Newsjacking

Newsjacking. I can't believe I hadn't heard this word until the Superbowl power outage - but it's great.

When the lights went out at the Mercedes-Benz sponsored MBUSA stadium for the US's biggest sporting event of the year, Audi tweeted "Sending some LEDs to the @MBUSA Superdome right now...". Brilliant. A controversial 'burn' directed to their competitor's biggest night of the year garnering over 10,000 retweets.

Meanwhile Oreos were on the ball with a near instant Facebook update with this image: winning over 20,000 likes... Oreo are pretty good on Facebook.

Hijacking news events and riding the publicity wave is a core PR skill, for B2C, B2B and corporations - and it's so much FUN. Whether it's these funny takes on national (or competitor) events, or more serious use of events to remind people of your brand, the newsworthiness of your story gets a boost from the free publicity wave - effectively hijacking someone else's news. And social media is the perfect medium, making this a relatively new skill where the fastest responses are the winners. So, ear to the ground everyone - who's news can you steal?

See the hubspot site for more examples.