ALISON BEARD: I am Alison Beard.
ADI IGNATIUS: And I’m Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.
ALISON BEARD: Adi, do you remember the 2013 Super Bowl?
ADI IGNATIUS: I do not remember the 2013 Super Bowl.
ALISON BEARD: Okay, so the Ravens beat the 49ers 34 to 31, Beyonce performed at halftime, but now that I’m jogging your memory, you might also recall that there was a power outage in the stadium that night, and it delayed the game for a full half hour. So you can imagine that the NFL and the TV network and all the advertisers that had bought expensive Super Bowl ads were panicking, but amidst all that, the marketing team at Oreo saw an opportunity. They tweeted out a picture of one of their cookies against a dark background with the line, “Power out, no problem. You can still dunk in the dark.”
ADI IGNATIUS: Okay, so now I totally remembered that. I’m assuming that went very viral.
ALISON BEARD: Yes, it was this pivotal moment in social media advertising. It got around 525 million impressions and it was one of the first examples of a strategy that’s become increasingly common ever since: fastvertising. Oreo was super strategic. They did have a commercial in the Super Bowl that year, but they also created a sort of war room of people ready to put out other really relevant of the moment marketing, and it was the latter that got all the attention.
ADI IGNATIUS: I love the term fastvertising, and I assume it is the ability to produce ads really quickly around a cultural moment.
ALISON BEARD: Yes, and it’s obviously been aided by the rise of social media where so many people see ads today, but there are risks and a lot goes into getting it right. The actor, Ryan Reynolds’ marketing firm, Maximum Effort, has made a name for itself doing this, and he partnered with our guest today, Ayelet Israeli, who’s an associate professor at Harvard Business School, to explain their, and other company’s best practices. Their article is called Marketing at the Speed of Culture, and here’s my conversation with Ayelet.
So first and foremost, how do you define fastvertising?
AYELET ISRAELI: Fastvertising is advertising that is created quickly in order to really be at the moment, at the culture. And it’s usually in a reaction to some trend that is already happening. Brands want to produce ads that are related to what’s happening now, what people care about. When everyone cared about body positivity, a lot of companies started featuring people of all shapes and colors, and disabilities, and things like that. Companies have always been in culture.
But what’s neat about fastvertising is that really, you’re creating an ad very quickly. Some of the examples that we have in the articles are within hours or within a day or two, and those ads directly wink or directly relate to what’s happening now and that makes the brand part of the conversation. Essentially, the brand is riding on this cultural moment The brand becomes very personal, very authentic to consumers who are observing this and know what the cultural moment is about. Maybe in a few weeks later, if someone sees that ad and had no idea what’s it about because the moment has passed.
ALISON BEARD: So is this something that you think all consumer-facing companies need to get good at? Or is it only relevant for particular types of companies?
AYELET ISRAELI: With marketing, you always want to be authentic, to your own brand. Meaning if you think of extreme examples, like a luxury brand that is hundreds-years-old that is all about timelessness might not be a brand that should do these type of ads. But brands that really are more modern, more in conversation with consumers, as long as it’s consistent with their brand values, I think you can dab in fastvertising.
ALISON BEARD: I imagine that the advent of social media is what’s made this possible, but companies have been able to do it on traditional media channels like television too, right?
AYELET ISRAELI: So I think with television, they’re a little bit longer cycles. It has to go through a lot of authorization processes. Then you have to assign the paid media and ensure that the ad goes there and goes to production, and all of these things. So I think technically, it’s possible.
But what is different here, other than the aspect of social media, is really also a cultural shift in how advertising companies and how brands move in producing these ads. So instead of taking weeks or month to approve and produce a usually pretty expensive ad, it’s about coming up with ideas once you see the viral moment or the cultural moment, and then being able to shoot and produce it within the same day. So it’s not going to be five different sets and different actors, but you’re going to have a clever idea that speaks to people and it could be produced relatively quickly.
Now what social media gives is this extra disproportionate impact of these ads. Because instead of just seeing it on television, once your fastvertising is successful and it does get consumers talking about it, then they start spreading it and there starts to be a ton of word-of-mouth. Everyone wants to talk about it, everyone shares it. Once it’s so shared, then it’s also on news cycle, morning news, evening news.
ALISON BEARD: And I want to dig into exactly how an organization gets good at this. But first, let me ask which brands are doing it best right now? If you had to point to a particular company or particular campaign, a particular fastvertising moment, what are the ones you would cite?
AYELET ISRAELI: I think Maximum Effort is very good at this. They have quite a few examples in the article. So a couple of years ago when the Sex and the City reboot happened, in the first episode they had the famous Mr. Big take a Peloton ride and essentially die immediately after.
ALISON BEARD: Spoiler alert.
AYELET ISRAELI: Yeah. Sorry about that. It’s a few years old now, right?
ALISON BEARD: Yeah.
AYELET ISRAELI: And then I think within 48 hours, Maximum Effort created an ad for Peloton where Chris Noth, the actor that plays Mr. Big, was suddenly revived. I think the ad was called something like He’s Alive. And he was having a romantic evening, slash maybe a workout with two Peloton bikes with Jess King, one of the famous Peloton instructors that actually also appeared as the instructor on the episode. The ad was for Peloton, and it was about Peloton is actually good for your health and good for your heart, and Mr. Big is alive.
So that was something that, if they wouldn’t have produced it within 48 hours, no one would have known what anyone is talking about. But this really quick reaction is what makes it clever fastvertising. I think the way that Ryan and his cofounder structured the company, they’re really able to do these things really quickly. Of course, you had to bring in Chris Noth on board and Jess King on board, and all of that, but it’s an ad where there’s only one scene, one room, so it’s relatively low production cost. And then do it in a clever way that is not offensive to anyone, that is related to the moment in culture in a way that people will talk about it and will make it viral, which then has the downstream consequences of once it goes viral, everyone talks about it and suddenly Peloton is seen as a positive thing. Where the previous news cycle it’s Peloton is killing people, which is not something that a company wants to be a part of.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And Ryan owed Peloton one because he did an Aviation Gin ad that was playing off of a Peloton ad that had gotten a lot of criticism. You cite this in the article, where a woman had gotten a Peloton as a gift from her husband and improved herself, and everyone cited it as an example of an icky relationship. So then they hired that actress to be in a bar, drinking some gin, recovering from that difficult husband.
AYELET ISRAELI: Exactly. So to me, the fact that Peloton later went to Ryan for this ad showed no hard feelings, were also in on the joke.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So it obviously takes really creative people to come up with these ideas. On the spur of the moment to see something in culture and think, “I can reference my brand in a clever way to respond to this.” So what kind of talent do you need to hire internally or at an agency that’s working on this to make sure you’re going to be able to capture those moments?
AYELET ISRAELI: So in some sense, it reminds me of late night comedy show writers that have to, for the famous monologues at the beginning, they usually reference things that happened today or in the most recent news cycle and have to make humor of it. And in some way, it has to be people like that, that see something and have a clever, potentially humorous reaction. But you also want to have some version of guardrails or some ability to ensure this joke is not taking it too far, this is consistent with what our brand means, this is something that consumers will react to. And of course, you’re okay with failure. Some jokes don’t land well. You want to have quick, witty people that are able to cleverly react to these things, as well as taking risks, but not too big of risks where this will backfire.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I think also, comedy writers understand that you might pitch 20 jokes and only one of them might get selected, and then it might be tweaked before it goes to the public. So I think that idea of internal failure will happen before it even reaches the level of being put out to the consumers.
I do feel like brands are hiring a lot of people like that to manage their social media feeds now. KFC or some airlines where they’re actually empowered to respond to people immediately online, and then they get kudos for it when they do it really well. Do you see companies viewing their social media feed and customer service response as a form of fastvertising as well? Or fast marketing?
AYELET ISRAELI: Certainly. So this is your way to communicate with consumers very quickly, very in the moment, very cheaply in the sense that it’s zero production value. You don’t have to record an ad at all, you can just have a clever line, a clever sentence, a clever hashtag. Of course, to every positive example, we can also have examples where this didn’t work out so well. But for the most part, I think it does seem, and we see this in research, this type of behavior, this type of ability, it really humanizes the brand in the mind of consumers. It makes them feel like this brand is someone they would like to hang out with, and again, we can talk about which brands this would be appropriate for, which brands it’s less appropriate for. And part of it is if I don’t do it and my competitor does it instead, then I’m not in the conversation and my competitor is. So as you balance the risk and reward of this strategy, that’s one thing you need to consider.
ALISON BEARD: So you want to be funny, you want to be responsive, you want to be fast. But how do you ensure that those guardrails you mentioned are there, that you’re not taking too much risk?
AYELET ISRAELI: So I think part of that is empowering the people and part of it is about company culture. So if you start developing a process where now, each tweak needs 20 different approvals to go up the chain, then you missed the mark because it’s not going to be fast enough. So you need to have a more flat hierarchy of approval, and you need to make sure that the writers really understand what the brand is about and what is okay in culture and what is not. So I think it’s actually tricky. In Maximum Effort, they do have, in some sense, a flat hierarchy that allows for ideas to go to production very quickly.
ALISON BEARD: But there is a senior person who can make the final call, that knows the brand in-and-out.
AYELET ISRAELI: Right.
ALISON BEARD: Understands risk. It’s not necessarily going up to the lawyers, but it’s going up to someone with enough authority to suffer the blow back if blow back comes?
AYELET ISRAELI: So for the early days, the Aviation Gin example is really easy because at the time the ad came up, then Ryan was actually a co-owner of this brand. He understands the brand, he understands culture,. But with other brands, sometimes they might have to pitch an ad, but this brand is so used to the old ways of doing things where they see a whole one-month of approvals and market research, and all of these processes that you can never have fastvertising this way. You can have ads that are related to culture, but not in the way we think about fastvertising.
ALISON BEARD: Are there any other structural changes that organizations need to make to ensure that this happens more routinely?
AYELET ISRAELI: Like everything, this ends up being a management problem in the sense that if management, whoever is the CMO or VP of marketing is not into these type of things, then it’s just not going to happen at the company. They have to be able to embrace this for this to go well. So I definitely think there needs to be a cultural change in, “We want to do this.”
And yes, it’s not what the marketing playbook from 30 years ago was talking about, but maybe it’s something that is appropriate in this new age of every moment is a new viral trend and we want to be in top with the trend, we want to talk to our consumers. In this age of fighting for attention of 15-seconds videos and people with their TikTok and Twitter, and whatever apps they’re using, then maybe in order to be in the conversation, you need to be in those places because otherwise you’re not.
ALISON BEARD: And so, there is a goal beyond going viral. It’s great if you do go viral, but if your customers are appreciating what you’re doing, that’s also a win?
AYELET ISRAELI: We can argue about does virality translate to actual sales. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But it definitely translates into share of voice, meaning how much you’re talked about, how much you’re heard about. And maybe today I’m not going to make a sale to buy this product, and maybe also not in two weeks from now, but maybe at a point in the future when I’m considering a purchase, this brand has positive salience in my mind because of this viral thing that happened last month. So that’s part of why we want to go viral. But certainly just humanizing the brand, making sure the brand is authentic, being in the mind of consumers is something you want to do even in the old marketing playbooks.
ALISON BEARD: The example that comes to mind when you say that is Astronomer, which was the company whose executives were involved in the Coldplay kiss cam scandal. And they’re a B2B company, but they still seized the opportunity to say, “If our brand is being talked about, let’s actually explain what our company does,” and they hired Gwyneth Paltrow, the ex-wife of the Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, to do an ad basically doing that. So it was a good example of even a B2B company just saying, “Okay, let’s get our actual message out there in a funny, humorous way.”
AYELET ISRAELI: Exactly. And that’s another, actually, Maximum Effort example.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. So is there any quantification of what fastvertising can do for a company in terms of increased sales, revenue, et cetera?
AYELET ISRAELI: So I think that link is the hardest one to make. By the way, it’s very hard to make this even with traditional advertising. So there are tens, if not hundreds of papers in marketing saying how hard it is to measure advertising, that most TV ads have null or zero impact on sales, and part of the reason is because a lot of these things take so long to actually impact purchase. So what we do see is things like brand mentions, how many people went to the website, how many people talked about the ad, things like that, we believe that correlate with actual purchases down the road, but it’s very hard to actually measure it.
ALISON BEARD: What about when fastvertising goes wrong? Is there a quantification of what happens when there are mistakes in terms of damage to the brand or lost sales?
AYELET ISRAELI: I think that’s the other side of the same coin. So we do see the brand has to apologize, tweets being removed, ads being removed immediately. Consumers do talk about it, it does go viral, but people have very negative sentiment. So when you analyze share of voice and it’s negative, we typically think of this potentially having negative consequences. But we also know from marketing research that even when there are boycotts of brands, often times it doesn’t actually have an impact on the bottom line because different consumers have different opinions. So I think that’s an even harder one to demonstrate. But definitely, at least for a short period of time, there is negative associates of the brand and no marketing manager wants that.
ALISON BEARD: So when you’re faced with a cultural moment, are there certain key questions to ask or steps to take to increase your chances of crafting the right kind of fast response?
AYELET ISRAELI: So I think one is to understand the gravitas of the moment. Some moments are just not appropriate for brands to want to be a part of. We have some examples of that in the article with the hurricane or with the Arab Spring where brands had tone-deaf reactions to that in a way that was just, if you look at it later, it’s completely in appropriate. So I think the first one is that. Is this actually a moment to make light of or not?
ALISON BEARD: And pop culture is a lot safer than politics.
AYELET ISRAELI: Absolutely. And then any disasters and war is probably not a place you want to associate your brand with. And then the second part, which I think is what we started of, is can my brand say something about this and stay authentic and consistent? Is it something appropriate for my brand, , to actually be a part of this conversation? So I think those are the top two questions before starting with sketching ideas and figuring out how can we react to this.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And in the ideation stage, we talked about the kind of talent you need, but can AI help?
AYELET ISRAELI: So I think we all know with gen AI that ChatGPT and others can help you come with ideas really quickly, and I’m sure it accelerates creativity. I think what is still humans’ role is to understand what is an appropriate, what is not appropriate joke,. I think there are still things that gen AI is not very good at and this is one of them. So humans still have the compassion, the cultural understanding, all of these things that make you a better judge of is this going to land or is this going to land me in trouble.
ALISON BEARD: That’s another key question to ask.
AYELET ISRAELI: Yes.
ALISON BEARD: Taste and judgment, we still have that.
AYELET ISRAELI: So for now, humans still have judgment above genAI.
ALISON BEARD: So do you think that fastvertising is something that big organizations with more resources are better at? Or are the smaller, more nimble ones, do they have the advantage because they can move more quickly and have less bureaucracy to get through?
AYELET ISRAELI: I think at the end of the day, it depends on the organization. We have examples of large organizations that still have empowered executives to make decisions and have flatter structures that allow them to be good even at moving quickly, and some organizations that are not. It is true that the more nimble you are, potentially it should be easier. If you’re very small, then maybe you’re too small for this to matter or for this to go viral. People still need to know something about the brand. But I don’t think that big organizations can’t do it.
ALISON BEARD: And when a fastvertising campaign goes right, is there a way to build on it and capitalize on it such that you do guarantee it translates into benefit to the bottom line down the road? How do you make sure that it’s not just a flash in the pan?
AYELET ISRAELI: I think that’s a tough thing to do because really, what you are doing Hopefully changing or highlighting how they think about the brand in their mind. But if I do that and now, “Oh, come and buy this, or use this discount code,” or something like this might seem less authentic to consumers. So I think it’s just something that, as a part of a bigger marketing plan, should help, just like we see other ads, and not something you necessarily want to try to immediately capitalize on in the same manner.
ALISON BEARD: It strikes me also that it’s not something you can repeat that often.
AYELET ISRAELI: Correct.
ALISON BEARD: Because you find a moment, you have something to say, but then you can’t really find a moment a month later and have something to say about that because people will begin to see it is inauthentic.
AYELET ISRAELI: Correct. So part of this is you have your regular marketing planning, you have your regular advertising, and sometimes there are cultural moment where it’s appropriate for you to do something about them and you do that in an attempt to improve how the brand is being perceived essentially.
ALISON BEARD: When we talk about the structural and cultural and talent changes that need to happen to enable companies to be good at this, they should also understand that it’s not going to be used all that frequently.
AYELET ISRAELI: So I think there are two parts. So one is do I want to have ads that are culturally relevant in general? Sure. Some of this is the same talent and the same type of people that will be a part of this. And the second part is do I want to be able to react quickly to things? Yes. Some of this is just sending an email from the company to consumer when something happens, some of it is a Twitter ad, and some of it is a more sophisticated fastvertising.
And those capabilities I think are important, even if you’re not going to create a fastvertising ad for every single cultural moment because we are in an era of huge social media, a huge fight for attention. A lot of things are happening and you want to be sure that every day you are going to think about how am I having the right conversation with my consumers. And those are the same talent, the same approval processes, the same culture that we want in a company to be able to do that.
ALISON BEARD: Another example that popped into my head as we’ve been talking is there was the furor over the Sydney Sweeney has great jeans American Eagle ad, and then Gap, which is a company that has great in-house production I imagine, produced an ad that emphasized multiculturalism, et cetera, very quickly. And it was I think a great example of a brand, in a subtle way, responding to a conversation that was being had by many consumers about how clothing is marketed.
AYELET ISRAELI: Yeah, yeah. And it’s clear to everyone that knows about the Sydney Sweeney things that happened a couple of weeks earlier exactly what this is about.
ALISON BEARD: But it also stands on its own.
AYELET ISRAELI: For people that don’t know about it-it might not be clear, but it’s still consistent with what Gap stands for and what Gap has done over the years. And that’s exactly the line you want to walk.
ALISON BEARD: So we’ve talked a lot about what marketing teams should be doing. If you’re a leader elsewhere in your organization, how do you support this kind of strategy? Email ideas to the marketing team?
AYELET ISRAELI: I don’t know if they’re going to appreciate that. But I think as part of the organizational change, there needs to be support from everyone in the organization that is a decision maker. Finance has to be on board as well for a potentially risky marketing campaign to be able to happen.
And there is a whole field that is called social listening, which is essentially social media analysis. Which tells me what are people talking about, what is the sentiment, is it positive, is it negative, how many mentions of my brand, how many likes, how many retweets, how many clicks on my website. Anything that happens on social media that I should know about my brand is now something that marketers, managers, brand managers are able to see and analyze. A successful fastvertising campaign should definitely move all of these is a positive direction.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, at relatively low cost.
AYELET ISRAELI: At relatively low cost, exactly.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Ayelet, thank you so much. This has been such a fun conversation, talking about all of our favorite campaigns over the past few years.
AYELET ISRAELI: Thank you so much for your time. It was a pleasure.
ALISON BEARD: That’s Ayelet Israeli, associate professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of the article, Marketing at the Speed of Culture. Next week, Adi explores the idea of the Octopus Organization. If you found this episode helpful, share it with a colleague and be sure to subscribe and rate IdeaCast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. If you want to help leaders move the world forward, please consider subscribing to Harvard Business Review. You’ll get access to the HBR mobile app, the weekly exclusive insider newsletter, and unlimited access to HBR online. Just head to HBR.org/subscribe.
Thanks to our team, senior producer, Mary Dooe, audio product manager Ian Fox, and senior production specialist, Rob Eckhardt, and thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We’ll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I’m Alison Beard.
