Automated marketing company RadiumOne has proven that real-time social data is turning traditional marketing on its head. Instead of brands seeking to evoke emotion through creative alone – consumers’ real-time emotions are becoming a powerful trigger for effective marketing.

The merging of social sharing data with real-time media delivery is allowing brands to align their messaging with the ‘right now’ moods and passions of consumers.

RadiumOne partnered with Dr Peter Steidl, renowned brand strategist at Neurothinking, to explore the principles and application of neuromarketing as it relates to social sharing and real-time media. Drugs, Data and Tech: has marketing utopia arrived? is the culmination of this work and was released today.

The research explores the ‘sharing economy’ – where consumers share their interests and passions across all social platforms. The groundbreaking work dives into three key areas that will be critical as the marketing industry strives towards ‘marketing utopia’:

• The drug is dopamine: it stimulates a consumer’s heightened emotional state of desire.
• The data is social sharing data: what, when and how consumers share the things that really matter to them.
• The technology is real-time media delivery: an ability to activate in the ‘right now’ – the moment consumers are showing us their emotional state and passion points.

Kerry McCabe, RadiumOne managing director Asia Pacific, said: “For too long our industry has had an over- reliance on great creative as the means to tap into consumer emotion. We wanted to come at the challenge from the opposite direction; tapping into the ‘right now’ emotional state of consumers as the catalyst for marketing activity, rather than the goal.”

He explains that social sharing is more than an indicator of interest or advertising receptiveness, but also the perfect trigger for marketers to connect with consumers in their ultimate moment of openness.

“Once we’ve found consumers’ real-time passion points thorough their sharing and interacting with content – technology allows us to act on these in real-time. Exceptional and relevant creative will always be important for brands, this work looks at the role of social data and technology in placing consumer behaviour at the forefront of the strategy.”

Dr Peter Steidl of Neurothinking said: “Social sharing activates the rewards system of the brain, providing the same dopamine release that we receive from please seeking activities such as sex, food and exercise.

“Building social sharing data insights and triggers into marketing strategy is a valuable step in getting consumers across the line. It requires aligning the timing of messages with the mood of consumers, based on what their actions are telling us about how the feel, in the moment,.”

The project included testing and applying these insights to several live marketing campaigns for brands including Tigerair and One Direction’s recent Australia tour.

For Tigerair: by focusing on consumer sharing of travel related content across the open Web and mobile, and their intimate (dark social) networks, RadiumOne proved:

• The importance of acting in the “right now” while dopamine levels are peaking. Some 34 per cent of all sales across the campaign occurring within 20-minutes of the sharing event and advertising message being viewed.

• Using “sharing events” as the trigger for marketing activity unlocks a valuable new prospecting channel with 62 per cent of the customers’ acquired during the campaign being new customers to Tigerair.

For One Direction: RadiumOne capitalised on the social buzz around the band to drive ticket sales across Australia after the ‘hard core 1D fans’ had already purchased. Here RadiumOne leveraged two major online “sharing events” (their album release and Aria Awards performance) – and ran paid media targeting fans based on content sharing activity. When content sharing was peaking conversions lifted 2-3x above the campaign average.

“Drugs, data and tech: has marketing utopia arrived?” (whitepaper download): http://po.st/DrugsDataTech