What brands get wrong about newsjacking

Newsjacking sounds simple. Something happens. A brand reacts. The internet applauds. The client says “can we make this go viral?” A PR person quietly walks into the sea.

In reality, most newsjacking is bad. Not evil bad. Just pointless bad. Slow, forced, irrelevant, over-approved and based on the tragic belief that every news event is secretly waiting for a brand manager to comment on it.

The best reactive PR feels inevitable. The worst feels like a LinkedIn content calendar.

Mistake 1: Reacting to everything

Not every moment is your moment. A brand does not need a take on every sporting event, weather pattern, celebrity divorce, political implosion, streaming documentary or minor national crisp shortage.

Good newsjacking starts with restraint. The question is not “can we say something?” The question is: “Should we say something?”

Mistake 2: Moving too slowly

Reactive PR has a shelf life. Often, by the time an idea has been through six stakeholders, three amends, legal review, brand review, founder review and someone asking “could this be more ownable?”, the internet has moved on and is now angry about a different man.

Speed matters. That does not mean being reckless. It means having a process before the moment arrives: permissions, guardrails, trusted decision-makers and a shared understanding of what the brand can credibly do.

Mistake 3: Confusing relevance with proximity

Just because something is happening does not mean it is relevant to your brand. A football result is not automatically relevant because your brand was once the official noodle partner of a club for a year.

Relevance needs a real connection: audience, category, product, behaviour, tension, place, timing or brand point of view.

Mistake 4: Forgetting the idea

Too much newsjacking stops at “we referenced the thing”. That is not an idea. The idea is the twist, the comment, the useful angle, the joke, the action, the offer, the stunt, the data point, the spokesperson or the unexpected intervention.

It is not enough to be fast. You have to be good quickly. Annoying, but true.

Mistake 5: Trying to go viral

“Going viral” is not a strategy. It is usually something people say when they want enormous impact but have no budget, no clear idea, no distribution plan and no appetite for risk.

A better objective is earned attention. Can the idea earn coverage? Can it create social conversation? Can it reinforce what the brand stands for?

Mistake 6: Having no point of view

The best reactive brands know what they stand for before something happens. That is why they can move quickly when it does.

They know their enemies, their tone, their audience, their red lines, their sense of humour, their appetite for risk and the cultural spaces they have permission to enter.