188 THE POWER OF VISUAL STORYTELLING Timing is critical to creating responses in real time. For brands that are more used to organizing campaigns around the print ad and TV commer- cial, planned months in advance, the concept of turning around visuals in days or even hours can be hard to adapt to. But if your brand has a strong sense of the story it wants to tell, there’s no reason why you can’t integrate news items and cultural events that are relevant to your brand and give your brand’s perspective on them through visual media. Not all brands need to turn images around quite as quickly as Oreo; some will have lon- ger to respond depending on their audience and the news item. This fast turnaround means that brands have become more like publishers, think- ing and operating in ways that enable them to give their take on relevant events on a rolling basis, as they happen. It can help to think of these sorts of images as subplots to your main print and TV ads. You don’t have to come up with whole new concepts. Once these have been agreed on, you can have more flexibility to adapt them to what it happening in the world around you in real time. Without giving too much text explanation, companies can give their take on a whole range of situations with a well-developed image. Below are just some of the examples: Real-Time Marketing Examples 1. Twitter trending topics. When the same- glasses next to each other with each one sex marriage bill passed in the United showcasing a trace of red lipstick. Kingdom recently, Virgin Holidays made sure 2. Big events like the Super Bowl or the they were part of the celebrations—and the Olympics. Oreo was the social media winner company got in a timely reminder of their at the Super Bowl with its “You can still dunk 13 The in the dark” tweet—and it continued the honeymoon packages at the same time. image read: “Same sex marriage bill passed. theme at the Oscars, tweeting its own tribute Time for a honeymoon.” The text was accom- to James Bond during a segment honoring 14 panied by the visual of two full champagne the world’s most famous secret agent.