REAL-TIME MARKETING IN A VISUAL WORLD 191 by releasing a single image. Oreo had spent months building up its online audience and its RTM memory muscle through the clever use of RTM, such as the 100-day Daily Twist celebration. Oreo’s marketing team had “trained” for the Super Bowl event by refining their real-time creative response process and incorporating it into their day-to-day routine, much as an athlete would train for a big event. There is a difference between planning and preparation. The Oreo team had prepared for an event such as the Super Bowl blackout (which no one could predict) through months of trial and improvement of their real-time response technique. That was why their “You can still dunk in the dark” image tweet was so successful: behind the glib message were months of hard work and practice for that moment. The Oreo team’s example is great because it shows how the RTM response process needs to be ingrained in the everyday running of a brand’s marketing. There will be many days when there is no cultural event that particularly resonates with a brand’s audience or with its core message, but when an Internet Relevancy has a deadline. meme, a topical news story, or a customer comment does occur that resonates particularly well, the brand is poised and ready to respond in an original, well-thought-out, and creative way. When real-time marketing is done well, it can make for a brand that understands its customers, reflects their needs in product designs, deals sensitively with feedback, and drives the conversation around its exper- tise. The obvious problems with RTM are that it can be a highly visible method of marketing and the structure has to be in place within an orga- nization to support the information flow into and out of the marketing department. We know that for successful RTM, agility is everything. Agility doesn’t have to mean that you are able to respond to every event instantly; that could lead to knee-jerk reactions and a fragmented approach to your overall marketing strategy. But organizational structures, particularly for the largest brands, can be large and inflexible, and processes can be slow. Marketing departments are used to planning months ahead, with much