By Danny Rovi
Rising Stars is a series of thoughts, reflections and perspectives by the interns at Devine + Partners. Danny Rovi is a rising senior at Syracuse University and is a Dually-Enrolled student in the Newhouse School of Public Communications and Whitman School of Management.
One of the fundamental practices of public relations is taking advantage of timely events.
Whether you realize it or not, when a new trend comes to fruition, thousands of brands will collectively race to insert themselves into the conversation, aiming to boost hits, likes, and shares with the ultimate goal of increased impressionability.
When it comes to trendjacking, many brands have successfully found ways to boost their brand image by associating themselves with what’s new and trending. My argument? In today’s day and age, if you don’t truly know your audience, trendjacking may hurt brand equity more than help it.
My prior experience managing multiple social channels with nearly half a million followers has taught me some lessons about when it makes sense to trendjack. If you get it right, you can nab a slice of a viral moment and help boost your brand’s market share through earned impressions. Get it wrong, and you become the nightmare case study everyone uses as an example. Before your brand hops on the next trending format, sound, or meme, here are some best practices to effectively navigate trends without putting your image at risk.
Simply put, the job of the social media manager is to create content. But the difference between creating content and effectively distributing it lies in the realm of audience sensitivity. Having a firm understanding of your channel’s demographics is the basis of knowledge needed to push new posts and campaigns that actually resonate with your respective audience, which then fortifies brand equity, the ultimate end goal of any social channel in relation to its brand.
Aside from truly knowing and understanding your audience, timing is one of the most important aspects of media strategy that PR pros and social channel managers have to navigate. New trends emerge by the day. If you wait too long, the moment to capitalize will imminently pass. If you execute too fast, the response may feel rushed and inauthentic.
In a modern context, the gold standard was exhibited by Stanley, the drinkware company. In 2023, a TikTok user posted a viral video of her car after a fire totaled it, with her Stanley bottle the only remaining item still intact in the wreckage. Within about a day, Stanley’s then-president Terence Reilly had stitched the video and offered to not only send her new tumblers, but also replace her entire car. The stitch immediately exploded. Just one reactive moment from Stanley helped drive a total of 3.3 billion earned media impressions, a 220% increase in TikTok followers, and Stanley’s best quarter in company history. It was all made possible through scrutinous media monitoring and recognizing an opportunity to connect with its younger, TikTok-centric audience through responding to a customer’s viral video.
Yet, forcing a connection to a viral video or tag is where brands can unintentionally self-sabotage. The classic example used in most PR classrooms today is DiGiorno jumping into the #WhyIStayed hashtag in 2014 with “You had pizza.” The problem was that the hashtag was for domestic violence survivors sharing their stories, and to this day it is still used as a textbook example of a brand completely failing to read the room. Tragedies, serious news, and politics are always lanes to stay out of unless your brand has a real, established reason to be there.
Ultimately, the brands that win at this concept consistently are the ones with a voice that people already recognize. Accounts like Duolingo and Ryanair experience virality often because they’ve established a playful, open personality already, so when they hop on any given trend, it feels like them, as opposed to a marketing team spewing posts out of a conference room.
The formula is as simple as timeliness, authenticity, and relevancy, with the last one being the most important element. Of course, you have to understand the trend itself before you touch it, but it’s even more important to be able to anticipate your audience’s reaction and how they will form new perceptions around your brand in relation to the trend you are associating your image with.
The best way to do this is by carefully studying and monitoring your insights and impressions, and then making conclusions from there. Ask questions like: What posts do people like seeing? Which ones receive negative feedback, or do worse? As soon as a good sample size is identified for both sides of that spectrum, carefully examine the tone used on those posts; there is absolutely a correlation between tone and social success.
Once that is established and consistently executed, it becomes easier to anticipate how associating your brand with a viral moment may shape your audience’s perception of your brand.
The bottom line is that trendjacking is not luck or a chance-based endeavor. The brands that make it look easy are the ones that are doing the hard work the best. It takes copious media monitoring behind the scenes, staying on voice, and knowing when to sit one out. The moment will pass either way. The job of the PR practitioner is to make sure your brand is on the right side of it when it does.
Devine + Partners is a Philadelphia public relations agency. We offer a full range of communications services– from message and content development and media relations to issues management and employee and community engagement.
