1/1000th or 1,000,000th of a second?

Real time, much to no one’s surprise, is a computing term, referring to programs that guarantee responses within strict time constraints. Response times are usually ‘in the order of milliseconds and sometimes microseconds.’ Anything beyond that, like, oh well… a second, is just considered a non-real-time response. God forbid, your response should just be plain fast! The madness doesn’t end there. Real-time systems measure consistency as well and take into account malfunctioning (read: refusal to respond), resulting in a three-tiered rating: complete failure, poor service quality, and degraded results!

The few times I’ve read technical Wikipages that describe concepts like the one above, I blink a few times, thank a few stars that I’m not a software engineer and proceed to find comfort in a bar of chocolate. The real-time computing piece was different. I realized the definition extended shockingly well to the world of marketing. Companies have slashed their response times, taken great pains to stay connected across time zones, and try increasingly hard to stay relevant. But mistakes happen: KitchenAid tweets about Obama’s dead grandma, American Apparel does a ‘Sandy Sale’ during the hurricane, and Lance Armstrong… oh, well. No matter how many times you get it right, consumers are unforgiving and un-forgetting of the one time you get it wrong.

In a world of real-time responses, McDonald’s is getting flamed for not informing its investors of falling stock prices soon enough, BP continues to launch $500 million campaigns to rebrand itself after the 2010 oil spill and nation-wide protests rock India over inadequate response measures after the recent rape case. Makes me wonder, what matters most when it comes to real-time marketing? Responding in an instant, or responding right?