You can’t have missed it! Jelly Babies were everywhere. Our sister company Perspectus Global hit headlines and made the ITN news with a story about how Jelly Babies had been voted the nation’s favourite sweet.
The coverage (around 14 national news pieces and many more feature and column bits as well as being discussed on TV and radio) was excellent and most of it included our messaging in the quotes. Perspectus were pleased.
Here we wanted to look at why this story was such a hit with news desks, and what parts of it you could learn from in order to generate similar headlines for your brand.
1. FAMILIARITY
Sweets. Everyone loves sweets! They’re sweet, after all. There’s nothing better than getting a topic which everyone can relate to. If your product or brand is not as popular as sweets, then you should be prepared to take your newsgen wider. If you sell car insurance, think about the best driving songs, etc. It’s good to be relatable.
2. NOSTALGIA
The reason that the story landed big pieces and not just nibs was that there was a second interesting element which journalists could latch on to. The fact that Gen Z’s were bringing back old-fashioned sweets.
3. A GOOD LIST
News desks love a list story. It adds talkability because it’s hard not to ask where your favourite is in the top 20 or however many there are. I mean, come on! Jelly Tots only in at number 11? What has the country come to?
4. HISTORY, BABY
We included a couple of paragraphs of history of the Jelly Baby (accidentally created by an unnamed Austrian immigrant who was trying to make a mould for “Jelly bears”) which gave an extra angle which was easy for journalists to dig into. In fact, our story lead to a Jelly Baby expert being interviewed on the news.
5. LOTS OF BRANDS
It was easy for us to include all the major sweet brands from Haribo to Rowntree – that’s probably why a sweet manufacturer hadn’t already done this, for fear of publicising a rival. That’s fair enough – but we would encourage confident brands to not worry too much about the opposition. And certainly if you’re doing a list, don’t leave out any obvious ones merely because they’re the competition.
Want to know more about how generate headlines? Drop us a line.