REAL-TIME MARKETING IN A VISUAL WORLD 187 filtering data more effective. Companies have had to restructure the way decisions are made, and they have streamlined the processes by which content is generated and published. “We can now do things far more swiftly and efficiently than we could before,” says Grant Hunter, regional creative director for Asia-Pacific at iris Worldwide. “From a creative standpoint we have an arsenal of digital tools that allow us to stay up all night to code and design a microsite or generate amazing video content in a 24- to 48-hour window, or within 10 minutes generate a Photoshop comp and then post it on Facebook.” But in a June 2012 survey conducted by Stanford University, nearly two-thirds of senior executives said they did not use social media infor- mation to track the success of their business, and in a September 2012 study, Adobe found that two-thirds of marketers thought social media should be more “rooted in data,” but fewer than 25% actually used social 11 data for their marketing activities. To meet the goal of creative, timely, and relevant responses, brands must make use of the data available, and they must design everything from the structure of their marketing departments to the decision-mak- ing processes around the concept of agility. Relevancy Has a Deadline— but Real-Time Marketing Takes Preparation Images and videos are creative responses to events; they build on the zeitgeist rather than just giving an opinion, as a simple tweet might. They are easily shareable, and Brands can’t simply become “more they resonate well with audiences, who appreciate origi- relevant” by commenting on the nal content. An image can also fit in well with corporate zeitgeist—not when everyone else branding, being themed with the brand’s color scheme, is doing the same. logos, or mascots. This means that no matter how widely „IAN SCHAFER, CEO of 12 the image is shared, it is still instantly recognizable as Deep Focus belonging to that brand.