Why Hijack when you can Newsjack? / by Joanne Jordan

To hijack is to illegally seize something in transit and force it to travel in a different direction or destination. 

Whether it is the illegal seizure of an airplane, or something a little less life threatening like the stealing of confidential computer information, hijacking, in some form, happens almost everyday.

What if we told you that there is a LEGAL way to hijack professionally that will:

            a) Never leave your story's fate in the hands of journalists

            b) Generate unprecedented buzz about your brand

            c) Grow your business exponentially

Most of you would probably call us crazy, but in fact, David Meerman Scott came up with just that. His idea? NEWSJACKING.

Newsjacking is the act of injecting your own ideas (or your brand's ideas) into a breaking news story to generate tons of media coverage for your own brand.

Whether you realize it or not, companies are Newsjacking all the time. In the 2013 Super Bowl blackout, Tide released the following, perfectly-timed tweet:

 

Tide-Super-Bowl-Tweet.png

In today’s digital age, real time marketing (as seen above) is becoming the wave of the future and will ultimately phase out long lead stories.

Unfortunately, pulling this off takes a great deal of quick, smart thinking. However, once mastered, your brand will generate more media than you ever thought possible.

We know we speak for the industry when we say that there is nothing more frustrating than writing up pitch after pitch only to be ignored by every journalist that exists, so why not give it a shot?

Here at Food Shelter PR, we try to Newsjack as much as humanly possible. Nevertheless, we are still making it a mandatory office read.

If you have any Newsjacking tips or would like to share a superb newsjacking story of your own, we are all ears!

Until next time, fellow Newsjackers. Godspeed.