Fastvertising - How to continue being relevant in today’s short attention span
- Updated: 02/12/2024
- Published: 31/07/2024
- 7 minutes read
Fastvertising
How to continue being relevant in today’s short attention span
- Updated: 02/12/2024
- Published: 31/07/2024
- 7 minutes read
Internet trends emerge seemingly overnight and fade into obscurity as quickly as they arise. Memes, dances, online challenges—the digital world is full of them. Better yet, these trends can be local, global, and interesting, but only for a moment. So, some marketing companies have picked up on riding the trends to stay relevant – a practice called Fastvertising. This practice requires fast (sometimes 24 hours) turnover time and relies on real-time communication and cultural references. Something that resonates with people who are constantly online.
So, how do you do Fastvertising?
What’s trending today?
The key to Fastvertising is understanding three questions:
The easiest way to see what’s trending today is to follow social media channels, news channels, or various forums like Reddit. Following those channels that somewhat relate to your business or industry can provide insight into what is currently trending among your target audience. However, you can also connect ideas from different industries, as long as the brand’s narrative fits the trend.
To meaningfully fit the trend, your ad must establish an almost instant connection between the trend and the brand when the customer sees the ad. Only that connection can produce the desired results and resonate with the audience.
How your customers react to the connection between the brand and a trend relies solely on the emotion the ad invokes. If the ad is meaningful to the target audience, they will react positively; if the ad misses the point, the fallout can be pretty costly.
And, a trend can be anything – an action, a popular newcomer to an industry that is reaching stardom quickly, or an interesting regular person who comes into the spotlight or becomes a meme.
Who popularized the Fastvertising practice?
Maximum Effort – you ever heard of them? A film production and digital marketing company headquartered in New York. Ryan Reynolds co-founded it and has worked on several marketing campaigns for Deadpool movies.
And they make a lot of cool ads.
Some of their ads are for Reynolds’ Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile, companies that entered saturated markets and found their loyal audience.
The second notable person is Elon Musk. He shares his thoughts and commentaries on x.com on many topics, sometimes even disrupting a whole industry (like his tweets about the Doge cryptocurrency).
Many influencers use Fastvertising methods to stay relevant in today’s short attention span markets, but companies also use it.
For example, Nike creates many campaigns that address current social issues, such as the one they created with Colin Kaepernick after his kneeling protest during the NFL’s national anthem. Or the ad with Serena Williams on gender equality among athletes.
How does one keep making relevant marketing content in this situation?
How to do Fastvertising?
Fastvertising comes down to knowing your customer persona well and understanding what resonates with them. While some customers may not react to everything you publish, others might be delighted. That is why you don’t need to jump on every trend that appears; instead, you can choose which ones you can fully utilize. Employing creativity and trying to connect what seemingly doesn’t connect at first can give you an idea worth pursuing.
Collaborations with existing influencers or creatives allow Fastvertising to flourish. A recent ad from Marc Jacobs allowed the company to combine cooking with its newest design.
However, you must always stay true to your brand, not the trend you’re looking for. As mentioned above, trends come as quickly as they go, but the brand needs to stay.
The positive aspects of Fastvertising
One of the main positive aspects of Fastvertising is that it makes the brand appear contemporary. It allows marketers to provide the brand’s own take on current issues and trends, adjust the message to fit their narrative, or allow the space to provide the company’s own perspective on the trending matter. Plus, the brands can understand where the customers’ attention is shifting toward, so they can adjust their marketing efforts to create effective campaigns.
Also, any communication piece can be seen as Fastvertising: PR, a comment on the latest developments and trends, or a fully developed advertisement. That makes Fastvertising versatile and allows marketers to employ it everywhere.
The drawbacks of Fastvertising
We have identified several drawbacks when it comes to Fastvertising.
One of the drawbacks is that it requires you to be constantly online, looking for trends. That means having people actively research and follow trends. And often, these trends are fickle and don’t live up to the hype or become viral – a thing that, for some reason, a lot of marketers chase.
Quick turnover is another drawback of Fastvertising. It doesn’t allow you to create a whole campaign revolving around a trend – instead, you need to follow the trends to stay relevant. And oftentimes, a lot of company brands cannot be so easily connected to the trends. But if you’re working on a personal brand, that allows you more room to connect your image to the trends.
Consequently, quick turnover doesn’t allow artistic expression, nor does it let you create timeless content pieces that can be used for a long time. It is almost like live service advertising, requiring you to adapt to the circumstances rather than creating your own brand narrative.
It is too reactionary, and the pitfalls may not always be worth the risk.
Some Fastvertising bloopers
When a company doesn’t understand the cultural narrative or its customer persona well, its ads can incite boycotts and general dissatisfaction. Pepsi is one of the most notable examples. Released in 2017, the ad depicts a group of protesters that closely resemble the BLM movement, led by Kendall Jenner. Kendall later shares a can of Pepsi with the police. This act, as well as the ad, have been characterized as tone-deaf and completely delusional, trivializing protesters’ aims to stop police brutality and violence and promote equality.
Another blooper came from Gillette when the company realized Dollar Shave Club was outperforming them in almost every aspect of marketing. We wrote a whole case study on how DSC’s copy made its brand stand out compared to Gillette’s. Gillette published an ad called “We Believe,” containing headlines from the #MeToo movement portraying toxic masculinity. The ad was met with a very poor reception.
As a reply to this backlash, DSC used Fastvertising and simply tweeted, “Welcome to the club.”
By the way, we have another article filled with Fastvertising examples – check it out.