Media training Archives - Page 9 of 11

Something we focus on during our workshops is media drawbacks. Of course, we are pro media and in an earlier blog entry we outlined why talking to the media can be a really good idea.

It’s just that it won’t serve you well if you grab every opportunity that crops up. It might be that having multiple opportunities sounds like a pipe dream for the moment but if you start to gain a bit of profile they can arrive quite quickly.

Here are some reasons not to engage that you might want to consider.

The opportunity isn’t right or you can’t stand the publication that’s approached you. It happens. It’s 1985, you’re a female entrepreneur whose business is doing really well and the Sun wants to run a profile on you but you’re aware that this paper sells itself on the strength of topless women on page 3. You’d rather not take part.
It’s 1997. Your business has grown and is doing well. The Guardian wants to speak to you but it’s so rabidly left wing and really doesn’t match your values.

In both of these cases the benefits are likely to outweigh media drawbacks. The first is no longer an issue as that particular feature is in the dustbin of publishing history but people still have issues with the Sun and other papers like it. Be careful. If you’re promoting your business your choice of outlet should ideally be about the readership rather than your own preferences. Likewise the second. If the right people are reading the Guardian it matters less what you think and more what you can get out of it. There are other things that can go wrong, however.

Media drawbacks and your time

The first is undoubtedly the problem of managing your time. When lead trainer Guy worked on IT trade publication MicroScope in the late eighties and early nineties there were a few marketing executives he knew he could go to for a comment on just about everything. They’d always take the call and always come up with something insightful.

He once met one of the readers who actually bought their supplies from one of his regular commentators. He said, “Oh yes, I know XX, he’s always great to talk to” – and XX’s customer came back with “I know, that’ll be why he’s never got enough time to return his bloody customers’ calls.”

There could be all sorts of reasons for not returning a difficult customer’s call. We sympathise. However, one possible reason is that XX had unintentionally focused too much of his time on working for the press rather than doing his actual job. If you don’t think you will have enough time to do your press engagements justice then you’re likely to do them badly or to start eating into time that should be spent otherwise. If it’s affordable this can be a sign that you need to expand your team. It can be quite a step, if you’re in the “growth” stage, to start taking people on whose value doesn’t feed directly into the bottom line.

Misquotes, misattributions, rephrases

Equally serious is when someone gets a quote wrong or attributes it to the wrong person. Sometimes companies like people to do that. When Guy (him again) was working on MicroScope all those years ago someone sent a press release with a contact person for followup questions. He called, took some notes and wrote the story. Before it reached publication the phone went again: it was the interviewee’s boss. The boss wanted the quotes attributed to him rather than the person to whom Guy had spoken.

There was no question of changing the content and they were puzzled when the editorial team wouldn’t co-operate. The thing was, Guy hadn’t spoken to the director in question and it was not the editorial team’s role to pretend he had. Some 30 years later he still wonders whether they appreciated the point.

Other times something is wrongly attributed or plain wrong.

Out of context

You’ll have seen many people saying they were quoted out of context. This can mean different things to different people but the best definition we’ve found is here, meaning someone has quoted only part of a sentence or at least not filled in the context to make it worthwhile. For example our main camera operator Paul might say “I could direct the next James Bond film if I had more experience of fiction and a Hollywood profile” (he’d still be pushing it but we’ll let that pass). If someone just quoted him saying “I could direct the next James Bond film” you can see how the meaning changes completely.

You have the right to complain if a journalist does this to you. What’s more difficult is when people say they were quoted out of context and they actually mean “I wish I hadn’t said that”. Try not to be that person! It can be worth having someone in the interview or on the call with you as a sanity checker. Never mind that the journalist resists – you don’t work for the journalist.

Rephrases

Sometimes a journalist will rewrite something into their own vernacular. This can be particularly useful when you’re speaking to a journalist from a different culture. When Guy launched his first social media book in 2009 (don’t even Google, it’s a decade and a half out of date) he received an invitation to go to Malaysia and speak at a conference. He did so and as part of the publicity a newspaper came and interviewed him. His quotes, when they came out, didn’t capture his voice at all. They were full of “wow” and “oh boy” – he was sounding a lot more like a Malaysian man than a Brit with jet lag.

However, it’s not worth getting hung up on those details. The substance was right. They even got his favourite gig right: they wanted some local colour so asked him which concert he’d enjoyed most. He said Paul McCartney and the reporter said “Wow”, no, really she did, “In the sixties with the Beatles?” Guy was a year old when they played their last gig but we’ll let that pass. The point is that these little rephrase didn’t damage the sense.

The danger is that if you’re incoherent, long and rambly or if you mumble, the journalist will have to compress what you said into a sentence. This is where you risk your quote turning into what they think you meant rather than what you actually said. Be careful to think before you speak and ensure you stop firmly rather than tail off wherever possible.

Plain wrong

The other risk is that a journalist will misunderstand and put something in that’s a load of old nonsense. Most often this will be based on a genuine misunderstanding. In her very earliest days as a journalist one of our colleagues asked a company for their turnover. They said £40,000 (that’s “sales” to international readers and for context this was 1989) so she reported it – but found they were unsurprisingly unimpressed when she didn’t make it clear that this was the monthly rather than annual figure.

Mishearings and misunderstandings are entirely possible. If possible, when you feel you’ve been misquoted or there is a misrepresentation due to a factual error, it’s worth getting someone else to put the call in or send the email. You might be feeling vulnerable or that your job is at risk. This could mean you are concerned your family home is in danger.

This in turn means you’re possibly the worst person to get involved. You’re angry and anxious. The vast majority of the time, the journalist or editor will want to remove any inaccuracies as quickly as possible, It can be much easier if someone else puts the request in.

It’s still worth it

These media drawbacks shouldn’t put you off but you need to be aware of them. There is a huge competitive edge to be gained from mindshare and branding when you talk to the media; customers thinking they want service or item A and your name popping into their head immediately will help you grow the business enormously. Just understand that things can go wrong. You can end up as a full-time media spokesperson when you have a company to run or you can use an external PR company (or both as you grow) – it’s always worth having some sort of expertise backing you up.

Media messaging is a bit of a dark art when it comes to interviews. The message we put into that opening sentence, for example, was “dark art”. It’s as if a media training company had a vested interest in making this stuff seem difficult.

A lot of our clients have difficulties with it, though, so it’s worth spending a little time on it. The truth is immutable, they say. They will just be honest about what’s going on, state their position or flog their story (whichever is the greater) and that will be it.

Which is interesting. It’s not going to work, though. The thing about media messaging is that it can vary according to which media you happen to be speaking with. That’s not a matter of being deliberately tricky, it’s simple realism.

Let’s take a simple example. Say you were a computer manufacturer and you’d done something revolutionary like released a new computer. (We can’t tell you how many times that was touted as something surprising when Guy worked for the trade press in the technology sector). Here are some possible scenarios and some relevant messaging.

The national press

You’re going for a big announcement here so you need the broad brush approach. Focusing as much on the brand as the technology, you’ll probably need to put messages out there as simply as possible to ensure people understand this is going to make their lives better. You can’t count on readers having in-depth technical knowledge so you’ll need to keep it relatively simple. Pick a few distinctive things about your computer, state them a few times and hope the journalist goes with what you want them to write. If you make it interesting enough and you haven’t done anything more interesting like robbed a bank. they’ll probably go with it.

The trade-only press

This is where Guy started out many years ago. He went in not knowing much about computers (it was the 1980s, only the obsessive knew anything about computers) but soon realised he didn’t have to. He wasn’t expected to be asking about the technology because the publication in which he’d got his first journalism job, called MicroScope, went to computer dealers only.

And computer dealers in the 1980s didn’t much care what a computer did. The good ones cared that it worked. No, they were more interested in where they could get stock, what percentage mark-up they should expect, whether they needed to qualify as dealers and whether there would be any joint marketing budget available from the manufacturer. Cynical? No, this is just targeted. You just had to know what the reader needed and make sure you gave it to them. Messaging for this publication and its modern equivalents would need to be very financial.

The tech press

Confusingly, a lot of public relations people refer to the technology press as the Trade Press as well. So publications like Computing would be referred to as “trades” – to make it simpler we’re going to refer to them as the tech press.

The readers tend to be the highly technically literate. You can go in deeper. You may also want to explore how the technology fits into a large enterprise and whether there are any implications for the tech support people who might be in an organisation. Your messaging will therefore be a lot more complex than it might have been for the more basic national press interview and the tech press won’t give two hoots about margins the dealers are earning unless you have evidence that they are fleecing the buyers.

Tailoring your media messaging for the readers

The publications and the knowledge the journalists have are only one side of the thing. The other is understanding the readers. The journalist should understand who he or she is writing for of course; there are other ways you can make sure your messaging is right for them.

The lifestyler

Let’s stick with the computer example. Is the technology fashionable, does it carry status? The more style-conscious readers will want to hear about this, although if you’re not selling Apple then they might take some persuading that it’s a fashion item.

The hobbyist

This one speaks for itself. Are the readers the sort of people who will go around trying to make their own computer? Can yours be part of a larger system somehow? If your target publication has a lot of those readers you’ll want to play that message up above all others.

You can expand the pool as much as you like. As well as the hobbyist you might have the bargain hunter, the maverick (who’ll want to hear something about why your computer will want to make them look a bit of a rebel), the family person who’ll want to see how the system fits into their home – the list is as long as you want it to be.

It’s worth thinking all this through before going into an interview because going in with the same information for everybody is ultimately a bit insulting and leaves you with a very bland message. Think of a musician with a new album; if they gave the same details and information to the nationals as they did to a specialist guitar magazine, one of them would find it inappropriate and the interview would probably get spiked.

Next steps

The other major thing you need to decide is what you want the readers to do next. A decent clipping in a major publication is a fine thing and may well do something for you if your aim is solely for mindshare and branding. This isn’t going to work for everybody so it’s worth thinking about what you need the reader, the viewer, the listener to do next.

Speaking with purpose

For example if you’re in a growing business you might be looking for your next round of financing. This will mean targeting the sort of publication the investor community is going to read but then preparing messages about financial solidity, the reliability of your board and maybe something about growth in your market overall.

If you wanted people to be more aware of your brand then you’re likely to be putting more general messages out. These are likely to focus on what you might call thought leadership; you’ll be looking for insights to offer that establish you as experienced and knowledgable and you won’t be pushing the sales message particularly hard (let’s be completely transparent, if we’re getting this right then you’re reading an example of precisely that at the moment).

You might just want an increase in sales. To make the best of your chances you’d first target a publication that your market looks at before buying things and then prepare messages on value, time saved, professionalism, or whatever it is that motivates people to buy from you next time they’re in the market.

Try to remember an opportunity for an interview is one thing but there are other steps. The fact that you are an expert in your market and your business probably means you’ll know more than a journalist is going to be able to take in. You have the right – you might say the obligation – to select the parts that are going to make a coherent story.

The fictional example that makes the point

It’s actually been parodied brilliantly in the film, “Notting Hill”. Hugh Grant’s character needs to speak to Julia Roberts so he poses as a reporter from the nearest publication he spots. He claims to be from “Horse and Hound” magazine and asks whether there are any horses in the film. The answer is no so he asks about hounds. The riposte (apologies if you haven’t seen it) is that it’s set on a submarine.

Obviously, this is an exaggeration but it’s how you need to think if you’re a spokesperson for your business. Ask what this particular publication needs and what you want its readers to do next; frame your responses around that and you should stand a chance of getting some useful coverage.

Final thought: don’t mention messaging

One of the worst pitches our founder Guy ever had was when he was writing an article and had sent a plea for help and experts out. There were, as always, many excellent replies. One PR executive, however, sent a note saying “let me share our messaging with you”.

Messaging is a PR term that will basically alert the journalist to the fact that they’re getting something that isn’t spontaneous, it’s prepared and worked on. That might be fine in your view but the media outlets aren’t going to be all that excited about your telling us that we’re basically fitting into your plans. Let’s put it another way: if you were to approach a new client or prospect, would you tell them your offering will work because of the value it offers and the fit with their requirements or would you say “I’m delighted you got in touch because I need to hit my monthly sales target”? Which might also be true!

Tell us you have thoughts, tell us you have a spokesperson or tell us you have insights by all means – just keep the word “messaging” for internal use.

Do you need help with your messaging or interview technique? Our team can help – get in touch and we’ll talk.

Many years ago, our lead trainer Guy had a media training client who taught him something about targeting. The client owned a chain of mobile phone stores, let’s say they were in the Reading area. He had been offered the chance of a profile piece in the Financial Times.

He had declined.

Guy was a picture of consternation. What, he wondered, was the point of training someone to speak to the media if they were going to turn down such a great opportunity?

The client’s answer was simple and instructive. His objective, he said, was to sell phones. The FT would publish a trustworthy and accurate piece – and one that would get him precisely nowhere. The publication would deliberately resist anything so promotional whereas the local paper might – we don’t know if he was correct on this point – be open to a promotional idea of sorts. If local people read about his shops they might actually visit, he reasoned. His mum would like a nice FT piece but he couldn’t see it working for his business.

Of course he was right.

Targeting is vital

Bad phone call for targeting blog entry — Journalists might not be terribly pleased with an irrelevant pitch

This is why, in our PR pitching masterclass, we talk a lot about targeting your press releases to the right journalist and publication. There are two elements to this (actually three but we’ll come to that at the end of the section).

First you need to decide which journalists or other media professionals are going to respond to you. This, if you don’t use a professional public relations agency, is a case of asking your contacts and seeing what they think.

That might sound a bit haphazard and there’s a good reason for that. It’s not an exact science. In the same way that a mate can recommend a restaurant and you can turn up and find it’s just not right for you, you can find you just don’t hit it off with a journalist, or the idea is fine but they’ve just written something like that and it will be published next Tuesday. Never forget that “no thanks” is by far the easiest answer to a pitch. It allows the listener to do precisely nothing if they choose. Also remember, however, that journalists and other publishing professionals depend on good ideas for their livelihood. No matter how cynical and jaded they sound, if your idea is good and relevant they need you.

Know the journalist

You need some knowledge of the journalist and what they write, podcast or broadcast about to remain relevant. Many are specialists. Lead trainer Guy has been writing about technology as applied to business (with some minor forays into consumer technology) for over three decades. Here are some of the things that have come into his inbox over the years:

Typing at 11.47 on 7 December 2022: a glance at the in-box tells us the BBC has sent a release telling Guy that Robson Green is fronting a new TV series. Guy did write about a new programme for the Radio Times once. In 2005.
On the same day there was a press release to Guy’s inbox telling him that the Supreme Court had said that bans on prayer and help for women in crisis could be implemented in Northern Ireland. This is something Guy personally regards as important. However he needs to read a complete story when a relevant expert has evaluated it, spoken to people and found out what’s really going on rather than a release from one interested party.
Guy’s favourite example was the company that kept sending him information on female sex toys for over a year. Mysteriously he forgot to ask them to stop sending these releases; we have never had the guts to ask him why not.

There was also a lot of relevant stuff of course, a lot of public relations professionals get it exactly right. The good news is that it’s not difficult to rise above the rest. One of our favourite games is to get the phone out during a PR Pitching Masterclass session and see what’s come in during the previous hour. In the ten years since launching this course there has always been something irrelevant to highlight.

Know the publication

It should almost go without saying but it seems not to. Knowing the publication is crucial. If you have a local story because you work in Edinburgh and have created 50 new jobs at the height of an economic downturn, great! There’s a good chance The Scotsman will be interested but don’t expect much reaction from the Argus in Brighton. Likewise you might have a hot news story to pitch to the Nationals but you’ve got your heart set on somewhere less immediately relevant. It happens.

It’s important to know the publications and also to understand what the readers are likely to do next. Remember the wise delegate at the beginning of this entry; he rejected the Financial Times not because it wasn’t a great publication but because he knew it wouldn’t be great use of his time.

But does it work for you? Targeting your objectives

Targeting image - overworked woman — You can end up working very hard but who is it for?

Knowing the journalist and who they’re writing for are undoubtedly excellent things. However, there is a killer question you need to ask: do you want to end up working for the journalist or do you want to build your own business up?

This isn’t as glib as it sounds even though you know the answer without thinking about it. You want to build your business, of course you do. Everything we’ve said so far, though, has been about finding the right journalist and outlet. We’ve discussed what the journalist does as they’re specialists and we’ve also gone through some real life irrelevant pitches.

So let’s say you’re a small consultant in tech security. You assess your market, you pitch to the journalist and he or she comes back with “that’s great but I need a user or case study to talk to”. That’s sounding good – then the article comes out and your client is cited as someone who had a tech problem and overcame it. No matter how many times you scour the article, you can’t find yourself or your business named as the person who sorted it out.

Will they credit you properly?

This happened to one of our delegates once. He told us he was up at 5am to appear on BBC Breakfast and represent his company (which was a larger concern as it happened). He’d done what he thought they wanted by avoiding mentioning his company name. He assumed they would credit his company in the caption. In the event he just came out as “Technology expert”.

There is a real risk for spokespeople: they can end up working for the journalist and the publication rather than the business for which they are responsible. Journalists mostly don’t have huge resources so if you mention that you’ve seen an important report they’re likely to ask you to send it over, free of charge. If you’ve written a book they’ll expect you or your publisher to provide the review copy. They will want a particular angle and they need to arrange their story around it. They are working for their editor and their readers and they will see everything in this light. It’s important to look at every opportunity that might come up and ask yourself: does this actually help our objective? If not, it might not be the right opportunity for you and you’ll spend a lot of time and effort working on the journalist’s behalf.

Targeting pitfalls

The mysterious “third element” we mentioned at the beginning of the last section is of course the sheer size and impossibility of the task. Keeping track of so many people is difficult. It’s one thing us Guy pulling out his phone and seeing who’s pitched something fairly ludicrous, ignoring decades of what he’s actually been doing. It’s another completely when someone has to sift through all of the potential contacts. According to Statista (see this link) there were around 110,000 people who could be described as journalists in the UK in 2022. That’s up from 71,000 people ten years previously. Many are likely to change jobs, go freelance, others will suddenly start a blog or podcast, still others will start or close a publication.

Nobody is underestimating the difficulty of keeping track of all those people. Unfortunately that’s what the job involves.

Targeting is fundamental

You can have an excellent story. You can understand why it affects many people who are outside your organisation. If you don’t take the trouble to find out about the media professionals and outlets that might be interested, however, you’re unlikely to get much coverage. Make sure you know why a story is important and to whom, ensure you approach the right outlet and the most suitable writer and you should stand above some of the actual professionals working in communications right now.

One more acid test, if we may. When you’re writing your pitch or formulating what you’re going to say to the journalist, ask yourself: why am I telling them this? If you don’t have an answer, start again – if you don’t know, they won’t either!

Further information on “Pitch Perfect”, our media training masterclass, is available by clicking here.

Yesterday our lead trainer Guy was media training in Hemel Hempstead (and although our media training clients are confidential unless they say otherwise, if they’re reading we want to thank them for their hospitality). The chief executive at the client had one core question initially. Why was it worth talking to the media at all? He wasn’t being aggressive, he genuinely wanted to understand the benefit.

Without divulging identities we can confirm this was a decades-old business with a solid, reliable customer base and hundreds of employees. The CEO was a man of roughly Guy’s age (he’s in denial about having slipped into his late fifties) so an experienced person.

It set us thinking on two topics. First, why had he paid to engage an excellent PR company and invested cash in our turning up to his premises if he didn’t understand the benefit? (The answer became clear: he trusted his marketing team and if they wanted to invest in enhanced services that was fine – he just wanted to understand in a little more depth). Second, since someone had asked the question, what were the benefits of speaking to the media?

Media coverage might not lead to sales

We do ask our clients why they want to speak to the media and some of the time the answer is that they want more sales.

Whoops.

Let’s ask the question. When did you last allow yourself to be persuaded to buy something thanks to a bit of media coverage? Actually let’s rephrase. When did you last allow yourself to be persuaded to buy something that you hadn’t already planned to buy thanks to a bit of media coverage? We’d be willing to bet that the answer is “not recently”. Loads of people check the reviews and social media feedback when they want to buy a new phone, a new dishwasher, choose a restaurant to visit. Note, though, that they had already decided they were in the market for these things.

Let’s clear something up before we go any further. We are talking here about “earned media” – in other words not an ad that you’ or a client has paid for, not a sponsored supplement in which you have final say. We are talking about independent reportage, something the journalist has found interesting in and of itself, or a thought leadership piece an editor thought was worth commissioning.

Inevitably there are different thoughts on just how useful this traditional media actually is but, for example, Sapience Communication in 2022 published a blog post citing figures that said a third of British adults came to the traditional media for their news rather than social media.

Nonetheless we’d query whether someone is going to the Financial Times when they want advice on a new phone. So an automatic addition to your sales funnel isn’t necessarily going to happen because you’ve been published somewhere.

The media can help indirectly through thought leadership

It’s not all about sales, of course. Actually let’s refine that a little bit. It is absolutely all about sales, completely and in every conceivable form. You’re reading this because you want to improve your company’s profile and go to the top of people’s shortlist when they are going to spend something. It doesn’t, however, have to be a direct link. This is where we encounter the idea of “thought leadership”.

Now, let’s be honest; Clapperton Media Training comes across all sorts of guff under the guise of “thought leadership”. As an experiment we entered the term into an online image library and had quite a choice, including the stock image above. And if it can be mass produced that often then there’s going to be the odd charlatan at it – in our time we’ve had pitches from people insisting that adding value to something before selling it rather than shifting commodities is “thought leadership” when we thought it was obvious.

There are counter-examples, however. When Guy was editor of Intelligent Sourcing magazine a contributor annoyed the publisher by coining a new word; he was advocating a local approach to global business and called it “glocalisation” and the publisher insisted it was a mistake. It didn’t catch on as it happened but it was an original thought or an original way of expressing an existing thought.

So yes, there is scope for publishing and establishing yourself or your company as leaders in your field. It’s also worth considering whether that’s going to achieve your objective, though.

Leadership isn’t everything

If we’re frank, we hear from a lot of people wanting to be thought leaders. We’re not convinced that’s going to lead to a business result every time, To some people this is a terrible point of view but to us it’s just logical and we can offer examples.

Let’s take one of the largest companies in the world, Amazon. The company certainly innovated when it first set up and it’s done a fine job in many ways since but we’re not quite convinced it’s a thought leader any more. Its logistics and of course its web platform is incredible but if you want to know loads about books you’re probably better off visiting a small local bookshop or something.

Ditto Apple. Yes we know they’re seen as market leaders and many of our trainers are iPhone users. If you can read this text then it means that typing on an Apple Macintosh computer works. However, Apple didn’t make the first smartphone. There were phones with satnav built in well before the first iPhone even came to the market.

The point we want to make is not that these are bad companies, far from it. However, becoming thought leaders does not appear to have been part of their mission when they set up and that’s actually perfectly reasonable. It just makes it a little baffling that so many organisations want to get quoted and published as innovators in their industry when this might not lead them to the position they want to achieve.

We just mentioned satnav

The satnav image is one of those that we come to often in our media training sessions, simply because of the way they work. You probably use one quite often because they’re automatically in vehicles and on phones nowadays. If you want to get somewhere you put the location in and then let the system work out the best route. If you have stipulations and stopping points in mind that’s fine but you accept that you may arrive a little later than if you were travelling more directly.

People abandon this approach when it comes to working with the media. Colleagues in the public relations industry tell us that their clients will insist they “want to be in the Financial Times” or that they “want to publish some thought leadership”. When asked why, the answer might be to do with sales, it might be to do with branding and mind share but one thing is pretty certain; it’s rarely clear how the steps they have envisaged are expected to get them to the point at which they want to arrive.

Whether you use a public relations company or not (and if you want a profile of any scale then it can be well worth doing) it’s worth taking that satnav approach and looking at where you want to get to first. You can then work backwards and see how best to get there, perhaps needing advice from an external agency on the way.

This entry started with the title “Why talk to the media?” because a client asked the question. The honest answer from us as a media training company is that we have no idea – why do you want to talk to the media? Only when we have the answer can we and your PR company help you with anything but the most generalised course. When you’ve got that target, we’ll help you hit it!