Engaging the world, in real time

It started as a trending Twitter conversation about fast food and became a marketing win for fast-food giant McDonald's and its public relations agency, GolinHarris, in a matter of hours.

Team members in GolinHarris' real-time monitoring centre at their Los Angeles office noticed the topic #fastfoodaddiction trending on Twitter. Staff in Dallas analysed it and learnt that McDonald's accounted for more than half the conversations when people talked about fast food they loved on #fastfoodaddiction.

This data was then shared with their colleagues in Chicago, who quickly produced and posted an infographic on #fastfoodaddiction. A few hours later, a second infographic was posted on the same stream highlighting the most popular McDonald's product on #fastfoodaddiction - French fries.

The result? These small exchanges - meant as virtual "thank yous" to their fans - helped McDonald's engage people, create new connections and boost its reputation online.

Said Mr Jonathan Hughes, president (international) at GolinHarris: "These kinds of activities - where a community feels a brand is engaged rightly - engenders a far more loyal and positive brand perception than anything else."

Welcome to the world of real-time marketing, where a PR firm's responsiveness is measured in hours and minutes, instead of days and weeks. This change has been driven to a large extent by changes in consumer behaviour brought about by the popularity of online platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. It's partly in recognition of this that GolinHarris has decided to break with the traditional model used by many PR agencies for years.

The new approach - which GolinHarris calls the g4 model - was first launched in its offices in the United States and United Kingdom last year.

Essentially, workers no longer have to be what the firm calls generalists - people who can do a bit of everything - and instead specialise in one of four areas.

Catalysts, people who secure partnerships and discover new opportunities, are at the core of the model. Strategists are business analysts who look at what will affect a client's future. Creators are storytellers who produce content, while connectors use various media platforms to reach out to target audiences.

Said Mr Hughes: "Where we've done this in London and North America, we've seen a huge improvement in the quality of the thinking we've done for clients.

"The area of real-time marketing is where we're seeing the biggest kind of impact. By that I mean the ability to look at what's happening both in the mainstream and print and broadcast media and what's happening in the social space.

"Because the two now cross so quickly, we can see what's trending in one side or the other and see how we can put a brand, comment or maybe a particular promotion or something that is relevant, directly into that conversation."

And the real-time marketing possibilities don't just end there. Discount websites like Groupon and location-based services mean it's possible to offer customers discounts on an item at a particular location - based on a conversation that's trending online. It isn't as far-fetched as it may sound.

Many retail companies already have computerised databases, which would make it possible to re-price items relatively easily.