Public Question
Nishad Ramachandran
India brands are still shy of doing any high volatile PR stunts. But the head of India's biggest business conglomerate was at it last week, getting personal.
Ratan Tata, the Chairman of Tata Group, famous for Tata Nano cars has had seen his crystal clean image get a bit sullied in the recent past with him and the company being dragged into a big scandal. So he broke back into good news with some very private revelations.
You see, Mr Tata at 74 is one of India's most eligible bachelors. He lands up at Talk Asia on CNN and spoke about how he almost got hitched 4 times in his life. And how he being a commitment phobic, could never cross the threshold.
Media in India picked up this juicy bit of personal news and splashed it all on the front pages, and on TV channels. Soon #tata was trending in India.
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Plus Aziz
I can think of 3 examples of newjacking: UNIQLO, Macy's, and BBH's Status of Africa. All campaigns exemplify the need for perfect timing and having a compelling justification to tap into something as authentic as personal real-time data.
1) UNIQLO's Lucky Counter (http://www.psfk.com/2010/09/uniqlos-lucky-counter-the-more-tweets-the-lower-the-price.html) and UTweet Show (http://www.psfk.com/2010/04/uniqlos-tweet-show.html) successfully leveraged trends in real-time data. UTweet connected to the user's Twitter feed and showcased them in an interesting, branded way. Lucky Counter was an even more superb example of 'newsjacking'. It motivated and rewarded consumers by offering them lower prices for product-centric tweets.
2) Another interesting example was how Macy socialized the Dressing Room experience by enabling customers to ask their social networks for feedback in-store (http://www.psfk.com/2010/10/macys-rethinks-the-fitting-room-experience.html). This tactic enabled them to take an intimate private experience and socialized it by connecting the shopping experience to the role of our friends' opinions in purchase decisions.
3) The final example is BBH's Status of Africa, where users voluntarily hand over their status updates to a larger social cause (http://www.psfk.com/2011/04/help-african-moms-by-lending-your-status-updates.html). Taking over volunteers' newsfeed is justified by the need to raise awareness and raise funds for 6 African mothers on Mother's Day.
Deanna Lawrence
It takes authenticity, conviction and flexibility to create truly compelling interaction. Dialogues have to be absolute, offering service, resources or in some way enable people-to-people connections. One of my recent favorites; The Bronx Zoo embraced disruption, when their now famed Egyptian Cobra went missing. Using twitter and facebook, the Snake and her adventures were brought to life with very witty humor. Media took notice and the snake has created a great deal of attention for the Zoo and New York.
She has over 240,000 followers on twitter. A recent contest to name the snake had almost 60,000 votes.
Tweets while missing-
Does anyone know if the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle sells organic mice? 8:42 PM Mar 30th via web
Recent Tweets – The Snake and her persona continue to captivate imaginations and keep our attention.
I hear New York's finest pickpocket lives in the Monkey House. He'd be perfect for my team. They call him Charlie Pockets. #teamsnake
I'm putting together a team. #snakewithaplan
