Newsjacking : A new marketing strategy practiced by an Indian brand for decades

In the last 5 years or so we have often come across new age internet marketing terms. Terms like native advertising, content marketing,  inbound marketing, growth hacking and many others. One such internet marketing term that has recently cropped up in a few years and has been started to pick up pace in its usage and meaning is newsjacking.

What exactly is newsjacking?

When Narendra Modi’s BJP won the elections in 2014 by a huge margin that is all everyone could talk about everywhere. I decided to take advantage of the same and plug in my brand and below is my first attempt at newsjacking.

marketing is all about timing, now they have a term for it, newsjacking

The term was coined by David Meerman Scott in the year 2011, a marketing strategist. He described newsjacking as

 the process by which you inject ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business

In simple words, it means finding a suitable plug by leveraging a breaking news to amplify your brand message.

Is newsjacking helpful for brands?

In order to leverage newsjacking brands have to be extremely intelligent and extremely careful. A marketing message interfering with a rather important piece of information can look extremely forced and unwanted.

However, when done in the right fashion taking care of factors such as timing and relevancy, newsjacking can lead to a lot of free media impressions and impress a few users out there to connect with your brand.

Amul : The Indian brand that has been mastering newsjacking since decades

Amul, since ages have tried to leverage trending news to sell butter to an entire nation. I don’t remember a moment when these ads have been distasteful or unintelligent. Amul did master the art of newsjacking long before the term was coined. This marketing communication strategy for Amul has always worked and continues to work to propagate the brand message of “taste of india”.

Here are some recent examples of newsjacking by Amul

1. On the upcoming crucial Bihar elections

2. When Sundar Pichai became the CEO of Google

3. On the on-going war between old taxi and app based cabs

4. When the stock market crashed

5. On the issue of net neutrality

According to this article, newsjacking by Indian marketers started the day India became independent.

Newsjacking equals making hay while sun shines?

In my opinion a brand will always have a lasting impression when it uplifts its potential customer from a sorry state of being to a state of happiness at the time of distress. It is only at this time when you completely wow a customer enough for him/her to talk to 10 other people on how and why they should be using this brand’s service.

For example, when Uber decided to let go off dynamic pricing when there was already a dearth of autos and taxis on the road because of the strike in Bangalore.

No dynamic pricing on a day when autos and buses will be off the roads. Way to go @Uber_BLR#Uber#KeepBLRMovingpic.twitter.com/fDsWNEmceU

— Rahul Raichura (@raichura_rs) September 1, 2015

Another example can be of Groupon who tried to newsjack the rising price of onions to start a marketing campaign. Now who says Newsjacking is only about making a comment on trending news. It is as much about opportunist marketing to take advantage of a vulnerable situation and emerge as a hero.

Read more about Groupon’s brilliant marketing strategy

Newsjacking is also risky for brands

Newsjacking can be considerably risky for brands because of the sensitivity of some news. Lenskart had to learn this the hard way when the internet went on an uproar soon after it sent the below marketing promotional message.

This news was way too sensitive for a promotion specially after the world was mourning the loss of thousands of lives in Nepal. Lenskart had to do a lot of damage control as a repercussion of jacking this particular news.

What do we know? What have we learnt?

Newsjacking is a fun, witty way to market your brand if only you take care of timing, relevancy and sensitivity of the news.

With the advent of social media, newsjacking can be an interesting way to reach your target audience in a non-push marketing way. The internet audience will always love a brand that is able to talk in their language and make fun, support, ridicule the same news just like they do. It is a brilliant way to get free media impressions and brownie points.

With “breaking news” being generated almost every minute there are enough opportunities out there to take advantage of the same and propagate your brand message time and again.