public relations Archives - Clapperton Media

At Clapperton Media Associates, we work closely with public relations professionals who want their clients to be visible, credible, and memorable. But one phrase keeps resurfacing in conversations that makes us wince slightly: “thought leadership.”

Like many bits of jargon, it began with good intentions. The idea was simple: if a client has genuinely original insight or a fresh perspective on their market, then helping them share that view is an invaluable service. Done well, it can spark discussion, shape perception, and position a business as an authority worth listening to.

Unfortunately, “thought leadership” has been overused to the point of meaning very little. Somewhere along the line, it became something to tick off a to-do list. We’ve seen well-intentioned PR teams ask clients for “thought leadership content” as if it’s a deliverable that can be produced to order. Occasionally, that works – a founder or expert may have untapped insight they didn’t realise was valuable. But more often, it leads to clients feeling pressured to produce opinions that sound authoritative without offering anything new.

When “thought leadership” becomes a formula rather than a spark, it risks doing the opposite of what’s intended. Instead of making someone sound like an innovator, it makes them look like they haven’t done their research. And it gets worse when that phrase – “thought leadership” – is used with journalists. Talking about “offering thought leadership” to an editor is like a magician explaining an illusion before performing it. Everyone knows it’s positioning, but it’s best not to draw attention to the wires.

The solution? Focus less on “leadership” as a label and more on what’s genuinely interesting or useful. A strong opinion, a data point that challenges assumptions, or a story that reveals something new – those are the real currency of influence.

At its best, great communications work helps ideas travel. But when every article, quote, and podcast appearance is branded as “thought leadership,” the words lose their meaning. So, by all means, help clients share their insights and opinions – just don’t call every thought a leading one.

Ifg you’re in public relations you’ll be well aware that media interviews are a critical component of shaping a client’s public image and conveying key messages. Many PR companies engage media training specialists—like our team—to prepare their spokespeople for live interviews with journalists. The common concern? Fear of “winging it”—the worry that their CEO or key executive will stumble, ramble, or be caught unprepared on camera or microphone.

However, while poor preparation is definitely a problem, there’s a nuanced challenge that often goes unnoticed: overpreparation. Some executives are so accustomed to meticulously rehearsed responses and detailed briefs that they end up delivering their messages with robotic precision. This leads to an interview that feels less like a genuine conversation and more like a memorised monologue.

The Pitfalls of Overpreparedness

Colleagues in the public relations industry often come across this issue. An executive might know every key point inside out but struggles to vary their script. They have done no preparation for someone asking something not in their playbook. So when an unexpected question arises, they stumble or retreat into delivering their rehearsed lines, failing to engage authentically with the journalist or audience. This over-reliance on scripting can undermine credibility and diminish the impact of even the most compelling messages.

A Cautionary Tale – this spokesperson had done his preparation but…

To illustrate this, we recall a particularly extreme example from a media assignment our lead trainer Guy undertook. He was invited to interview a government minister in Portugal. Leading up to the interview, Ihehad met one of his colleagues—a personable and approachable individual who was straightforward without being overbearing. He was genuinely looking forward to the meeting.

When the official entered the room, he was flanked by soldiers—nothing threatening, but a striking visual. He took his seat between two flags, and then, quite unexpectedly, opened a folder and launched into a pre-written speech, reading aloud to me in full. His PR representative, sitting beside Guy, visibly shrank at the spectacle.

Guy attempted to ask a few questions without being rude, but the minister continued reading his script with a smile, nodding politely as if it were a conversational exchange. When he finished, he shook Guy’s hand and left. Later, his PR team admitted they were as baffled as we were about what it was all supposed to achieve. The minister’s English was excellent, so it wasn’t a matter of language barrier or discomfort.

While this was an extreme case, it underscores a key point: journalists—and in fact, any audience—are rarely satisfied with overtly scripted interviews. Even without the soldiers, a rigid delivery can come across as disingenuous or disengaged.

Mastering, Not Memorizing

At our media training sessions, we emphasise the importance of mastering your key messages rather than memorising answers. Actors, for example, spend years honing their craft to sound natural—even when reading lines—so their delivery resonates as authentic. Most of us don’t share that training, and attempting to produce a perfectly rehearsed performance during an interview can backfire.

When a client delivers a rehearsed, robotic response, journalists quickly perceive a lack of engagement. This perception ramps up the pressure, prompting them to ask more challenging, unexpected questions to test the interviewee’s spontaneity and authenticity.

The Key Takeaway

Preparation remains vital—but it should serve as a foundation for confidence, not a script to recite. A well-prepared spokesperson should be able to navigate interviews with authenticity, drawing on their knowledge and core messages, and adapting to unexpected questions with ease.

If your organization invests in media training—either through our sessions or others—you’ll find that empowering your team to speak naturally about your brand will deliver far better results than forcing them into a scripted performance. Authenticity builds trust and rapport, qualities that no rehearsed answer can truly convey.

Conclusion

Remember, the goal of a media interview is genuine communication, not performance. Preparation should enable your spokespeople to articulate their points clearly and confidently, without sounding like they’re reading from a script. Whether it’s a press conference, an interview, or a one-on-one dialogue, authenticity will always resonate more effectively than robotic recitation.

If you’re interested in helping your team master the art of authentic communication, contact us to learn more about our tailored media training programs. Let’s ensure your executives not only know what to say but also how to say it with confidence and sincerity.

Why Internal Storytelling Doesn’t Always Travel

One of the challenges many PR professionals face is persuading clients that not every internal update makes a good media story. Announcements such as a new director of sales, a departmental restructure, or the launch of a new division can feel highly significant to those inside the organisation. But the wider world doesn’t always share that perspective.

If you’re writing for a niche trade publication, where readers may directly interact with the new team or product, storytelling like that may well resonate. In broader contexts, however, it’s often less compelling.

That’s why we encourage clients to use what we call the “window exercise.” Imagine standing by your office window and looking out onto the street. Internally, the announcement may feel vital. But if you were to stop a passer-by and explain it, why should they care? Too often, the honest answer is that they wouldn’t. Their reaction would likely be a shrug.

The Reverse Window Exercise: Finding Hidden Gems

This exercise isn’t just about tempering client enthusiasm. It’s also about uncovering stories that organisations overlook because they’re too close to their own work. Many businesses assume their day-to-day activities are routine or unremarkable. In fact, they may be sitting on powerful stories that only need reframing to shine.

A Case Study: Turning Dry Tech into a Tangible Narrative

Years ago, we worked with a company specialising in data compression – at a time when information had to be stored locally on devices rather than in the cloud. When asked about potential stories, the company insisted they had none. They could cite impressive compression ratios and technical statistics, but saw nothing newsworthy.

On further probing, however, they revealed that one of their largest clients was the US Navy. Their technology had enabled the Navy to take all ship blueprints and manuals – previously cumbersome, paper-based, and slow to access – and make them searchable on handheld devices.

This was a game-changer. Instead of crawling in and out of hazardous, hard-to-reach spaces multiple times to check instructions, engineers could carry everything with them. It saved hours, reduced risks, and made naval operations more efficient.

What the company saw as “just another contract” was, in reality, a story of innovation that saved time, money, and even lives. It was all in the storytelling – they assumed it was pretty routine. We didn’t.

Why PR Professionals Play a Crucial Role

This example underlines the value PR professionals bring when they step back and ask the right questions. Clients may fixate on what matters internally, but skilled communicators can spot the external hook – the part that connects to wider audiences and makes journalists sit up.

The window exercise works both ways:

Outward-facing: It helps curb unrealistic expectations when clients want coverage for something only meaningful inside their business.
Inward-facing: It helps uncover hidden gems – stories that clients assume are mundane but can be framed as innovative, impactful, or human-centred.

Top 3 Tips for PR Professionals

Use the Window Exercise Regularly
Ask: would a passer-by care about this story? If the answer is no, you may need to reframe it or accept it’s an internal comms piece.
Dig Beneath the Routine
Clients often undersell themselves. Probe gently with questions like: “Who benefits from this?” or “What’s the biggest change it has enabled?” The real story often emerges from impact, not process.
Translate Features into Human Benefits
Statistics and technical achievements may impress internally, but journalists and readers connect with outcomes. Always ask: how does this save time, money, or improve lives?

Final Thought

Every organisation has stories worth telling – but they’re not always the ones clients expect. As PR professionals, your role is to help them distinguish between internal milestones and external impact. By applying simple perspective-shifting exercises, you can guide them to craft narratives that resonate, inspire, and land with journalists.

The next time a client insists that a new hire or internal restructure deserves front-page coverage, invite them to look out the window – and then look inward. They may just find that their most compelling story is the one they never thought to tell.

The picture for this post is not an iceberg. Well, it’s not a complete iceberg. The fact is that icebergs are largely underwater so you can’t see them without the proper equipment. What we’ve got here is the tip of the iceberg. About one tenth of one.

You probably knew that but you will be thinking, never mind the pedantry and detail, that’s an iceberg. You’d be right. And yet loads of people still think that when they’re explaining things to the press, the thing to do is to explain all the detail they can. And the result is a confused journalist.

This is very frustrating if you work in PR. You spend ages pitching a story to journalists (maybe even after doing one of our courses, he hinted), you pare it down so it attracts attention and then your client does the human thing of trying to help with all the information they possibly can.

This is where that information can become garbled. The journalist may be a specialist in the client’s field but they may not (and even if they are, their skill will be in writing about it rather than being a practitioner). Their real specialism is in getting stories out of people and constructing a narrative.

So if your client has been working in their field for 20 years and the journalist asks them something, their instinct can be to try to impart everything they’ve learned in those two decades. This is actually going to be a lot for the recipient, who will be doing other interviews too, to take in and assimilate.

Pare it down

In our media training sessions we try help your client to cut down on what they deliver to journalists, podcasters and other stakeholders. If they can start with what sort of headline they’d like to see and work their way backwards from there, they are more likely to offer the important bits rather than every last detail.

Going into too much depth can come from a good place, it’s the client trying to be helpful. It’s just that when you’re talking to someone whose job is to report what’s happening in a condensed amount of words, keeping it simple and cutting out the unnecessary stuff is actually more use than the detailed version.

Basically we all know we can only see about ten per cent of an iceberg above the surface but if someone asks you to show them a picture of an iceberg you’ll show them something like the image we’ve used here. We can help get your clients to do the same – just show the journalist the iceberg.