Super Bowl ad celebrities and you

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the suggested search terms that dropped down when I googled “who are the celebrities in . . .”

The auto-complete suggestions were:

• the planet fitness commercial
• the uber eats commercial
• the caesars commercial

Although I was looking for “the peyton manning commercial,” I was glad I wasn’t the only one not getting the inside jokes.

Yes, I’m not gonna win any pop culture trivia contests, and if you’re like me, you might assume that you don’t have a shot at “newsjacking” big cultural moments like Super Bowl ads. But you’d be wrong.

Here’s a real-life example of newsjacking that highlights a technique that levels the playing field for those of us without a large real-time social media operation or a nimble organization that can move quickly without lots of approvals. I call it “pre-newsjacking.”

Tori Simmons reps a nonprofit hospital chain that REALLY wanted her to get them on a national morning show (I see you nodding in grim solidarity with Tori). When the COVID vaccine was approved at the end of 2020, she took her shot at newsjacking. But by the time she sent out footage of her nurse dressed like a Santa’s helper injecting healthcare workers on the afternoon of the first day, all the producers already had the footage they needed.

Tori learned from that priceless failure. This past fall, when word was spreading that the CDC might be approving the vaccine for children, she was ready. Five days before the expected approval, she had coached up her client’s communicators on the types of shots they needed to get for her. And she started pitching that early, even before she had any footage.

Then, the day before the eventual decision, her subject lines were promising “b-roll of kids getting vaccine tomorrow (pending approval)”. Laying the groundwork paid off: The ABC News medical unit lead asked for the videos in advance. And then the morning after the approval, Tori and her team kept pitching.

That’s how they landed coverage on Good Morning America, ABC’s World News Tonight, TODAY, CBS Mornings, and syndicated coverage on CBS affiliates across the country.

Follow Tori’s example and right now, mark your calendar for Feb. 8, 2023. That’s the Wednesday before next year’s Super Bowl, when you can skim all the ads released early on YouTube and look for a tie-in to your brand. If there is one, you’ve got time to line everything up and pre-newsjack.

Tori generously revealed all the details behind her pre-newsjacking campaign, plus the pitch structure she uses to regularly land coverage from cold top-tier media for new clients. She and I presented all this to my Inner Circle last week, along with the lengthy email convos she has with producers to secure interviews.

Register here for our Wait List, and you can get free bonus excerpts from trainings like that. And you’ll be the first to know when we open up again for new members so you can get access to Tori’s entire presentation.