Breaking News becomes an advertiser's dream

Last night the power went out during the biggest calendar night in the NHL, the Super Bowl. The San Francisco 49ers took advantage of the change in momentum and nearly overturned a massive deficit in the match. But, honestly, a lot of us were watching the adverts.

The team behind Oreo's marketing campaign on the night, 360i, did an incredible job. Not long after the lights went out - after Oreo's advert had already been aired - the official Oreo Twitter page released this advert:

This is the age when brands have to start interacting with their users - and by interacting with those who were watching the Super Bowl, they garnered a huge amount of interest. When I retweeted it last night, it had 46 retweets. 15 hours later, it has nearly 15,000 retweets.

People were amused, impressed and engaged with the brand - and this is precisely what companies need to be doing to stay relevant and to interact with their customers. Rachel Sanders, over at BuzzFeed, spoke to 360i's agency president, explained that they were able to release the advert so quickly because the brand team was there:

"You need a brave brand to approve content that quickly. When all of the stakeholders come together so quickly, you've got magic."

This is not the first time that a social media team has reacted surprisingly well to a situation. Last year the UK network O2 were in the middle of a PR disaster when their services stopped working for a huge number of their clients. Their social media team acted remarkably, making jokes, engaging with customers (even those who were extremely disrespectful and used profane language) and they attempted to alleviate concerns all at the same time. Not only did they manage to get customers feeling cared about, their follower count increased dramatically. Last night's performance - that by 360i, of course - just confirmed that brands must be ready to change the rules of the game, and sometimes take a risk.

That's enough from me on that, I think. I'm off to Tesco's now. I have a desperate craving for a pack of Oreo cookies...

Originally published in my blog on media.