Rugby kit debate creates a marketing opportunity for grocery brand

A good example of using newsjacking to inject humour into a topic and take advantage of social media’s potential to go viral is the South African brand Checkers Sixty60, a popular grocery e-commerce platform.

The national rugby team, known as the Springboks, is famous for its dark green and gold-trimmed kit. But, for the 2023 Rugby World Cup tournament currently taking place in France, a mint-green and white alternative kit has been introduced as part of an initiative to help visually impaired fans.

Many people have expressed dismay, with a large number taking to media platforms to point out that the new design and colour scheme closely resembles that of Checkers Sixty60. The result has been a flood of memes poking fun at the kit and its claimed connection to the e-commerce platform.

Checkers has quickly embraced the newsjacking opportunity and late last week it produced a video campaign showing the alleged kit ‘designer’ telling a colleague he has no idea where his inspiration for the design came from. 

The camera then follows the ‘designer’ into his office and we see him surrounded by packets of Sixty60 groceries, Sixty60 children’s toys and sitting on a Sixty60 plastic toy delivery motorcycle.

The payoff line from Checkers is: “It wasn’t us…but it may be our fault.”

The video attracted 140,000 views on YouTube on its first day and has received a positive response from the public for its fun take on the Springbok rugby kit debate.

Pandemic provided a host of newsjacking opportunities

For newsjacking enthusiasts, the Cover-19 pandemic provided ample opportunities for the genre.

A good example was Uber. Despite its business proposition being based on moving people quickly and easily from A to B, the Uber marketing team and its agencies produced a counter-intuitive campaign that urged people not to go anywhere and thanked them for ‘not riding’. 

“Our message with this campaign is pretty simple: Stop moving,” explained Thomas Ranese, VP of Global Marketing at Uber, when the campaign launched in early 2020. 

“We felt it was particularly relevant for a company whose brand stands for movement to reinforce this important message. And we don’t think you can repeat it enough.”

You can watch the Checkers Sixty60 video here.

You can watch the Uber video ad here.