What is Moment Marketing?

Introduction
What are the Advantages of Moment Marketing?
Success Stories
It’s a Wrap

One busy morning in 2014, while the entire metro crowd was busy talking over the phone at the top of their voices and listening to music, an enormous billboard around Akshardham caught my attention saying – ‘TRY WITH HAIDER BREAD OR ROTI’ with a picture of Shahid Kapoor, and the noseless Amul girl who was this time–for a change–was wearing a warm jacket, but the polka dot red hairband was quite evident. The Amul girl has this time replaced Shradha Kapoor and comes up with an innovative punchline – Modern Day Classic.

(And let’s accept it, nobody can pull off humor out of a real-life situation the way the Amul girl does.)

Needless to say that the billboard was celebrating Shahid Kapoor’s recent release ‘Haider’ or desi Hamlet, which was riding high with all the critical acclaim that it has been getting. After that, taking a sneak peek of that billboard became a ritual for me. And Amul billboards never disappoint. Biweekly, they used to come up with something relatable, quirky, and witty. Either it was telling about the Cannes look of Deepika, celebrating the wedding of Virat Kohli and Anushka, or commemorating George Clooney’s wedding with a tagline – Clooney ne promise pe Amaal kiya. At that time, I was not aware that it was a fine example of Moment Marketing.

Fast forward to 2021. Moment Marketing has become a buzzword, and many brands started to experiment with it. And the reason is quite simple – it helped them reach their target audience quickly at a marginal cost. From Netflix to Burger King and even Surat Police and Mumbai Police, everyone is making the most of the recent trends to connect with their customers. If you are still clueless about what I am talking about, continue reading this article. And trust me, you will never regret this.

Introduction: What is Moment Marketing?

Your advertising campaign will not be effective if delivered at the wrong time, no matter how visually appealing, nerve-wracking, and groundbreaking it is. To create an impact, you have to wait for the right moment. And that is when the role of Moment Marketing jumps in.

In textbook terms, Moment Marketing is the ability to take advantage of an event to deliver relevant and related, seemingly spontaneous, and often fleeting interactions with customers in real-time.

Initially, brands used to add a lot of interruption marketing in their playbook. Put simply: brands used to break up the narrative of the TV show you are watching, create urgency through the advertisement, and then promote their product. So, what will you do when your plan A – interruption marketing, is not working? One possible solution is to shift to Attention Marketing. And that is where exactly moment marketing fits.

What are the advantages of moment marketing?

1. It saves a lot of Money:

A marketing campaign is effective only when it reaches the right people at the right place and moment. But that is not the case with moment marketing campaigns. It is more about seizing (at times, even creating) the moment and making the most of it. And for this, you do not need to break a bank and splurge whooping advertising costs. You only need a team that remains on the top of their game when it comes to trends and knows their ways around the audience.

2. You Become the Talk of the Town:

All that you need is one moment and solid content that connects with your audience and communicates your brand value. People connect with the brand the way they voice their opinion about the trend. If the content comes out well and you can not communicate your message nicely, you will soon become a sensation and increase engagement.

People have a short attention span, which can be a real challenge to engage with your brand. And to overcome the hurdle, moment marketing is the best.

3. It All About 3Cs: Connection, Conversation, and Conversion:

Moment marketing provides a great platform to strike a conversation and create a real-time connection with your consumers, as the latter is searching or reading about a particular trend or news at the time. It further increases the chances of getting discovered by consumers, besides creating a high recall. Also, create an organic relationship with your followers, who are more likely to convert on their terms.

Success Stories

Now that you know what exactly moment marketing is all about. Let me share examples and draw your attention to brands that are doing it well.

Amul – Utterly Butterly Deliciously Timed

Had there been a leader in the ‘moment marketing’ space, Amul, the dairy brand, would be the one. Amul is probably the only brand whose campaigns have had the same theme and style for nearly 50 years. The best part about Amul advertisements is that just when you think that you’ve pinned down your all-time favorite ad, the next week will in another ad that will be equally good. In fact, to date, the Amul Girl has been amusing the Indian audiences with its phenomenal one-liners nearly every day.

Netflix – Showcasing Fine Examples of Stiletto Sarcasm Instead of Blunt Criticism

Another player that has been making the most of Moment Marketing is Netflix, an OTT platform. They have been regularly using Twitter as a medium for reaching out to their audiences. If you check out their Twitter handle, you find their tweets about everything, from rainy weather in Mumbai to Jal lijiye meme, all connected with binge-watching.

Netflix followed the #Binod trend when the name went viral on the internet after Slayy Point Posted a youtube video about comments under various videos that make no sense whatsoever.

Pepsi – The Ultimate Swaggers

PepsiCo India is yet another brand that is riding on the wave of moment marketing. The buzz created around ICC Women’s T20 helped it garner conversations, even better than their arch-rival and the official sponsor of the tournament, Coca-Cola. They roped in a new brand ambassador – 16-year-old cricketer Shafali Verma ahead of the finale of ICC Women’s T20 World Cup, which coincided with International Women’s Day. Pepsi promoted her as the new ‘Swagstar’ for Pepsi’s youth-centric campaign – Har Ghoont Mein Swag. They [Pepsi] even continued the moment marketing wave after match conclusion with their campaign with #HarWomanMeinSwag, thereby celebrating the spirit of womanhood.

Burger King – The King of Marketing Good Moments

Burger King (as the name suggests) is not just the king of burgers but is also very good at capturing moments. In November 2018, Burger King poked fun at Kanye West with their famous “Explains a Lot” tweet when the rapper announced that McDonald’s is his favorite place to eat a meal. Burger King hit back with their “Eyes still closed I guess” tweet, which was about West’s claims that his eyes are now “wide open” as he distances himself from politics.

Adding to it is the campaign conducted during Valentine’s Day. Burger King took a different stand by terming it as the season of breakups. By steering away mushy stuff surrounding the occasion, this campaign urges its customers not to compromise and aim for something better. The campaign video featured the match-making sensation Sima Taparia, wherein she was convincing customers to break away from their current relationship and move on to something better. Then the camera pans, and the actual story is revealed.

Faasos: Quirky yet Upbeat

While Mumbai was busy experiencing a power outage, Fasoos did not miss out on capturing this marketing opportunity. They came up with this quirky one-liner: ‘Andheri or Andhera we’re still delivering’ to promote their delivery service.

One more fine example of Moment marketing was the newly launched #SacredWraps collection. They renamed all the wraps after the characters from Sacred Games. As a result, the campaign saw an overall impression of 47 million and more than 45k engagement across all social channels.

Zomato – Love them, hate them you just can’t ignore them

When the iPhone 11 Pro launched with three cameras, Zomato, no stranger to quirky and humorous advertising, took to micro-blogging platform Twitter to talk about the much-discussed iPhone launch. The ad copy came with a tagline ‘for less than ₹199’ while the tweet goes with the caption – Do it like a Pro. Another classy example of moment marketing is when they participated in the #RahulBoseMoment with a creative saying, “You could get a banana milkshake and banana split in less than the amount the 52-year old actor paid for his bananas”.

It’s a Wrap

Be it Amul girl’s sense of humor and the way get she gets away with every controversy with her wide-eyes innocence, twirly red polka dress and stinging wit or the tribute of Zomato when Yuvraj Singh announced his retirement or Netflix’s gripping, grilling, and grasping reaction on almost everything – these days brands are making a real-time connection with customers through moment marketing. That is because customers are always looking for a particular trend or news on social media, and their chances of getting discovered increased, besides creating a high recall.

With a heavy heart, I have to say this: Moment marketing is short-lived. Brands can leverage for only a particular time (or, should I say, till the time an event is trending) by linking it with their core products and services to induce sales. That’s why it is of utmost importance that a person handling this segment should be a fast decision-maker and the one who knows things (like Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones). And the best way to be that one is by upskilling.

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