How to newsjack ethically in your PR

Newsjacking is a popular PR and marketing technique used by brands to increase their visibility - often by tying their own insights and news to other high profile stories in order to gain media coverage.

Consumer brands commonly do this by promoting their own marketing content alongside popular holidays, like Christmas or Valentine’s day, or alongside entertainment news, like the world cup or awards ceremonies (check out some examples from Hubspot, here).

However, B2B newsjacking can look a bit different - while holidays and pop culture events can be newsjacked, more commonly, relevant awareness days, government policies as well as other companies’ research are newsjacked instead. Take a look here to see how this is done.

But these events require tact and there are certain ways to appropriately newsjack them. For example, without caution, hopping on another company’s hard-earned research to boost your own thought leadership could be deemed, at best, as careless and, at worst, as plagiarism. 

At the same time, using meaningful awareness days (such as LGBT+ history month) purely as a marketing ploy can be a sure-fire way to lose respect from your audiences and tarnish your brand.

So how should brands newsjack ethically and successfully?

4 ways to newsjack ethically

Give credit

If you’re going to use another company’s work to boost your own views, it’s vital that you attribute the work to them. In particular, when using another brand’s data, reference the report it came from as well as the name of the company and a backlink to the relevant webpage. 

This step is essential to avoid plagiarism and showcase respect for another brand’s hard work. It also means others can learn more about the original source/data.

Add your own insights

The purpose of newsjacking is to boost your own thought leadership by utilising the talk around a well-known topic. But to do this well, you’ve got to bring your own views to the table.

Simply regurgitating another company’s ideas will, firstly, not help others recognise you as experts with original and forward-thinking insights. Secondly, it runs the risk of heading down the path towards plagiarism. 

Using another company’s research must be done with the purpose of adding a new angle to a well-discussed topic to bring further value to the conversation.

Be sensitive when picking topics to newsjack

Not every event is appropriate to newsjack and it’s important to be careful. Trying to gain publicity from a sensitive event could attract some pretty negative attention towards your brand.

In particular, in the HR space, there are some delicate topics to talk about - redundancy, mental health, diversity and inclusion, for example.

It’s not necessarily wrong to newsjack high profile discussions around these topics but you should only do so if you are truly adding valuable commentary and guidance - not simply using them as a plug for your products or services.

If you don’t have the right content, tone and tact to add to the conversation, it can do more harm than good - for both your brand and the subject at hand.

Ensure your connections are genuine

There’s nothing worse than seeing brands align themselves with causes that their previous actions or values don’t seem to support.

For instance, watching brands align to Pride month or show support for Black Lives Matter movements in their marketing can seem sour if they’ve shown little previous support for diversity and inclusion among their own employees.

Particularly when newsjacking stories around awareness days, it’s vital to ensure your connections and insights on the topics are genuine.

Without this, not only will your work be viewed as a cash grab, but it can detract from the great work that others are doing to genuinely support these causes.

Need more info on how to strengthen your PR strategies in the HR market? Check out our HR Media Report 2021.