Paul Maher on Trendjacking Marketing and Public Relations

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On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we are looking back on our greatest hits with Paul Maher, founder of the UK agency Positive Marketing.

Most companies chase press coverage by trying to invent news from scratch. Paul thinks that’s backwards. His view is simple: the news happens anyway, so you might as well be in it.

Christopher Lochhead sits down with his friend of more than twenty years to talk about the craft Paul Maher has become known for, trendjacking. Paul’s agency has won the Sabre Award for best earned media agency in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Lochhead calls him the category king of the practice. Here’s what the two of them cover.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

 

Where Trendjacking Began

The idea took shape in a London Starbucks. Paul and Christopher were stewing over a merger in their industry, worried their own company would be out-positioned by a much bigger consultancy. Instead of sulking, they wrote a point of view on the deal and got on the phone with the reporters covering it. They walked those journalists through their category, and soon the coverage was saying the acquisition happened because the big player was afraid of them.

That’s trendjacking in a nutshell. You take a story that is already unfolding and turn it to your advantage, the way a hijacker commandeers a vehicle. Paul says it has since spread well beyond that coffee shop. A German colleague recently called it “issues jumping,” which tells you the idea has legs.

 

Be Provocative and Read the News Cycle

Paul Maher opens his list with a mindset. If you want to lead a category, you have to be willing to be newsworthy, because every story about you pulls the market toward the future you want. He also leans hard on provocation. Journalists today lean toward conflict and tech backlash, so a bland angle won’t get picked up. When Chegg, the textbook rental company, wanted a back to school splash, the team invented a day called Textbook Tuesday. For a data regulation in Europe, Paul’s team counted back from the deadline and coined “X Day” for the date a company needed to know whether it had been breached.

Timing matters just as much as the angle. Paul, a former journalist, explains that the first person to hand a reporter a quotable line wins, and the next person is yesterday’s fish and chip paper. Breaking news produces a quick factual story, then reporters hunt for commentary and background. If your executives are available at that moment, you slot right into what the writer needs. Paul says that often means pulling a CEO out of a meeting on short notice.

 

Paul Maher on How to Prepare, Flex, and Keep Going

Paul stresses getting ready in advance. Have quotes written, spokespeople lined up and open letters drafted before the story breaks, and plan for more than one way it might go. He points to Boris Johnson, who once wrote two versions of a newspaper column on Brexit so he’d be ready whichever way the result fell. Lochhead recalled a quote Paul once handed him about a drawn-out acquisition looking like two porcupines mating. It ran in several hundred papers through the wire services, because it was memorable.

Flexibility counts too. When the Ashley Madison breach hit, Paul’s client wanted nothing to do with it at first. The team waited, and when the story took a second turn with the stolen database posted online, they came back with an analysis of how such attacks work. Finally, Paul says persistence wins. Your first attempts may miss, and you may land in a small trade blog before the Wall Street Journal ever calls. Journalists at big outlets read those trade titles, so you can even pitch the trend upward once it has been noticed below. Few companies will put in this effort, which is exactly why it gives you an edge.

To hear more from Paul Maher and his thoughts about Trendjacking and Marketing, download and listen to this episode. Also, check out this post for the seven secrets of Trendjacking.

 

Bio

Paul Maher is the founder and CEO of Positive Marketing, a London-based consultancy focused on B2B technology PR. He started the agency in 2009 to help UK tech leaders get noticed by their US counterparts, drawing on his earlier experience at HP and VMware.

Under his leadership, Positive has grown into an award-winning firm offering content, digital PR and social media services across the UK and EMEA. It has won a SABRE Award for Best Earned Media Agency in the region.

Maher is also a frequent industry speaker, including at Big Data LDN, and a business mentor and board advisor. He is known for championing creative approaches to PR, such as trendjacking, and for building careers for young European talent.

Links

Linkedin UK | Positive Marketing

 

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