Newsjacking a naked Prince Harry

Over the past week, I've noticed a bunch of people attempting to newsjack the stories of Prince Harry's Las Vegas romp. As you have likely heard many times by now, naked photos surfaced of the Prince cavorting with equally undressed women in a hotel suite.

While most newsjacking attempts went unnoticed, several were highly successful.

Newsjacking works when you have a tie to the story

The pattern is quite consistent – the more of a tie you have to the story, the better your success at newsjacking.

The location of the Prince Harry photos was the luxurious Encore Wynn Hotel. The owner of the hotel, Steve Wynn publicly waived the tens of thousands of dollars hotel bill, which got the Wynn into, by Google News count, 3,657 stories. For example, this one from the UK’s Daily Mail Living like a king: Prince Harry's £30,000 hotel bill 'waived' by Vegas billionaire is essentially a huge, free advertisement for the luxury Encore Wynn Hotel complete with descriptions and photos of the property as well as the royal suite.

This is a perfect example of newsjacking success. For the price of waiving a few hotel nights, the Wynn gets mentioned in thousands of stories. This isn't the first time that the Wynn has newsjacked. Here's another example I wrote about a few years ago: Wynn Resorts real-time Paris Hilton PR triumph.

Another example of success was the $10 million offer made to Prince Harry by Steven Hirsch, CEO of Vivid Entertainment, to appear in a porn film titled The Trouble with Harry. The offer was shared with TMZ who wrote about it in a story titled Prince Harry Offered $10 Million to Bone on Film. If you click over to the story, you can see the actual written offer document, which makes for some fun reading. This story appeared in 642 mainstream media stories according to Google News.

Again, the Vivid Entertainment newsjack succeeded because the company produces pornographic films and Harry was caught in photos with his pants down. By sharing the actual offer with TMZ, the story was sure to be picked up in mainstream media.

Lessons from Prince Harry

The lesson learned here is if you want to newsjack successfully, you've got to have a legitimate tie to the story. If you do, and you put out there, journalists who are hungry for second paragraph content for their news reports may include you in their stories.

The other lesson, is you've got to be quick. Stories like this break in a matter of hours and if you dilly-dally, you won't be seen as reporters are writing their stories.

Comments

[Grant Crowell]

Thanks for sharing this, David. I think the core of the strategy you're getting at is back up your legitimate tie to a story with some form of action taken on your part. This seems to go beyond just making commentary, but a direct attempt at engaging the subject of the story, perhaps?

[David Meerman Scott]

Grant - I think it can be just commentary, but there needs to be some legitimate tie to your organization to get a lot of exposure. In other words, you need to post content that the media and your buyers care about.

[Mohan]

Sounds like a legit cheap advertisement ...... But draws more attention then d national geographic :)

Cheers

[Grant Hunter]

Hi David

We really liked Lynx's effort. It's cheeky and irreverent but links directly to the product.

http://www.urgentgenius.com/sector/fmcg/the-harry-effect

[David Meerman Scott]

Grant - Lynx did a great job. Many thanks for sharing here!

[AskJamieTurner]

Hi, David --

We Newsjacked the story with a good amount of success, but didn't go viral for the reasons you state above.

Here's what we did:
• Uploaded a post with photo within an hour of story breaking
• Tied it to marketing by including an infographic about stories that go viral
• Watched as the traffic spike for about 24-48 hours

Our traffic bumped up, but it didn't go haywire for the reasons you stated above -- a good Newsjacked story will have a clear and direct link to your industry/business. Otherwise, it's a force fit.

Thanks for the update. Still learning. And still a believer.

Cheers,
Jamie

[rizzomb]

I was thinking the same thing, Prince Harry has done more for Vegas in a two days, then anyone.

He should make this an annual thing.

[Rj_c]

I think the most critical where many organizations can't do effective newsjacking is in the timing. The problem is most organizations are so into following so many protocols by the time the run through them all the value of connecting news to something becomes depreciating.

[Barbara Nelles]

BTW, I see that the city of LV also committed a Prince Harry newsjacking--and it really gave me a good laugh: http://www.visitlasvegas.com/knowthecode/ [such that I shared it--a lot.]

[bokij]

The guy is yust great