Newsjacking: Why advertising needs to be faster and smarter

But the journey of change from the traditional slow pace of advertising to the speed of instant is a story that Hunter and co-author Jon Burkhart felt needed to be told, and would be as relevant today as it was three years ago.

Burkhart and Hunter were both based at Iris Worldwide UK when the idea for Newsjacking: The Urgent Genius of Real-Time Advertising first popped. Since then, Hunter has moved to Iris Singapore to take up his current role and Burkhart is spearheading Iris' social and real-time arm named (what else?) Urgent Genius. 

The concept first hit the duo in 2009 after an episode of BBC’s Question Time, which featured the British National Party’s Nick Griffin tearing into immigration, so incensed senior creative Wieden+Kennedy creative Jon Plackett that he stayed up all night just to create a website called ‘Slap Nick Griffin’. The site, as described, let the surfer slap an image of Griffin taken from the show. Plackett then posted the site to a message board and went to bed. Within 48 hours the site registered 25 million slaps.

“We realised that there was something interesting there and that was when we started trawling the internet for other examples of marketing and advertising agencies doing interesting things with topical news,” said Hunter.

From there sprang the blog Urgent Genius which documented real-time marketing by everyone from agencies like JWT, BBH and Iris itself, to T-shirt manufacturers that crafted topical shirts in 24 hours. Over time, the concept evolved into seven principles (see box) that Hunter claims have altered the way Iris is structured.

“For example, one of our principles is for agencies to have a newsroom mentality, meaning we need to think more like journalists in terms of opportunity and speed. So, besides hiring former journalists, we also spoke to clients and streamlined the approvals process,” he explained.

With client Johnnie Walker, Iris has a system that allows the agency to get approvals for ideas in as little as 15 minutes. “It’s changed how we work and our relationship with our clients," Hunter said. "We need legal approval from Diageo for ideas, and now we have their legal team on tap.”

Just last week, Hunter and his team were in Shanghai filming branded content for Johnnie Walker for a programme titled Step Inside the Circuit. “It’s a documentary-style piece where we take viewers into the world of F1—the glamour, the lifestyle and what makes drivers tick," he said. "It takes lots of planning and a strong editorial hook to make sure F1 broadcasters will take it on and air it.”

To maintain currency, the piece had to be filmed, edited and delivered to a media partner in less than a week.

Media owners have also picked up on the phenomenon of real-time brand reactions. In February, The New York Times introduced the ability to target advertising based on topics trending on Twitter.

The approach has also changed Iris’s planning process, which now takes into account a cultural calendar for each client, identifying events important to them and mapping out potential responses to possible outcomes. It's a strategy Hunter and Burkhart call ‘planned spontaneity’.

“We were 90 per cent sure that Adidas spokesperson Lionel Messi would win the 2012 FIFA World Player of the Year award," Hunter said. "So we crafted a tribute video [below]. It was beautifully done and took about five weeks to make. If he had lost though, we had an alternative strategy that could repurpose the video. Messi’s social presence was very different to that of say, Ronaldo. Our response for Messi and Aadidas would have been: ‘Well done to the other person, we didn’t win this time, so we’re going to make ourselves better’. It was all planned and so we could get it out almost instantly when the results were announced.”

Talent-wise, to get that instant flash of cultural insight that makes the approach work, Iris has had to hire from a wide spectrum. “For Adidas, we’ve hired people who come from football journalistic background and someone who knows Barcelona, understands the space and has a passion for it,” said Hunter.

Without this insight, quick-response advertising can go horribly wrong, as KFC Thailand found out with its ill-thought out tweet urging fans to rush home and order KFC in the wake of a Tsunami scare. Or a Buick dealer in China’s post following the kidnapping of a child in an SUV, which recommended that future parents of kidnapped children would have more peace of mind if they had bought a Buick instead.

Hunter contrasted these insensitive reactions to tragedy with Bundaberg Rum’s response to the floods in its native province of Queensland, Australia, or Mini UK’s treatment of the horsemeat scare. “Culture,” he said, “is so, so important. We always ask ourselves, is it relevant? Is it good? Is it… genius? If it isn’t, people will judge.”

Hunter and Burkhart's book, Newsjacking: The Urgent Genius of Real-Time Advertising, launches today.