Oreos may have been dunked in the dark in 2013, but does “real-time marketing” have a real future in 2014?

Sebastian Hempstead, CEO of social media marketing monitor service Brandwatch, says immediacy is vital.

“The content we put in to conversations can turn up a day later… if it’s not in the right moment… when we want to consume it, that moment of interest, that opportunity to engage has gone,” he tells Beet.TV. “We need to be engaging at the point in real-time.”

By means of example, Hempstead’s Brandwatch has helped one client respond quickly to negative social discussion about its financial results. And, Hempstead says, when disgruntled customers tweet they’re leaving their mobile carrier, that is an immediate sales opportunity for rival networks.

We taped this segment at the Mindshare Client Huddle, where Hempstead was interviewed by Mindshare’s north America chief strategy officer Jordan Bitterman.