Guy Clapperton, Author at Clapperton Media

I had a chat on LinkedIn with podcaster and speaker booker Maria Franzoni this week. She’d had something I’ve had in the past as a journalist – people calling her up to pitch clients to her podcast and saying flattering things, only to make it apparent that they really hadn’t listened to even one episode.

Nobody is suggesting it’s easy to keep up with every single journalist. I’ve had the same thing; there’s the incident I mention in this tip, and another time a PR person told me their client really, really wanted to meet me because they’d be an invaluable contact and (said the PR person) I was a major writer in their client’s market. I agreed to the meeting, they suggested coffee – and when I got to the venue it turned out the client was finishing lunch and allocated me ten minutes for a quick coffee after their main guest had gone. Which would have been fine but the first thing the client asked was who I was and which publications I worked for – the suggestion that they’d considered me an important contact came from the PR person’s head and nowhere else.

I’m not actually sure where this compulsion to tell everyone they’re really important comes from. I’m fine with someone not having heard of me, my podcast or anything else I do, and it can be very helpful that a mutual connection puts us in touch. I’d just recommend being honest about it. The PR industry has an often-undeserved reputation for over-selling – why not smash the stereotype?

Dear Rishi,

I don’t train politicians, my presentation skills are generally in more commercial areas. However if I could have changed two things about your debate last night then they would have been 1) the speed: you’re dealing with (or should be dealing with) complex economic issues and they’re not hitting home. 2) Interrupt less, no matter how strongly you feel: you might consider that Liz is out of her depth and for all I know you’re right. If that’s the case then what we saw last night was her grabbing enough rope and you whipping it away before she could hang herself.

Dear Liz,

As I was saying to Rishi I don’t train politicians on presentations but I’ve offered him two pieces of feedback so I’ll do the same for you. First, I get that the strategy was to rise above it all and make sure he looked like the rude and irritating one and to an extent that worked, but if you don’t push back more then people are going to worry about how you’ll cope on the international stage and indeed in the cabinet room. Second, and this may be more difficult, you need to get a grip on your supporters. One of them yesterday was criticising a wealthy man for wearing a bespoke suit when going through what amounted to the most important job interview of his life, leaving you visibly embarrassed when this was read out to you; later, one of your cabinet colleagues accused Rishi of “mansplaining”. For what it’s worth I think he was indeed guilty of this but if it’s left unsaid people will work it out for themselves; out loud from one of your known supporters it starts to sound like a calculated political attack (the ordinary man on the BBC News last night was a lot more powerful when he said it because he had no axe to grind and it was unexpected). So I’d brief your supporters and keep them away from criticisms that go nowhere.

Overall I’d advise both of you to be more positive in tone and let the other person’s arguments fall over by themselves. So less “This isn’t costed and the next generation will pay” and more “This is interesting, how have you costed it to avoid landing the next generation with the bill?” and less “This will crash the economy” and more “I can see there could be risks, how have you mitigated those?” – then the other person has to answer and the audience can judge whether those answers add up.

Hugs (if not votes)
Guy

What? No, I’m not talking about whether interviewers plan their interviews. Of course we do. I’m a journalist so I go into every press engagement with a clear idea of what I need to get out of it. This is based around my readers’ needs.

What surprises me is that so few interviewees do the same.

Interviews belong to you too

The fact is that journalists and other influencers are very good at making it feel as if an interview is their province exclusively. To my mind this isn’t reasonable. The idea is simple enough; someone with a commercial interest (or a political one) is going to push their view onto everyone so the journalist’s role is to cut through this. The same is true of interviews with any other influencer – podcaster, blogger, whatever.

I have some sympathy with this view. Nobody wants to read, watch or listen to a bunch of vested interests. It’s definitely the job of the journalist to make sure their copy doesn’t reflect any of this.

There are powerful counter-arguments, though. Consider a media training client I had a few weeks ago. Nice people, helpful, non-pushy and specialists in their field. Now, I’m a specialist in several things. Publishing. Podcasting. Interviewing. Training. I am not, however, an expert in the client’s field (which was insurance as it happened but you could also slot in manufacturing, technology, any of those things). This could give me a problem.

That problem is that as a non-specialist I don’t necessarily have the right insight to ask something that will get to the piece of insight the reader really wants. I might but I might not. So it’s valid for the interviewee to squeeze their message in, whether I’ve asked about it or not.

It’s also valid (and journalists don’t always have the time to consider this) for the interviewee to look for some sort of value from the transaction. They’re offering their expertise and their time. As long as they’re not nakedly promotional it’s not unreasonable for them to expect their name and company to be correctly credited and for their view and comment to be made clear.

So do you take control of your interviews and ensure both parties come out with value? And if not, why not?

Do you need help ensuring you get value from media interviews? We can help – just get in contact and we’ll set us up a time to talk.

When media training I often find the same questions come up, particularly around repeating yourself. Is it a good idea, ask people who have been giving presentations as part of their job for decades if not longer. These are inevitably people who wouldn’t hesitate over the odd repetition in a presentation.

The answer, as I said on yesterday’s video tip (less than two minutes, check it on this link) is yes – but be careful.

In the previous video I talked about the TV series, Line of Duty, and why the interrogation scene with the Jo Davidson character was an object lesson in never saying “no comment”. For those of you who haven’t seen it, her character says “no comment” about ten times and the assumption of her guilt seems to mount higher with every repetition.

So if you get asked, are you making redundancies, hiking your prices, whatever, “no comment” an audience is likely to hear it as “absolutely yes”.

Then they tried it again

The final episode of Line of Duty has had something of a critical mauling and although it’s not prime among the reasons quoted, I think getting the actual villain to keep repeating “no comment” was one of the flaws. There’s no problem with having the mastermind unveiled as an unlikely character we’ve known since episode one, also no problem with slamming us with the idea that we’ve been rooting for the wrong side all along.

The problem is that you need to make it exciting, so just having the same schtick as the week before in a less tense setting is going to be problematic. And this is where interviews and presentations can fall over as well. Here’s a video of the fairly young Ed Miliband when he first became Labour leader:

The problem isn’t that he repeats himself. The difficulty is that he doesn’t vary it – he has his message and he’s going to drive it home. He actually seems unaware that he’s saying the same thing over and over again. Had he started an answer with “as I’ve already said”, or “I don’t have anything to add to my previous point” or whatever, he might have looked better. He might also have considered refusing to answer more questions (I have no information but my guess is that he was expecting only one answer to reach the airwaves).

So you’re being interviewed – great. You want to use the opportunity to publicise your business – of course you do. However, if you have important points and want to repeat them, remember at least to look as if you’re aware you’ve made the point already. I’ll bet Ed Miliband wished he’d done so.

Do you need help with your media and interview skills? My Mediamentor media training service can help. Ask my assistant Nikki to set us up some time for an initial chat.