Arbys: Good Old Tweet Fashion

Again real-time marketing proved to be one of the most powerful methods of story telling for brands with Arbys' tweet during the Jan 29 Grammys at Pharrell Williams commenting on his oversized Vivienne Westwood hat choice:

This quick reaction to a real-time event with a real-time response has proven to be invaluable in branding. Fellow St. John Fisher students admitted in classes today, while discussing the topic, that they started follow Arby's just because of this one genius tweet. 

The best part for Arbys? They didn't have to pay for a commercial on the Grammys to get  advertising through the Gammys. As little as 24 hours after Arbys' posted their tweet it had 77,000 RT and 40,00 favorites on Twitter. The clever Pharrell William's also Tweeted back at Arby's in what they couldn't have asked to be better product placement:

The proof is in the cookie if you're skeptic of real-time marketing doesn't count except to get a front page article on AdAge. Oreo was able to grab the attention of some 24.1 million Tweeters updating during last years Super Bowl. During the 34 minute power outage, when Oreo updated, there was an average of 231,500 tweets per minute. That's a lot of active users and a lot of eyes to be in front of at one time in such a personal, non-invasive way. Kevin Weil, Twitter's VP of production for revenue said brands who get interaction by tweeters through replies or re-tweets see on average of 12% increase in sales.

In this world of real-time media, you really do have to come up with a big idea, and quickly. It took advertisers just four minutes to have the first promoted tweets up against "power outage" searches on Twitter during last years Super Bowl. 

Though you shouldn't try too hard with real-time marketing if you missed the moment or you'll end up looking like you're just trying to piggyback off another brands shinning moment. A great example of this was also shown through tweets during the Grammys after Arbys tweet:

Though Gain did get some attention using this technique:

You can see more of the Grammy tweet flops through DigDay's: The Grammys As Seen Through the Eyes of Brand Tweets -- note the amount of retweets and favorites of most of these piggy backing brands. 

Everyone was going to be talking about Pharall Williams' hat the next day, but Arbys was able to steal some of that spotlight. I'm excited to see what kind of real-time marketing the Super Bowl on Sunday brings with all this competition to connect brand stories to high profile events. All major advertising teams and agencies will have their eyes peeled to the screen for their moment to shine and it at least makes for some good case studies. 


Original Story Source:  Ad Week: Arbys Slayed Grammys Tweet About Pharrell Williams hat  Posted January 27th by David Griner