategy
to determine how to connect your brand to the community in the most
interesting way.
For example, take Buick’s #InTheMoment initiative. Buick, in partnership with
DigitasLBi, noticed an increasing trend amongst their social media audience:
technology fatigue, particularly with smartphones. In response, Buick
launched a movement aimed at getting people to put down their phones and
live in the moment.
The content was specifically tailored to their digital community:
a dedicated #InTheMoment Tumblr page, a content partnership with
Buzzfeed, a video produced with popular YouTube singer-songwriters Rhett
& Link (which received over 1 million views), culminating in a social media
blackout for Christmas—so that people would live #InTheMoment with their
families for the holiday.
*Video Distribution: YouTube is not a Dumpster, Eric Korsh, MediaPost
© 2014 NewsCred 9
Establish a
Cadence
Internally
Just as a news team meets in the morning to discuss
the latest news, a brand must designate a time to
meet and mine social conversations of the moment.
These meetings are integrated across disciplines:
expertise in planning, search, media, analytics,
creative and account management should be present
to discuss the latest content – but with the fewest
number of participants possible. It’s up to the team,
capability agnostic, to creatively connect the events of
the day to the brand. The team should have a ready
set of filters that help them translate their concepts to
the brand strategy on individual channels.
Establishing the rigor of cadence and of mining,
meeting, creating and revising is important. It
ensures the team is tightly integrated and sets up
expectations for the new creative process. Basically
– have the same meetings at the same time about the
same things. Moving it to accommodate other work
results in missed opportunities and signals a lack of
commitment to change.
Learn From
Results and
Evolve the
Process
Real-time monitoring tools allow you to approach
content analytically. Build your content strategy off of
social insights, trending topics, and viral content from
competitors and customers. You can easily see what’s
working or not, and evolve accordingly.
“
Any one of
these pieces
of content can
fail or be great.
It’s a learning
process; we see
what works and
we evolve.
— Norman De Greve
Chief Solutions Officer, North
America, DigitasLBi
”
© 2014 NewsCred 10
Monitoring The
Digital Space
The Creative Newsroom: Does the new creative
process call for a new physical environment?
Technology is a prominent member of any real-time
marketing team. Whether or not you designate a
physical command center to coordinate your efforts
matters less than your commitment to the process.
Today, advanced collaboration software allows teams
to manage project workflow in real-time from just about
anywhere. With platforms like the Content Marketing
Cloud, marketers can create content teams with varied
permission levels, queue content for editorial approval,
and even manage freelancers, contracts and payments.
Members of your team may be in different countries
let alone in separate rooms. However, designating
a physical environment within your agency can be a
mindset reminder to work in a new way. It also reaffirms
your team’s and client team’s commitment to the new
creative process.
[at DigitasLBi]
“ While
we have a suite of tools,
partners and the creative
newsroom, the truth is
you don’t technically need
that stuff. What you do
need is a commitment to
the new process. But it’s
helpful to have the physical
environment that reminds
you and challenges you to
work in a new way.
”
— John McCarus
SVP, Social Content,
DigitasLBi
© 2014 NewsCred 11
DigitasLBi
Case Study:
The Wire
*Two years ago, Procter & Gamble posed a challenge
to DigitasLBi to figure out a way to react in real-time to
conversations around the world. The speed of social
channels didn’t mesh with the slow-paced agency-client
process. The brand and cross-agency team created
something new: the Always On Newsdesk. Then
DigitasLBi built a physical workspace at its Boston
office headquarters designed to drive quick
collaboration. The project grew into BrandLIVE, a social
nerve center embedded in DigitasLBi offices across six
cities, including London. There, execs from certain client
teams are surrounded by six plasma screens displaying
all sorts of social content and data from which DigitasLBi
can mine and then create content in the moment. The
ever-present screens, pulsing with social activity data,
are affectionately called “the wire.”
*Digiday, "Inside the Digitas 'Social Bullpen'"
“
The Wire is our source
for discovery. We look at
what’s happening, what
people are consuming and
what people are sharing –
and those are often
different things. Paying
attention to what audiences
want is critical, rather
than what you want to
tell them.
”
— Anne-Marie Kline,
SVP, Social Content / Managing Director,
BrandLIVE, DigitasLBi
© 2014 NewsCred 12
Creating Content
that Resonates
“Today people’s trust
is not with companies,
it’s with people. So
companies need to
act more like people –
and sometimes that
means acting in the
moment.”
Always Relevant and Current
Consumers have become accustomed to brands in their
conversations and even welcome the interaction, if it comes
in an authentic, non-disruptive, and useful manner. The key
to successful real-time content is finding the intersection of
what’s relevant to your brand and relevant to your audience.
— Norman De Greve, Chief Solutions Officer,
North America, DigitasLBi
3 Examples
of Authentic
& Relevant Real-time
Marketing *
1. Getting Political. Within minutes of the bill legalizing gay
marriage passing in the UK, Virgin Holidays tweeted this
image and posted it to their Facebook and Google+ Pages:
Not every brand can celebrate legalized gay marriage in
social channels and have it come across as an authentic,
relevant message. However, Virgin knows their audience,
they offer honeymoon vacations, and founder Richard
Branson is an outspoken gay marriage supporter.
Therefore, the message itself is relevant and credible.
They used the #equalmarriage hashtag to expand their
reach and were rewarded with 265 retweets from their
community.
2. Smart Comebacks. Comical responses to consumers
can work, if handled expertly. @SmartCarUSA impressively
replied to one man’s snarky tweet: “Saw a bird had crapped
on a Smart Car. Totaled it” by amusingly debunking the
science of the claim with a snarky infographic of its own,
diagramming the “weight of bird crap required to damage
Smart’s Tridion Safety Cell.” Not only was it funny but
it managed to reaffirm the brand’s safety message in a
surprisingly delightful way.
© 2014 NewsCred 13
3 Examples
of Authentic &
Relevant Real-time
Marketing *
3. Weighing In On Pop-Culture Events. Oreo’s Super
Bowl blackout tweet prompted many other brands to
put on a real-time show at the Oscars three weeks later.
While most of their efforts lacked relevance or pizzazz,
this Nintendo tweet stood out for its wry, sardonic take
that contrasted nicely with the high gloss of the award
show:
Join an Existing Conversation.
It’s always a good idea for a brand to share a unique
perspective on a conversation that’s already happening,
rather than initiate their own conversation. A few
reasons:
1. Existing conversations have built-in audiences.
Organic, naturally-occurring conversations are more
sustainable than brand initiated conversations, which
ultimately are PR events. In general, it’s more useful
for a brand to consistently engage with the existing
audiences around natural topics than to spend
precious resources on creating a topic spike. On
Twitter and Instagram, those conversations are often
marked by a hashtag. Some hashtags are recurring,
like #TBT for Throwback Thursdays, in which
people and brands post reminiscent photos from
their past. Other hashtags are event-specific and
time sensitive, like #NYFW for New York Fashion
Week. Hashtags are an effective way to jump into
pre-existing conversations.
3. Real-time marketing etiquette is like being at a
cocktail party. “At a party, when you first enter
a conversation your head is nodding and you’re
agreeing. You’re adding value to an existing
conversation. But once you’ve been there awhile,
you can change the topic. I think this is a helpful
analogy for brands doing real-time marketing
because you don’t get invited into a discussion
if you just show up and want to serve your own
agenda. Over time, as you build trust, people are
more willing to listen to a new viewpoint from you.”
–John McCarus, SVP, Social Content, DigitasLBi
4. Developing an Editorial Calendar. One thing
digital agencies across the board agree on is the
importance of creating an editorial calendar or
content matrix: a loose roadmap for the brand’s
social media initiatives each week or month. For
any brand, this calendar will contain a mix of
planned (proactive) content, and spontaneous
(reactive) content. It may seem strange to plan to
be spontaneous, but that’s often what real-time
marketing requires. Always expect, and prepare
for, the unexpected.
2. Live-blogging events ensures your message is
relevant to your audience. For example, if you
determine your target is young, male adults who
watch football, you can bet they’ll be tweeting about
a big NFL game on a certain date.
© 2014 NewsCred 14
The Virtues of
Stock vs. Flow
Sweet
Spot
“Stock” is the type of content that brands have always
been great at creating: glossy campaign-based assets
that attract new customers. This content is planned ahead
of time and often carefully executed – on TV, in print,
online, and sometimes on social media. “Flow” is the
lightweight content that brands are creating reactively,
in real-time, to engage their growing social audiences:
tweets, pins, Instagrams and Facebook status updates.
Right now, brands are awkwardly transitioning from their
comfortable place as stock content creators to the new,
haphazard world of flow. And in their adolescence, many
brands are struggling to make sense of their roles on
social media. Finding that sweet spot between stock
and flow is tough, but will soon prove to be a worthwhile
challenge for any brand to take.
Stock
Flow
The balance is important because each piece of content
you post should ladder up to a greater brand story arc
and help drive your narrative, which takes advance
planning. But over-planning can cause your brand to
appear stiff and inhuman. The whole purpose of real-time
marketing is to connect with customers on a personal
level—real-time marketing is entirely in the moment.
Ultimately, the best real-time marketing will have a
healthy mix of stock content (proactive) and flow content
(reactive). It’s important for your brand to understand
when each approach is appropriate and why.
© 2014 NewsCred 15
Stock Content:
Planning Ahead
“There’s reactive
content and planned
content, but between
them is a huge spectrum
of things that happen
that can give the illusion
of being live because
they’re served up in a
relevant manner.”
—Anne-Marie Kline
SVP, Social Content / Managing Director,
BrandLIVE, DigitasLBi
Flow Content:
Thinking on Your Feet
There are certain events you know are coming and
can plan ahead for: holidays, elections, and award
shows. While it’s smart to have approved content
ready in advance of these events, it’s also important to
monitor the social space in case real-time conversations
spark new ideas. Trending topics can provide inspiration
and guidance for your next piece of content.
Stock includes the idea of “Planned Live,” which
involves creating content for known events which
happen at unknown times. For example, an insurance
brand might have a message they know they want
to communicate before or during a natural disaster,
so they will keep that content in a repository for a
forecasted occurrence. Similarly, a financial institution
may keep content on hold for when the Dow hits a new
historic threshold. This method helps a brand plan for
when, not if.
The infrastructure you’ve built with your real-time
marketing team will help make the process more fluid
when you need to act in the moment. For example,
when you know a relevant cultural event will take place
on a certain date, arrange for members of the brand
and client team to watch the event together to expedite
creation and approval.
© 2014 NewsCred 16
Case Study:
Lenovo, The Onion,
& Fantasy Football
Some brands are developing campaigns and
platforms that utilize both stock and flow content,
as computer brand Lenovo demonstrated with
their web mockumentary series, “Tough Season,”
and the social media program that flowed out of it.
Lenovo launched a new product called the
“Yoga 2 Pro” laptop, and leveraged their existing
partnership with the National Football League to
target the Fantasy Football crowd. Kevin Berman,
Lenovo’s marketing director, focused on fantasy
diehards because they are the technology “doer’s”
of the NFL, and Lenovo is “For Those Who
Do.” These fans have scale (over 30M fantasy
participants), a 24/7 obsession with their rosters
and league standings, and participate in the
dominant social conversation that surrounds the
NFL.
engaged Brad the Fantasy Football character with real
NFL fans and Fantasy Football participants.
These engagements – ad hoc content based on
week to week events and fan conversations, with
players such as Larry Fitzgerald and Andrew Luck,
were the “Flow” content. Coach Brad, using the
voice of The Onion on his character Facebook
and Twitter pages, engaged live during NFL game
days.
This marketing initiative, with both planned
and real-time content, proved effective because
it latched onto an area that people were already
passionate about, fantasy football, and used it as
a launchpad to engage in real-time conversations
on social media. As of mid-January, the web
series and accompanying social video content had
received over 13 million video views.
To position the Yoga 2 Pro laptop as a musthave accessory for the Fantasy Football season,
Lenovo partnered with DigitasLBi and The Onion,
a popular mock news publisher, to create a digital
mockumentary series called “Tough Season.”
Tough Season is the story of Brad, the perennial
last place finisher in his office Fantasy league. The
comedy web series ran eight episodes, released
periodically, during the NFL and Fantasy Football
season. Consider that the “stock” content. It was
scripted and organized andproduced in advance.
Throughout the course of the season, Lenovo’s
contracted NFL Player Talent produced videos,
Tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagrams that
© 2014 NewsCred 17
Chapter Two
The New
Client Relationship:
Working
Side-By-Side
agency/brand divide
“ The
needs to be narrowed.
Agencies no longer have
the luxury of going off on
their own to come up with
a solution to a problem.
Instead, both sides need
to work together in real
time, or very close to it...
We are one team committed
to the end goal.
”
– Linda Piggot
EVP, Global Relationship Lead, DigitasLBi
© 2014 NewsCred 18
Setting Expectations
people who are
“ The
successful in this space
are all in. They have
media attached to it, a
production budget, and
a dedicated team
focused on it. You need
to have that in place
to be successful.
”
– Anne-Marie Kline
SVP, Social Content / Managing Director,
BrandLIVE, DigitasLBi
Real-time marketing is a true collaborative effort.
While brands may recognize the need and value of
having a strong social media presence, many don’t
understand the resources and dedication required to do
real-time marketing right – and that it’s the consumer
expectations in social that require the real-time effort.
Brands also may not anticipate how active a role they
will play in creating, approving, and mining content
along with their agency partners. Real-time marketing
requires that agency and brand teams are extensions of
one another; they are constantly in contact, reviewing
creative, and evolving the brand together. It’s important
for individuals to bring more than a narrow skillset or
point of view.
Creatives must be as interested in a relationship with
legal colleagues as account leaders must be in sourcing
creative ideas from the news and current events.
It’s up to agencies, with their experience across
multiple brands, to educate their clients and align the
expectations of both teams. Clients needs to get on
board with the new creative process, and everything
that comes with it, before real-time content creation can
begin.
© 2014 NewsCred 19
Forming A Cadence
Between Agency and
Client Teams
The age of big client presentations and the “great
reveal” no longer applies. Instead, agency and client
teams are communicating regularly— in many cases
daily—and their meetings resemble working sessions
more than formal creative presentations.
“We’re talking to our clients
every day. A shorthand
develops between client
and agency, so the approval
process is streamlined.”
Develop a relationship of comfort and trust with one or
more point people. This includes the ability to challenge
orthodox points of view, and to focus on the needs of
the consumer within each channel.
— Anne-Marie Kline , SVP, Social Content /Managing
Director, BrandLIVE DigitasLBi
“Real-time requires a tighter
integration between agency
and client, so that truly, the
agency becomes an extension
of the client team”
— Nicole Estebanell, VP/Group Director,
Media, DigitasLBi
Try to streamline the approvals process on the client
side. Levels of feedback will slow down the efficiency of
the creative process. Allow final decisions to be made
by individuals who are available and responsible.
Figure out a way to act more quickly and together,
whether it means meeting in person often, providing
feedback in real-time over the phone, or using
collaborative technology to work in tandem without
occupying the same physical space. Scheduling
no-miss daily meetings and catch-ups can work, or
identifying a client who will respond immediately with
yes/no answers within fixed amounts of time.
© 2014 NewsCred 20
Expediting Client
and Legal Approvals
The approval process often has a way of slowing down the
publishing process, making it hard to react in real-time. This can be
a challenging hurdle for both the brand team and the agency. The
back-and-forth between clients, agency partners, and legal counsel
that usually takes place with traditional marketing pieces simply
can’t apply to real-time content.
So, what gives?
As with the new creative process, the approval process also needs
to change. It helps when expectations are set ahead of time among
agency, client, and legal teams. The earlier all parties get involved in
the creative process, the smoother approvals will be. There are even
things all teams can do proactively to speed up approvals, avoid
compliance barriers, and ensure a continuous flow of work.
Agency team You have to do the work upfront to be successful
quickly. Account managers, planners, and creatives all need to
understand the brand’s legal risks and compliance standards. It’s
important to know what you can and can’t say ahead of time to avoid
legal barriers while creating content.
Client team Create a streamlined process for feedback that
maximizes efficiency. That could mean sitting in the room with the
agency and reacting/revising the work on the spot.
Legal team It’s not just about approvals and rejections. It’s about
looking at the end objective in the brief and helping the creative
team arrive there – not through word-smithing but through thoughtful
direction. Legal approval should be woven into the creative process
rather than tacked on at the end. For real-time events, lawyers are
often sitting with the client and creative teams, working together.
“This is where a content guidelines document comes in.
When looking at producing real-time content, there needs
to be a thoughtful approach as to what is covered and what
is not covered. That document then is put in front of the legal
team. What remains is the start of your real-time program
(since essentially legal has signed off on you producing content
in a certain area). Because it’s legal’s job to overreact, I would
recommend starting with smaller issues and then working
toward more controversial items (if that ever becomes the case).”
– Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute
Those are proactive measures each team can take to create a more
fluid approval process, but when it comes time to monitor social
media and create real-time content, a new plan should already be in
place.
Plan an approach. Determine who is going to be responsible for
interacting with people, who is going to respond to certain types of
questions, and when you need to hit pause and run comments by
your legal team for approval.
Keep everyone informed. While having every comment, interaction,
and response approved up and down the ladder will kill your ability
to truly be social, you can keep your team and management in the
know with regular interaction reports.
Get senior leadership on board. If you have the consent and support
of senior leadership on both the brand side and agency side, your
ability to act in real-time will be much smoother. Real-time marketing
is not a ground-up sell inside a brand – it requires senior level buy in
from the beginning.
© 2014 NewsCred 21
Chapter Three
How to
Measure & Sustain
Success:
Turning Real-time
Content into
Long-term Results
© 2014 NewsCred 22
Reducing Risks,
Maximizing
Opportunities
Joining real-time conversations online means opening
yourself up to feedback from fans. Brands should see
this as an opportunity, but understand the risks. It’s up
to a brand team and agency partners to set expectations
for both positive and negative scenarios, and together
decide how to capitalize on opportunities and minimize
risks. The way a brand reacts to feedback, positive or
negative, often matters more than the feedback itself.
Authenticity gives brands a wide berth for error in the
eyes of consumers.
Consider the Wednesday morning in August of 2013,
when The New York Times website and mobile app
suddenly collapsed. While the Times was inaccessible,
several employees took to Twitter to reassure readers that
they were aware of the problem and that it was being fixed.
Some employees shared updates on their stories over social
media; others offered tongue-in-cheek alternatives for
readers while the site was down. For important breaking
news, the Times took to Facebook to provide a more
robust lede with visuals. Clearly, the Times has a stronger
imperative than most brands to deliver timely content;
that’s their only job. Even so, commercial brands can
learn something from the Times’ graceful handling of
a negative situation.
Real-time marketing may be new, but it’s been around
long enough to see some tremendous success stories
as well as horror stories. Brands can learn from those
examples and use them to reduce risk while maximizing
opportunities in the social space.
© 2014 NewsCred 23
“If you don’t have a
right to play, don’t say
anything. No one will
ever say, ‘I can’t believe
Brand X didn’t comment
on MLK day.’”
— Anne-Marie Kline, SVP, Social Content/
Managing Director, BrandLIVE,
DigitasLBi
“It’s tempting to jump
on a major breaking
news story, because
it’s what people will be
talking about. But it’s
when a brand is seen
to be jumping on the
misfortune of others
that things can go
wrong. It works if it
is playful so makes
people smile, or is truly
supportive in intent so
adds real value.”
— Grant Hunter, Regional Creative
Director Iris Worldwide
Know the right time to talk. Not every cultural moment
deserves a real-time response. In other words, brands
don’t need to jump on every conversation happening
on the web. Talking too much, too often, or at
inappropriate times can really hurt your brand. Realtime works when there’s a legitimate reason for you to
participate. Otherwise, a timely social media post does
little for you if it doesn’t align with your brand story.
Finding success with real-time content often means
knowing when to let opportunities go. Consider
the anniversary of September 11th. In 2013, many
brands felt compelled to weigh in, and while most
social media posts were harmless tributes, few were
relevant to the brand or their story. In one case,
a well-intended tweet by AT&T caused a flurry of
negative feedback from fans.
The post was widely criticized and lampooned by
followers who felt that the company tried to capitalize
on the somber event by showcasing one of their
phones in the image. Eventually AT&T posted an
apology, took down the tweet, and moved on. But
there is a valuable lesson to be learned from their
misstep On the flip side, some case studies reveal brands that
knew exactly the right time to talk. During the launch
of Apple’s iPhone 5S, for example, competitor brands
Samsung, Nokia, and Motorola bought social ad space
to tout the superior features of their own phones.
The timing and placement of those ads played off the
cultural moment just right, in a way that was relevant to
the competitors’ products and brand story.
© 2014 NewsCred 24
“When we started, it
was most important that
you were first. Now it’s
shifted and it’s more
important to be the best.
So you might get there
second, but you better
be better. You better be
right. And you better be
credible.’”
— Anne-Marie Kline, SVP, Social Content /
Managing Director, BrandLIVE,
DigitasLBi
“You can’t enter this space
without a contingency
plan - both for when
things go well and for
when things don’t go as
planned.’”
— Nicole Estebanell, VP/Group Director, Media,
DigitasLBi
“Negative remarks will
always be around. But the
power of positive brand
and community sentiment
can be your support
system. Great content,
delivered consistently,
will cultivate an audience
that will become more
than just fans - they will
become advocates and
defenders.”
— Eric Korsh,VP/Group Director, Brand Content, DigitasLBi
Stand out from the rest. Every brand is now jumping
on the real-time marketing trend, so it can be difficult to
distinguish your brand through all the noise. As with all
marketing efforts, the quality of your content and ideas
ultimately defines your level of success.
Here are two successful examples of brands
poking fun at each other on social media:
The personality you establish for your brand on
social media will help determine what type of content
you’ll post and how you’ll talk about a topic. Is your
brand playful? Informative? Irreverent? Quirky? When
all stakeholders have a firm grasp of your brand’s
social persona, and stick to that persona regardless
of the scenario, it really helps your brand stand out.
Oreo’s “slam dunk” Super Bowl tweet was as much
about style and tone as it was hyper-relevance.
Know when to take a risk. Some kinds of risks are
rewarded on social media. Others backfire. How
does a brand determine the right kind of risks to take?
In general, the more playful and good-natured the topic
and tone, the safer it is the less of a risk your brand
faces. If people are talking about Miley Cyrus at the
VMAs and you have a pithy one-liner, you’re probably
on solid ground. If you want to weigh in on an incident
in which people have been hurt, like Superstorm Sandy,
you’re probably better off staying on the sidelines. If
you feel compelled to comment in those cases, keep it
simple and brief.
One area that seems like a safe (and fun) place to take
risks it interacting with the social channels of other big
brands. Perhaps because those brands are not tied to
any single person, getting sassy is unlikely to offend
followers.
© 2014 NewsCred 25
What to do when something goes wrong.
Every brand will have missteps— it’s part of the process
of seeing what sticks. However, brands can often turn
mistakes into opportunities to show their human side
and make improvements by staying authentic and
sincere.
Consider JCPenney’s “Hitler Tea Kettle” incident. In
May of 2013, a billboard was erected in Culver City,
Los Angeles advertising a designer tea kettle that bore
a striking resemblance to Adolph Hitler. This caused a
flurry of negative commentary and caught the attention
of some high-profile celebrities on Twitter. JCPenney
immediately tried to diffuse the negative publicity
by responding to the tweets in a calm, human, and
sometimes humorous manner.
Don’t delete it, deal with it.
Unless someone is violating community guidelines
it’s important not to delete a person’s post. Doing so
would violate the understanding that Facebook, Twitter,
and other social media are open forums for dialogue,
and can make fans skeptical of the authenticity of
your brand’s other content. If it feels appropriate, you
might even engage fans who are expressing negativity
and use it as an opportunity to open the floor for
constructive feedback. But remember, most of your
followers aren’t visiting your page to view negative
commentary; they’re viewing the content you push out
into their feeds. The exposure to negativity may not be
as great as you’d expect.
© 2014 NewsCred 26
Fusing Creativity
and Technology
“We have this mantra:
No one should
develop content that’s
not shareable, and
there are no great
social ideas without
content at the center.”
— John McCarus, SVP, Social
Content, DigitasLBi
Creativity at the Core. The digital tools available today
encourage dynamic thinking and open up possibilities for
engagement. But at the core, real-time marketing is contingent
on creativity and good ideas. The key is to use technology to
your advantage to help you create a diversity of content at scale.
Brands have a tendency to think linearly about their content in
relation to their products and/or ad strategy. But more dynamic
thinking is usually rewarded. Forget your products for a moment;
who is your target audience and what do they really want from
content? Brands that answer this question first, and back into
their advertising strategy second, tend to maximize creativity and
optimize results.
Publishing & Social Sharing. Publish content to hosted landing
pages and share across social channels. Amplify distribution
through paid campaigns.
Measure ROI. Measure content clicks, shares, social engagement
and conversions, page views, unique visitors, time-on-site and
bounce-rate.
Stay True to Your North Star. With all the new digital platforms,
social spaces and devices, it can be tempting to veer away from
your traditional voice and adopt a persona that doesn’t normally
fit your brand. In some cases that’s okay, but it requires everyone
on board committing to the new, established social media
personality. The better bet is to stay true to the brand you’ve built
offline and bring it to life on social media.
Use Innovative Technologies to Create Better Content. Every
brand has advanced tools at their disposal to plan, discover,
source, publish, share and measure content at scale. It’s
worthwhile to find the right technology for your target and goals.
Planning & Workflow. Plan ahead with an editorial calendar and
track content approvals. Easily organize and archive all owned,
licensed and social assets, in one place with asset management.
Content Discovery & Social Listening. The ability to surface and
curate the most relevant content in real-time based on socially
trending topics, your brand’s target audience and marketing goals.
© 2014 NewsCred 27
Turning Real-time
Moments into
Something More
Lasting
Real-time moments, even when successful, are fleeting
interactions between a brand and its followers. How can
brands turn these instances into opportunities to build
deeper, more meaningful connections?
» Finding Hidden Insights in Consumer Responses. If you’re
only talking to people on social media channels, and never
with them, then you’re missing out on the social part of
social. Fans and followers can provide valuable content and
insights if you let them. The next step to publishing real-time
content is soliciting real-time participation and feedback.
For example, what if Oreo had asked fans at the Super Bowl
to show them how they dunk in the dark? They would have
likely received hundreds of responses that provide valuable
insight into Oreo’s audience. Are the images clever?
Sentimental? Silly? The feedback can help the brand shape
the tone and nature of future content. It can also serve as a
springboard for more real-time interaction in the moment.
» Turning a ‘Like’ Into Loyalty.
Continued engagement with consumers is what will
ultimately create loyalty and purchasing power. In the end,
“Likes” and “Follows” do not drive sales, but brand loyalty
certainly does.
» Creating a Sustainable Relationship with Fans. As in
any good relationship, it’s important to take notice of a
consumer response and assure customers that they’ve
been heard. The simplest example of this is when someone
tweets a question at your brand on Twitter, tweet back at
them. Write as though a person is on the other end, and not
an automated machine or corporate headquarters.
need to cultivate the
“ You
principle of little bets... in
other words the willingness
to foster lots of small,
experimental creativity
to put things out there and
see what sticks. It’s the
approach that’s built
Google and HP.
”
— Jon Burkhart
Co-Author, Newsjacking
order to give
“ Invalue
back to your
community, you have
to understand what
your community
values.
”
— Jay Curley
Global Marketing Manager,
Ben & Jerry’s
© 2014 NewsCred 28
So, What’s Next?
This white paper can serve as a guide to any brand on
how to go about structuring their organization for
optimal success. The following are key points to take
away:
Embrace a new creative process.
• Structure a nimble, multifaceted team that’s not
afraid to experiment with their ideas.
• Identify the communities relevant to your brand and
listen to what that community values before you start
to speak.
• Establish a cadence of content creation internally
and with your client.
• Monitor the social space for topics relevant to both
your community and your brand.
• Generate high volumes of content that live at the
intersection of stock and flow.
Set expectations for a new kind of client relationship
• Narrow the agency/client divide by working as
extensions of each other.
• Present new ideas regularly and often, establishing
a workflow cadence.
• Put new processes in place to speed up the
approval process. That could mean integrating
client, legal, and agency teams from the start.
Real-time marketing isn’t a fad; it’s a natural evolution of
the social age. These moments, when fueled by social
media, give brands an opportunity to achieve cultural
relevance and an engaging, ongoing dialogue with their
audience. Those that do it successfully will continue
to surprise and delight their fans and the industry. But
brands that jump into the game before they’re ready-before they’ve embraced the new process and set up a
strong foundation--risk their reputation.
The real challenge for brands is successfully structuring
their organization to capture these moments on a
sustained basis without losing sight of their overall
strategy and goals. To keep up with consumer
expectations, all brands will eventually need to use
social media – whether for daily engagement or
sporadic responses to consumer requests. The only
way to be ready is to put the right processes and
infrastructure in place. Doing so isn’t easy and takes
time, but the outcome will prove worthwhile and
become more important as social media plays an
increasingly prominent role in brand vitality and health.
Learn from past examples to reduce risk and
maximize opportunities.
• Know the right time to talk and when to take a risk.
• Have a contingency plan for if something goes
wrong.
• Stay true to your brand’s narrative in order to stand
out from the rest.
• Build a sustainable relationship with consumers by
finding hidden insights in their responses.
© 2014 NewsCred 29
NewsCred is the leading content marketing platform.
Pairing cutting-edge software with world-class content,
we transform brands into storytellers.
NewsCred’s Content Marketing Cloud© provides the
easiest end-to-end solution for content planning, creation,
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Through NewsCred, global brands like Pepsi, P&G, Dell,
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Founded in 2008 by Shafqat Islam, Iraj Islam and Asif
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IA Ventures, Greycroft Partners and others.
DigitasLBi is a global marketing and technology agency
that transforms businesses for the digital age. We help
companies of all shapes and sizes decide What’s Next…
and then we take them there. Also a top ten global agency,
DigitasLBi comprises of 6,000 digital and technology
experts across 40 offices in 25 countries worldwide.
In 2008 the agency created the now-annual Digitas
NewFront, a breakthrough, industry-leading event to
showcase what’s next in original digital content.
In 2012, the agency successfully founded the Digital
Content NewFronts (DCNF) to shape a new market space
for original, premium content at scale—an acknowledged
competitor in the Upfront marketplace.
DigitasLBi is a member of Publicis Groupe [listed on the
Euronext Paris Exchange – FR0000130577 – and part
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Learn more at newscred.com and follow us on Twitter @newscred
© 2014 NewsCred 30
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© 2014 NewsCred 31