Guy Clapperton, Author at Clapperton Media

I’ve just finished a virtual media training session and someone asked a really good question. What do you say when someone has asked something – if you don’t want to risk appearing to agree with a negative?

This can happen if someone is asking, say, “Your industry has innovated as much as it’s likely to, how do you differentiate now that you’re selling commodities?” If you catch yourself nodding and try to buy yourself time by saying “That’s a good question” then anyone seeing this will assume you agree with the premise.

So the first thing to do is to try not to nod when assimilating a question. This is tricky but do-able. The next thing is to be careful with your filler phrases. There is nothing wrong with a pause while you think. You can even say “I need to take a second to answer that properly”. Journalists will hate the delay but who cares, you don’t work for us. You might say “Thanks for the question, people will have different views on that…” or something.

Just beware of appearing to accept a premise that puts your (or your client’s) business in a bad light. The journalist might quite innocently take your response as an agreement.

Something I said at a webinar last week seems to have resonated so it may be worth sharing again.

When you hire a public relations company, or marketing company or indeed a media trainer like me, it can be worth listening to what we have to say and advise. Clients often tell us they want something specific, whether it’s increased sales, a wider distribution network or whatever else it might be – and then they instruct, say, their PR company, about where they want coverage.

It is often better to give the PR company, marketing company or whoever, a good guide as to what you’re aiming for and then take their input. What I said in the webinar was that service providers are like a satnav; we work best when we’re given the destination and then we apply our expertise to work out the best route. Anyone wanting their satnav to get from, say, London to Brighton and insisting they had to stop off in Newcastle on the way would soon find themselves wasting a lot of time and get frustrated at the competition arriving much earlier than they did.

In communications this can apply when someone asks me for techniques to shut down awkward questions, when the most productive thing can be to assume the reader/viewer will also have thought of the question – so the best strategy is to give a decent answer. PR professionals, as distinct from trainers like me, might be told someone wants their story in the Financial Times to increase sales, while a less prestigious publication might actually provide a better line to their market and primed buyers.

You’ll have your brand and some strong ideas about it and that’s a good thing. It’s a mistake to let us take over and make it in our own image. But remember that satnav metaphor; it can be well worth starting a briefing with the destination you want your business to reach and then letting the experts work out the best way to get there.

I’ve often used this blog to highlight bad practice in interviews so I thought it might be worth highlighting some people who’ve done incredibly well.

Put it another way: I’ve been watching the Commonwealth Games and been incredibly encouraged by how the competitors treat each other. This seems to be a common feature among modern sportspeople but the Games have highlighted a few interesting examples.

For example, I was watching the diving yesterday. I know nothing about diving other than I once stood behind Tom Daley in a fast food place at King’s Cross Station which doesn’t make me much of an expert, but the skills and athleticism on display was awesome.

In the 10m synchronised event yesterday, British diver Matty Lee won the bronze. The BBC pulled him over and interviewed him and he was fine, speaking respectfully about the other participants and ensuring everyone knew he was happy with his bronze and that he was just glad to be in the others’ company. So far so routine – then the winner, Cassiel Rousseau, happened to be passing so the BBC pulled him into the interview and asked him about how he felt.

So your media interviewer suddenly loses interest

There were two interesting points from my point of view as someone in communications.

First, no serious competitor in the history of the universe has ever enjoyed coming third. It’s not why people compete and when they’re asked immediately afterwards how they feel, many people such as tennis players or footballers can be pretty grumpy. I don’t criticise that just after they’ve been focused on the win but I do feel Lee was incredibly gracious and positive given his circumstances.

Second, basically the interviewer decided they’d found someone more interesting and pulled them in – with Lee still standing there dripping. He had to listen and nod graciously as Rousseau celebrated the fact that he’d pulled off more or less the perfect dive (and he’d done so, there’s no question that the right person won). Lee continued, nodding and congratulating him.; Rousseau acknowledged Lee, of course.

These were very young people just after the battle of their lives so far, and one will have been bitterly disappointed. They still managed to conduct themselves perfectly and professionally. Maybe next time you see a businessperson, possibly someone from your own team, growing impatient with a journalist, next time you see a politician accusing the press of being “deliberately misleading” because the point wasn’t made clearly in the first place, you might reflect that some very young and inexperienced (in life at least) people in Birmingham have given a masterclass on how to cope over the weekend.

Do you or (if you’re in PR) your clients need help with your media interviews? My team and I can help – drop my assistant Lindsay a line, Lindsay@Clapperton.co.uk, and she’ll set us up an initial chat.

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?