NEW YORK: Internal barriers and setting priorities are some of the main obstacles to leveraging real-time marketing, according to Google, The Campbell Soup Company and ConAgra Foods.

Marketers attending the Digiday Brand Summit were asked what restraints they faced when it came to real-time marketing and gave a variety of responses.

For Cecelia Wogan-Silva, in charge of independent ad agency relations at Google, the main challenge was the desire to collaborate internally.

"We work hard to consider perspective from all different angles, and that takes some time," she said, adding "sometimes consensus building can be a burden but the outcome is always worth it."

Others were wary of getting sidetracked from their established priorities. "It's all about making decisions based on our brand objectives," said Jonas Paretzkin, director of PR and social media at packaged foods business ConAgra Foods.

"Instead of chasing the next shiny object, we know the things that work really well for the organisation so typically we'll focus our efforts that way."

The sentiments were echoed by Austin Craig, the co-founder of the Orabrush tongue cleaner, who admitted that focusing was hard.

"There's so much going on, there are so many different possibilities, it's sometimes a struggle for us to narrow down on the few things we're going to execute and then do those with everything we've got," he said.

But there were some who were more sanguine about the issue. Sam Niburg, Sr. associate brand manager at the Campbell Soup Company, observed that change was constant and marketers were going to have to be at ease with the notion of making decisions quickly with limited data.

"And that's really about creating the right processes, guidelines and empowering people to make those decisions in real time," he said.

Jeffrey Hazelett, formerly chief marketing officer at Kodak, suggested that "usually, it's the mindset of those getting the work done that is holding brands back".

"It's all about being a change agent within your company and implementing good habits," he stated, adding that this was something that marketers should already be doing.

"It's not like you put something in place and then stop. It should constantly be a changing and evolving process."

Data sourced from Digiday; additional content by Warc staff