180 THE POWER OF VISUAL STORYTELLING all of the best ones—involve rich media. As you can see from the Oreos example above, to be truly effective, brands are using images, videos, and infographics as a real- time social response, based on the current interests and needs of their audiences. What Is Real-Time Marketing? Constant, relevant content creation can be hard work for brands. But Smart Car shows just how real- time marketing techniques can inspire ideas for creative content—and turn prod- uct criticism into an opportunity to drive engagement and share important product data at the same time. In June 2012 Clayton Hove, creative director for an ad agency in North Dakota, sent the tweet you see above, left. What was Smart Car’s inspired response? “Couldn’t have been one bird, @adto- thebone. Sounds more like 4.5 million. Seriously, we did the math.” And they attached the infographic showing exactly that math. The clever graph, which showed exactly how much bird crap it would take to dam- age a Smart Car’s safety cell (specifically 4.5 million pigeon craps; 360,00 turkey craps; © Courtesy of Daimler AG. 45,000 emu craps), got five times as many