interview prep Archives - Clapperton Media

Want to confuse a journalist? Tell them everything you know about your top subject, don’t worry about focus, just come out with all of your experience. That’s what a number of our media training delegates do in the first interview practice sessions we run with them and it almost never helps.

It’s like this. Journalists are experts in many things: storytelling, interviewing, maybe editing a video or audio package together, collating quotes into a written article. As they progress they may become superb managers and developers of young writing and interviewing talent. They are superb at working to deadlines (or they won’t last long).

They might – just might – also be an expert in your client’s field. Equally they might not. So let’s say your spokesperson has been doing whatever they’ve been doing for 20 years and the journalist uses a light opener like “tell me about yourself” – and the well-intentioned interviewee comes out with everything they can think of that might help.

It comes from a good place and a wish to help. But without focus it’s going to damage an article. If someone is not an expert in your field already, telling them 20 things about it is more likely to end up in confusion than clarity. And that’s when mistakes and factual errors creep in, not because anyone is stitching anyone up but because the interview just wasn’t clear.

Focus is essential

The classic picture of a media trainer is someone who tells you to pick three things and come out with those whatever the question might be. This is extreme and likely to offend journalists who know when they’re being ignored. It’s worth going into interviews with three prepared messages, though, for three reasons. First, you need some area of focus just to stop yourself rambling. Second, if the interview goes off piste then you’ll have something to get back to. Third, it’s actually courteous to the journalist to think about what you want to say in advance.

Stick to a few core messages and try to ram them home. By all means answer the rest, the politician’s trick of ignoring the question is something the listeners and viewers will spot at some distance and it makes the spokesperson look arrogant – but there’s noting wrong with having an intention and a focus for every media interaction.

You’re in an interview and you’re the sales director. The journalist starts asking about marketing. Or sales. Or HR.

There are ways of coping. Blurting out answers because you think you ought to say SOMETHING isn’t the best.

Check this video for Guy’s thoughts.

It always amazes us at Clapperton Media that so many people think they can ad lib a media interaction and go without interview prep. The same people who will rehearse and prep a presentation that’s going to go to 200 people in a hall will cheerfully claim they know what they want to say to the press (when they will effectively be talking to thousands) and they don’t prepare.

It will stagger you, no really, stagger you, that this approach can often go wrong. A question comes in that doesn’t suit your agenda exactly. Your tone doesn’t suit the occasion completely. The instant rapport you imagined you’d have with the journalist just isn’t happening. It is all told a bit of a nightmare.

We knew one PR professional whose client had exactly that attitude going in – didn’t need support. They spent an hour with the journalist and it didn’t go well. They came out of the meeting, called the PR person and said they didn’t want the interview to go out. They were then stunned to find out that the PR person had no power or authority (and let’s be honest, no inclination) to prevent the publication of an interview that had been given willingly. It wasn’t paid-for content so there was nothing to be done about stopping the write-up, which then wasn’t pretty when it appeared.

Interview prep needs taking seriously

A variant on this is the person who just doesn’t take it seriously. The PR people have prepared a document and the executive who’s going in front of the press intends to read it, honestly, and might even have glanced at it before the event. But they don’t give it enough time so they’re not on top of the figures, the latest research, the journalist’s readers and therefore how they can connect with them.

Clapperton Media Training works with many PR companies, some regularly and some on one-off bases. We often hear from them that their biggest frustration is the client that takes the prep documents and almost immediately discards them. Clients are busy people, they get that – but seriously, those prep documents are gold dust and invaluable – take them to heart, you’ll do a better interview.