Trendjacking: a guide for charities

Trendjacking (the social media equivalent of newsjacking) is a type of marketing ploy that involves jumping on the latest social media craze, trend, topic, event, or cultural moment.

 

For example, cast your mind back to the Pokemon Go craze of 2016 or the great Internet debate over #TheDress. Everyone, including celebrities, were jumping on the hype. It wasn’t long before brands started to capitalise on the moment, too.

 

 

What are the benefits of trendjacking?

 

In short, trendjacking presents an opportunity to gain maximum reach with minimum investment.

 

Charities can use trendjacking to pull attention from a wider conversation back to their cause, and engage followers in a new, fun way. It’s also a super simple and easy way to create new content. Rather than creating a new conversation, trendjacking allows you to join an existing one.

 

When done well, trendjacking can have a hugely positive impact on audience reach, engagement, and your overall social media image.

 

 

What are the risks?

 

Trendjacking is not without risk. A poorly-timed tweet, a problematic post, or a meme gone amiss can have serious repetitional repercussions for a charity.

 

If you’re thinking about jumping on the latest meme, trend, topic, or hashtag, you’ll want to make sure you’re engaging with the moment in the right way. Here are our top tips for charities on how (and when) to jack a trend:

 

 

Stay up to date

 

The majority of trendjacking happens on and as a result of social media.

 

For example, when the lights went out for a half hour in the middle of the the 2013 Super Bowl, activity on Twitter exploded, reaching approximately 231,500 tweets per minute. Many brands jumped to capitalise on the moment, but the most successful was Oreo. Their tweet featuring an image of an Oreo with the tagline ’You can still dunk in the dark’ was retweeted more than 15,000 times in 12 hours.

 

Twitter is perhaps the easiest platform to use when it comes to ‘jacking a trend’ because of the What’s happening/Trending topics feature, which makes it easy to find, reply, retweet, and join a conversation at the speed of light. Instagram and TikTok have similar features, but TikTok in particular is fast becoming the go-to platform for trendjacking through the infamous TikTok challenge.

 

 

Understand the full context

 

Trendjacking is different from simply utilising a popular hashtag on Twitter or Instagram (though that can be a big part of it). It is imperative that you thoroughly research and/or understand the full context of a trend before deciding whether to trendjack.

 

Luckily, there are a number of helpful platforms available. Feedly, Google Trends, and Google Alerts are great starting resources when it comes to assessing the size and extent of an emerging trend. Whereas, social listening platforms like Hashtagify or Mention can help you to analyse and understand trending hashtags.

 

Trendjacking is time sensitive. But don’t let the pressure to post something timely get to you. Posting or tweeting without understanding the wider context can negatively impact your image, making you appear misinformed, irrelevant, or unprofessional.

 

 

Know what topics to avoid

 

Brands are guilty of missing the mark when it comes to trendjacking. A famous example from 2020 was when Bristol Gin tweeted a photo of their Turbo Island gin with a rag stuffed into one of the bottles.

 

The tweet was released at the height of the US Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protests. It was an attempt to trendjack President Trump’s infamous ‘looting and shooting’ tweet, but the overwhelmingly negative response caused Bristol Gin to loose custom from a number retailers. The company was forced to issue an official apology.

 

In the world of social media, it’s easy for things to become misconstrued. But in almost all cases, trendjacking in the event of death, tragedy, or other serious event will be received in bad taste (unless your cause and values are directly aligned and consistent with the trend or moment).

 

This infographic flowchart, which asks you to consider timing, frequency, and potential value of jacking a trend, is hugely helpful.

 

 

Be relevant (and original)

 

Trendjacking is all about increasing awareness and reaching a wider audience. So, it might sound counterintuitive, but successful trendjacking depends on the link between the trend and your charity being immediate and obvious. Otherwise, you risk confusing your audience, or seeming like you don’t understand the full context of the trend.

 

One charity trendjacking success story comes from The Salvation Army South Africa.

 

In the days and weeks following The Dress debate, The Salvation Army South Africa launched a campaign on Twitter with images of models wearing the infamous (clearly white and gold) dress. The model’s face and bodies were painted with a number of bruises and cuts. The captions read: ‘Why is it so hard to see black and blue?’ 

 

While the campaign required more than simply firing off a clever tweet, its relevancy and originality garnered huge success, with an approximate reach of 15 million and a significant return on investment.

 

Matthew Sherrington, director at Inspiring Action Consultancy argued in The Guardian: “In this case, Salvation Army in South Africa…has simply and effectively ridden the viral wave of the #TheDress, and exposed people through something frivolous to something deadly serious. An effective juxtaposition that gives people pause for thought.”