When was the last time you experienced something and kept it to yourself?

No pictures. No status updates. No tweets. No snaps. Just you, the participates, and the experience?

I have to go back almost one year — to a cottage excursion during a long-weekend with great friends. And some pictures still ended up finding their way onto news feeds. So, my example may not even count.

A buddy of mine is in the habit of posing this question:

If you went somewhere and did something but don’t at least put it on Instagram, did it even happen?

Brands want us to know what they make happen. This extends their brand narrative and deepens their bond with consumers. And when consumers are able to create definable pieces of themselves within the branded experience — like pictures shared alongside a specified hashtag — that bond deepens.

Two-way discourse being the cost of doing business, digital media provides excellent tools for deepening the bond I’m referring to. And this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who hasn’t lived under a rock since the Samsung Razor was all the rage.

Digital Media could have a new (super cute) tool: Meerkat.

As described by Casey Newton on The Verge last week, “Meerkat is a little app that’s turning live video into a big deal again.”

Why might Meerkat be a big deal?

Broad simplicity & FOMO.

Have Twitter? Of course you do, even if you don’t use it. So, you can download Meerkat onto your smartphone, let the world know when you are going to live-stream something, — a video with your fat cat, your talent when it comes to mixing a cocktail, maybe your latest wicked rhyme — and share your content with The World. (aka The Internet.)

By creating, you define your Digital Media Self through the likes, comments, and real-world interactions that happen between you and other real people as a result of what you created.

Brands can do this too. And you can watch the content through Meerkat as it happens. Live. Real-time. Right in the moment.

I think Experiential Marketing could be where brands do this well.

Meerkat CEO and co-founder, Ben Rubin, is promoting the app’s utility when it comes to breaking news.

And isn’t the point of Experiential Marketing to create a Breaking Moment, one the majority of consumers don’t get to be part of besides watching it through a well-edited video? What if the majority I’m referring to could get in on the Breaking Moment without having to be there in the flesh?

What if you could watch and comment on the real-time actions taking place in a town square because of a button?

What if you could cheer along with a crowd of people on the other side of the world?

And what if you get to talk about the experiences you had that others missed out on because they missed the moment? What if these stories were yours because you were tapped into a brand and didn’t want to miss what it was going to do next?

Yes, I’ve posed a lot of questions. But Meerkat isn’t even old enough to be knee high to a duck right now. So, questions are what we need — because questions are how we determine if opportunities exist.

Meerkat is the new kid at school who is cool and intriguing due to its “new” moniker. It’s a mobile application experiencing the coveted “hockey stick” level growth. Brands need to start thinking about how to use it:

• What do we want to convey in real-time?
• Do we have the writers capable of writing a “live” story?
• If Twitter is the only avenue for us to promote our Meerkat stories, will this become part of our Twitter ad buys? How much should we spend?
• What will our KPIs be?
• Who monitors and controls the live stream from a digital and in the flesh standpoint?
• And on we go.

A new storytelling tool might be emerging.

What brands will figure out how to use it?