Faced with the speed that news and trends sweep across the internet, marketing departments must stay informed in real time to remain effective. In a 2018 study, Accenture, Intel, SAS and the Harvard Business Review partnered to survey 560 business leaders on their use of real-time data. Fifty-eight percent of respondents, three-quarters of whom had increased their spending on analytics, experienced a significant increase in brand loyalty by using live data on their consumers’ behavior. Nearly half saw associated revenue growth.
Equipped with so much insight, marketing departments have a unique challenge: strategizing how to turn that data into reach. For Dong Chen, senior marketing lead at Reddit, selectivity is essential. Reddit’s platform has more than 100,000 communities with constant user activity. New trends, viral content and other real-time marketing (RTM) opportunities arise daily, but not all are worth executing.
“You don’t want to necessarily respond to a moment just because it exists. It needs to align with your overall goals and what you’re hoping to accomplish for your brand,” he said.
For RTM to be effective, striking the right balance of timeliness and relevance is key. A clear understanding of both company vision and customer behavior, as well as where those variables intersect, can help lead brands to the most strategic opportunities.
What strategies or tools does your team use to ensure you're ready to jump on RTM opportunities when they arise?
Reddit has more than 100,000 communities formed around almost any topic in the world. On any given day, countless trends start on our platform. Many of these can expand beyond our platform and drive real-world action.
Our marketing department partners with several cross-functional teams at Reddit to keep track of these trends and conversations. We have a playbook on the marketing side to respond accordingly if we think a trend or moment is an opportunity.
Depending on the moment, we have different tactics across the entire marketing funnel to allow us to respond thoughtfully.
You don’t want to necessarily respond to a moment just because it exists. ’’
How do you get the most out of RTM campaigns? And how do you maintain that momentum once the conversation shifts?
We have a small but mighty marketing team at Reddit. The key to ensuring that we get the most out of each campaign is prioritizing the ones that are important to us and responding appropriately.
You don’t want to necessarily respond to a moment just because it exists. It needs to align with overall company and marketing goals, and what you’re hoping to accomplish for your brand.
We are very selective when choosing which RTM moments to engage with, and we tap into a variety of tactics to best approach each opportunity. This allows us to get the most out of each campaign that we decide to execute.
Tell us about the most creative, unique or successful RTM campaign your team has launched. What made this campaign such a hit?
In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl this year, the world learned about the Reddit community r/wallstreetbets, and the power that Reddit’s online communities have in driving real world action. As the velocity of conversation continued to increase, it became clear that our response needed to be as meaningful as the moment our brand was having.
In response, our team created the first five-second Super Bowl ad. By going “small” on the big game, we “crashed” game night with a five-second JPEG that ended up dominating the conversation on television’s biggest stage. We wrote the copy very candidly, even admitting that we couldn’t afford a full ad and spent our budget on just five seconds. But internally, we bet that this approach would resonate with viewers. In the core message of the ad, we specifically highlighted and celebrated the power of Reddit’s passionate communities.
While other brands spent months of planning and millions of dollars on spots, we created and executed the entire spot in less than a week.
Our bet paid off. Viewers paused, rewound and actually read the 11 lines of copy during the Super Bowl. They then shared it online – ultimately making it the most effective ad of the night, according to the Kellogg School Super Bowl Advertising Review.
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