Brands take on the Pope Real Time

March 14, 2013

After years of social media marketing, quick thinking and fast implementation by brands has become a common routines. They’ve begun to realize the importance of acting quickly in the real-time environment social media has created. Brands and their agencies are now on stand by during large events, tweaking their brand messaging, copy, and images at a second’s notice.

With the election of a new Pope, brands closely watched news coverage and hopped on the momentous event to share real-time content. A great example comes from Ford. As the Pope was announced, Ford posted an image of a sporty Mustang releasing exhaust from its tailpipe, with the copy “We have white smoke too…”.

Ignoring the grammatical error here (“,” after smoke), the post was extremely relevant and excellently planned. What better car to tie this all together? I’m sure Ford and the agency teams were anxiously waiting for the Pope to be elected just to make this post.