In February 2013, during Super Bowl XLVII, the stadium lights at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans suddenly went out. The blackout lasted 34 minutes. Broadcasters vamped with images of players milling around while their producers scrambled. The millions of Americans watching at home started to do something that was becoming more and more common at the time: They scrolled through Twitter.

Oreo’s marketing team launched an immediate response. Minutes after the blackout began, it tweeted a simple picture of a single Oreo edging into the left side of the frame. The soft white spotlight on it faded to black on the right. The image was captioned “Power out? No problem” and included the tagline “You can still dunk in the dark.”

The post exploded. It was shared thousands of times, got more buzz than most of the Super Bowl commercials, and generated roughly 525 million earned media impressions. Oreo’s bold, fast post was praised for its marketing brilliance by media outlets around the world. This was the first time a brand had acted so quickly with so much humor and was so plugged into what was happening—in a way that resonated with so many. That one image of a cookie in the dark reshaped what brands believed was possible.

In the decade since that tweet, the ability to create and release marketing at the speed of culture, often referred to as fastvertising, real-time marketing, or newsjacking, has become a full-blown strategic capability. Oreo’s post wasn’t a random tweet from a social media manager. The brand had a dedicated Super Bowl “command center” with agency partners, creatives, and brand executives on hand to conceive and approve ideas instantly. When the blackout hit, that setup allowed it to create and post the tweet within minutes. Today companies are trying to replicate that agility with in-house creative teams, AI tools, and entire advertising ecosystems. The fastvertising model—producing rapid-fire, culturally relevant, platform-native content that engages people at just the right time—is no longer optional. Social media accelerates the pace of public discourse so much that being fast isn’t just a marketing edge; it’s a survival skill. In a world that prizes virality, there’s a zero-sum aspect to branding. If you don’t seize the moment, your competitors will—and they will be the brands that are seen as being in touch with the culture and customers. The conversation won’t involve you if you miss the opportunity.

When done well, fastvertising appears easy and inevitable. This may lull marketing teams into thinking that if they just act fast and say something, they will always be successful, but that’s not the case. It’s just as easy to get things wrong.

In this article we’ll use various examples to illustrate why fastvertising can be so effective, how to implement it, key principles for success, and how generative AI is providing new tools that increase speed and reduce costs. Our insights are derived from a range of sources. One of us (Ryan) has built a firm that specializes in fastvertising, and some of the anecdotes in this article describe that work. And three of us (Ayelet, Len, and Matt) created and teach a course at Harvard Business School called Moving Beyond Direct-to-Consumer, which examines how brands can adapt to today’s fast-paced culture, and have become fascinated with fastvertising while studying marketing trends.

Why Fastvertising Works

Fastvertising doesn’t just reward brands for being speedy; it rewards them disproportionately. As the Oreo tweet shows, when a campaign lands in the right cultural moment, it does more than resonate with audiences—it gets amplified by them. The value comes not from the media impressions a brand pays for but from the earned media that a campaign generates: reposts, press coverage, commentary, and word of mouth. A tweet written in a few minutes can end up on morning news shows, triggering days of headlines and millions of dollars’ worth of attention—achieving results that with paid ads would take a lot longer and cost much more.

With fastvertising the audience itself becomes the distribution channel. It helps brands tap into what people are already talking about and, in doing so, turn cultural participation into free publicity. In a world where attention is expensive, fastvertising can deliver it at a small fraction of the cost of more-traditional marketing—if you’re willing to strike while the iron is hot.

There’s a deeper reason fastvertising works: because it speaks to human connection. When a brand shows up in a cultural moment, it creates a feeling of shared experience. The brand isn’t just selling a product; it’s participating in a conversation with its audience. That creates a sense of presence and, with it, intimacy. It mirrors the dynamic that happens when a friend sends us a meme about a recent event just as we’re thinking about it, making us feel we’re in on a joke. The timing itself is a crucial part of the message—and if you miss the timing, the joke is no longer relevant.

Consider a Peloton campaign from 2019 that went viral for the wrong reasons and how another brand used fastvertising to respond to it. For the holiday season that year, Peloton created an ad called The Gift That Gives Back, which depicted a woman documenting her year of transformation after receiving a Peloton bike from her husband. The ad featured her recording selfie-style videos of her workouts, eventually stitching them together into a heartfelt thank-you to him. Instead of being seen as inspirational, the spot was widely criticized as tone-deaf and unsettling. Audiences read it as a story about a husband pressuring his already-thin wife to exercise more, and the woman’s anxious expression only reinforced that interpretation. Within hours of its release the commercial was being mocked across social media, late-night shows, and news outlets.

Just three days later, Aviation Gin released a new video online. (Disclosure: It was created by Maximum Effort, the marketing agency cofounded by Ryan, who also co-owned Aviation Gin at the time.) The gin ad turned the Peloton cultural firestorm into an opportunity. It featured the actress from the Peloton commercial, now seated at a bar with two supportive friends. Looking shaken but relieved, she raises a martini and mentions that her gin is smooth. One of her companions reassures her, “You’re safe here,” and they then make a toast: “To new beginnings.” The camera lingers as she downs her drink, implicitly positioning the Aviation Gin cocktail as her escape from the Peloton narrative. As the bottle is shown at the end of the ad, one of the friends is heard saying, “You look great, by the way.” Peloton wasn’t mentioned, and no backstory was explained; the ad simply let the audience connect the dots because everyone watching was already in on the joke.

The impact was swift. Within days, Aviation Gin’s video had amassed millions of views online, earning widespread coverage in media outlets. The ad never appeared in paid media, only on free social platforms, yet it delivered disproportionate returns in earned media, brand visibility, and goodwill. By transforming collective outrage into collective amusement, Aviation Gin demonstrated how fast, well-timed marketing can harness the power of shared experience, turning cultural participation into tangible brand equity.

A real-time response signals that a brand is alive, human, and paying attention to the cultural context surrounding its customers. When done well, fastvertisements do more than entertain; they create a subtle emotional bond. People begin to feel that the brand understands them—or at least understands what’s happening around them. In a world full of meticulously planned, static campaigns, that sense of spontaneity can feel surprisingly personal.