Was the Tweet Mightier than the Ad?

Collaboration keeps Oreo relevant during Super Bowl power outage

It’s now the tweet heard ‘round the world… or at least around the Twittersphere. Mere minutes after half the lights went dark in the Superdome at the 2013 Super Bowl, Oreo tweeted a clever image with the tagline, “you can still dunk in the dark.” As of this morning, the tweet had been re-tweeted more than 14,500 times and tagged as a favorite by nearly 5,000. It even caused one loyal follower to tweet, “Did you all plan for the lights to go out….or did you cause it?”

Today the story behind this brilliant stroke of social media genius is hitting the marketing world, and one word is the culprit of it all: collaboration. According to BuzzFeed, Oreo’s agency, 360i, hosted a viewing party the night of the Super Bowl for appropriate Oreo executives. With everyone in one room, the group could respond to and collaborate in real time to deliver this gem of a tweet.

This story will undoubtedly become a signature case study in social media. Kudos to 360i for being prepared for the entirely unpredictable by bringing the appropriate persons to the table far before the unpredictable occurred. And, to Oreo’s credit, they were ready and willing to capitalize on the blackout quickly and get ahead of other brands.

Of course, reacting to a blackout wasn’t the group’s top priority. Oreo also aired a commercial during the game with a three-second call-to-action pointing consumers to Oreo’s Instagram. Before the commercial aired, Oreo had around 2,200 followers. Shortly after, its following climbed to nearly 20,000 and this morning it was more than 36,000. Considering the cost of the commercial – which was reportedly around $4 million for the buy alone – I’d say the free tweet might have been the most effective tactic of the night amid a well-developed integrated marketing campaign.

Regardless, there is something we can learn from this. It’s not every day you have a Super Bowl blackout moment, but taking advantage of real-time moments that are important to a target audience is really the beauty of social media. It could be an industry rumor at a trade show, interesting words spoken during a conference, a pop culture event that you can boil down to your niche. We even had one client live-tweet – and dramatically increase engagement with followers – during an appropriately-themed Jeopardy airing. Similar to Oreo and 360i, we’ve seen the benefits of collaboration, as our fearless leader Neil Mortine points on in a PRWeek article today, when an agency can work alongside experts from all disciplines.

Whatever it is, the right foundation of collaboration and engagement between the agency and the client must be in place. When it is, the right people are often at the table and appropriately prepared in advance, so when it comes time to pull the trigger and hit send, you’re all on board.

Where have you seen real-time posts make a difference?

photo credit: StevenW.