In real estate, the old adage is location, location, location. For newsjacking, we’d argue it’s timing, timing, timing. The concept of newsjacking—essentially capitalising on current events to promote your brand or message—has become an invaluable PR tool for increasing brand awareness and gaining earned media.
Mastering the art of newsjacking can significantly boost your brand's visibility and relevance without spending thousands (or potentially millions) in paid advertising. However, doing it effectively requires more than just a quick reaction; it demands strategy, awareness, and finesse.
In the world of newsjacking, timing is everything. But what is newsjacking? The concept of newsjacking is, simply put, capitalising on current events to promote your brand or message. It’s an invaluable PR tool to increase brand awareness and generate media attention.
By understanding and mastering newsjacking, you can improve your brand’s visibility and become more relevant, without spending thousands (or millions) on paid advertising. However, effective newsjacking requires more than just a quick reaction; it demands strategy, awareness, and finesse.
Here at Streem, that’s exactly what we do. Our realtime media intelligence platform helps make your newsjacking strategies as effective as possible. But before that, let’s first take a deeper dive into the meaning of newsjacking and how to do it with finesse.
Newsjacking is the practice of strategically inserting your brand or message into breaking news stories to gain media coverage, increase brand visibility, and drive website traffic. In essence, you leverage the momentum of a trending topic and piggyback off its popularity to generate attention, which can ultimately lead to sales.
For example, when there's a major sporting event, a fashion brand may release a limited-edition line inspired by the event, using the event's buzz to generate excitement around its products.
The goal of newsjacking is to be relevant, timely, and aligned with the news story to capture the audience's interest and link it back to your brand or message in a meaningful and respectful way.
It's important, however, to avoid exploiting tragic events or appearing insensitive.
The concept of leveraging current events to promote a brand has been around for a long time. However, the term "newsjacking" gained widespread recognition in 2011 with the publication of David Meerman Scott's book, "Newsjacking." The book popularised the term and provided a framework for brands to strategically capitalise on trending news stories.
One of the most famous examples of newsjacking occurred after the 2017 Oscars "La La Land" / "Moonlight" best picture mix-up which hit all the news websites the next morning. Specsavers, an optician chain, famously capitalised on this with a campaign retelling the moment with the tagline "Should've gone to Specsavers."
This clever and timely campaign not only generated significant media attention but also solidified "newsjacking" as a recognised(and effective) marketing strategy. It was even shortlisted for Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year in 2017.
Newsjacking, when executed effectively and sensitively, can offer brands plenty of benefits, but it's certainly not without its risks.
Newsjacking is not just for ad campaigns. Many different types of effective newsjacking can elevate your marketing strategies. These can be divided into reactive newsjacking and proactive newsjacking.
Reactive newsjacking is all about responding quickly to relevant breaking news or trending stories with a response that's related to your product or service, often with a clever or funny spin on the original topic.
The most important part of reactive newsjacking is speed. If you’re too slow, you’ll miss out or be thought of as unfashionable or old-fashioned. To get it right, you’ll need to monitor the news regularly and have tools for intelligent media insights and reporting.
Here are a couple of forms of reactive newsjacking:
One of the most common forms of newsjacking is leveraging trending topics, formats, or memes across social media platforms. It’s a powerful way to engage with your audience in real-time.
Social media newsjacking involves creating social media posts that connect your brand in some way to current social media trends, hashtags, or viral topics.
Of course, not all social media trends are created equal, so you need to think about how each aligns with your target audience before you decide to jump on board. Plus, if you have lengthy approval processes for social content, social newsjacking may not be for you, as you may struggle to get content posted within the limited timeframe of a viral trend.
Examples of social media newsjacking:
In 2013, a blackout occurred during the Super Bowl XLVII, which brought the game to a halt for at least 34 minutes. This, of course, was a devastating event for many fans who were enjoying the game. But, for brands, it was an opportunity to launch their humorous marketing campaigns.
Here's Tide's response:
And here's another from Oreo:
These examples are simple yet witty, and at the time, extremely relevant despite the fact that these brands have no actual ties to the Superbowl.
It's a relatively short-term strategy, since news like the Superbowl blackouts will quickly be forgotten by most people. But in that moment, it fully captured the attention of different demographics and audiences.
Proactive newsjacking is all about being ahead of the game and anticipating relevant news stories before they happen. To do this, you'll need to look at upcoming dates, holidays and events, and analyse the trend cycles (using Google Trends) to see what could be next.
This requires careful planning and an in-depth strategy. You’ll want to create content, collect quotes and have assets ready to go so that they’re ready whenever a relevant news story strikes.
Here are some examples of proactive newsjacking:
Nothing shows you're an industry leader like releasing an insightful thought leadership piece on a topic just as everyone is starting to talk about it.
This is typically written content - such as blog posts, articles, or whitepapers - that ties your brand or message to current news trends, ideally with valuable insights and research. By swiftly crafting and publishing content that relates to breaking news, you can position your brand as a timely and relevant authority on the subject.
For example, if a new report highlights an industry trend, a well-timed blog post analysing the report’s implications can attract significant attention, gain you backlinks and drive traffic to your website.
By swiftly creating and publishing expert-led content related to the news, you can position your brand as a go-to source for that topic.
This approach also involves positioning yourself or your client as a subject matter expert in response to current news.
To do this, you'll want to reach out to journalists and media outlets to offer expert commentary, insights, or quotes related to a breaking news story.
By providing valuable expertise, you not only contribute to the current conversation but also enhance your brand’s credibility and visibility in the media. Tools such as Streem’s Outreach can help you get in touch with outlets and journalists who align with your brand.
While often used interchangeably, there's a subtle but important difference between newsjacking and trendjacking.
Newsjacking focuses on capitalising on breaking news or current events to promote your brand. As we've mentioned, it's about reacting swiftly and strategically to a specific news event.
Trendjacking, on the other hand, involves leveraging emerging trends or social media virality to connect with your audience. It's about identifying and participating in broader cultural shifts or online trends relevant to your brand.
Essentially, newsjacking is about reacting to the news (e.g: reacting to a political scandal with a relevant offer), while trendjacking is about participating in cultural trends (participating in viral dance challenges on TikTok).
Ethical Considerations of Newsjacking
While newsjacking can be an effective marketing strategy, it comes with important ethical responsibilities that brands must carefully consider for the sake of brand integrity and to avoid backlash.
As a brand, being mindful of copyright licensing is crucial. In Australia, images are automatically copyrighted under the Australian Copyright Act, which means you need stated permission from the owner to use them. There are exceptions for satire, research, criticism, or news reporting, but this doesn’t apply if it’s being used for commercial purposes (like promoting your brand on social media).
To make sure you’re above board when it comes to image use in your newsjacking content, you can purchase them from stock image providers like iStock, or Shutterstock. Or use free-to-use image providers like Unsplash or Pixabay.
Before newsjacking, you need to make sure you fully understand the context and sensitivity of the topic you’re tying your brand to.
Avoid leveraging any stories that involve significant tragedy or sensitive issues, especially if your brand’s involvement could be perceived as opportunistic or disrespectful. Doing this could damage your brand’s reputation rather than enhance it.
To mitigate the risks, monitor social media and traditional news channels for feedback and be ready to respond quickly if any negative reactions arise.
To be successful at newsjacking, you'll need quick thinking, careful planning and a strategy. Here's how:
Stay ahead of breaking news by setting up your media monitoring tools to alert you to topics relevant to your industry. Ideally, you'll want to focus on stories that naturally align with your brand values and expertise.
For proactive newsjacking, create a content calendar that includes known events like holidays, sports championships, or industry events, but remember to stay flexibility so you're able to respond quickly to unexpected news. The best time to news jack is when stories are gaining momentum but haven't yet reached their peak popularity.
When you identify a potentially viral story, first question how (if at all) it connects to your brand's products, services, or values. There should always be some alignment for it to feel natural and authentic. Create content that adds meaningful value to the conversation rather than simply jumping on the bandwagon for the sake of it.
Choose the channels where your target audience is most active and where the news story is gaining the most traction. In an ideal world, these would be one and the same.
Social media platforms like X and LinkedIn are often ideal for real-time newsjacking, while blog posts and email newsletters (or video, if you can) work better for more in-depth analysis of developing stories. Consider the nature of the content – visual newsjacking might work better on Instagram or TikTok, while detailed industry insights might be more suitable for LinkedIn or your brand's blog.
In June 2024, British artist, Charli XCX released her latest album "brat". From then on, "brat" summer became the latest Gen Z social media zeitgeist with its neon lime green aesthetic and black Arial font from the album cover.
Brands and content creators alike scrambled to jump on this trend to capitalise on the all-but-guaranteed increased social engagement.
Data: Streem Social “brat” mentions on X 30th July to 15th August 2024
But it wasn't just Gen Z. In the U.S., the summer of 2024 was known for another reason: the presidential campaign. When Joe Biden announced his withdrawal and endorsed Kamala Harris as the potential new Democratic presidential candidate - Kamala HQ, the official Kamala Harris campaign account on X rebranded their account in the green "brat" aesthetic.
This tactic resulted in “Kamala” and “brat” being mentioned together in over 7000 posts on X over its three-week peak (July 23 - August 14 2024).
This successful newsjacking strategy also contributed to building a relatable and engaging image for Harris, aligning her with the vibrant, youthful energy of the "brat" meme - something notably missing from her predecessor’s campaign.
This example of newsjacking shows how the campaign tapped into a current cultural phenomenon to craft and promote a relatable and engaging image for Harris, aligning her with the vibrant, youthful energy of the "brat" meme (something notably missing from her predecessor’s campaign).
To effectively newsjack, you need the right tools. Streem's media monitoring platform empowers PR professionals with realtime alerts on trending topics, competitors, and keywords.
With Streem, you can identify and react to breaking news instantly, streamline outreach and track campaign performance with data-driven insights.
By integrating Streem into your workflow, you can efficiently capitalise on newsjacking opportunities and elevate your PR results, achieving greater media visibility and building stronger relationships.