Who is this service for?

Often working alongside public relations agencies, we help executives up to and including the C-suite prepare for media interviews to ensure they are productive and the executive's voice is heard. We also help executives preparing to deliver keynote speeches and our value goes beyond this as many of the skills are transferrable to other stakeholders.

What actually happens?

A team often including an experienced journalist and a camera expert will offer input and advice on what journalists, podcasters and other media professionals will need. The core of the sessions, however, is a practical interview session under lights and playback/feedback on the spot. We do this at least twice.

How long does it take?

A basic half-day session will take three and a half hours for up to three delegates.

How much does it cost?

Costs vary but a three-person half-day session will cost £2320 plus VAT. This excludes travel. Extras can include the hire of premises or indeed a full-blown TV studio if required.

What is your catchment area?

We are based in London but over the last couple of years we've worked in Greece, Bahrain and elsewhere. Just ask – we can probably make it work!

public relations Archives - Page 5 of 6

Sometimes a media training session will leave you uncomfortable. As trainers we might have to tell you that you’re talking nonsense. On one occasion lead trainer Guy was called in precisely because the PR company involved thought their client needed to hear it.

Client confidentiality still applies so there will be no names here. The company offered a variety of legal forms online.

During the first dummy interview Guy asked who the service was aimed at.

The directors explained it was aimed at everybody. Everybody would need a form at some point.

OK, said Guy. But nothing is aimed at everybody.

“You just don’t get it,” came the reply. “We can aim this at everybody because everyone needs a legal form at some point.”

Media training and reality

He didn’t resolve that issue to his satisfaction and the client didn’t listen which was a shame, because the concept itself was good. Sadly the client wouldn’t listen to the question so they missed out.

Here’s the thing. The fact that a product or service could in theory apply universally doesn’t mean that’s going to happen in reality.

Let’s take food as an obvious example. If we don’t eat, we die. This is why companies like Tesco employ well over 300,000 people according to Statista (the actual number may fluctuate but we can agree “loads”). A quick Google suggests around 100,000 people fewer work for Sainsbury’s but it’s still a vast number.

Even with that many people and providing something as essential as food, however, neither company believes it sells to literally everybody. Of course those numbers don’t reflect the people in marketing but those numbers will be significant too.

So we get back to Guy’s client with the 30-odd staff in total, believing the team could and would sell to literally everybody. No journalist or other media professional would take that seriously. The marketing wouldn’t stack up, the website would almost certainly crash because of the sheer numbers and for all sorts of other reasons “everybody” can’t be a client unless you’re in central government. The PR company that commissioned Guy actually asked him to make this point because they’d tried and the client didn’t listen to them either. The underlying problem was that the client wanted the PR function and media to amplify the message unchallenged.

This isn’t how it works at best. If you get a media trainer in, it’s really worth listening. A good one won’t help you formulate and articulate just any old thing. They’ll test your message, prod it and find holes. It’s a friendly face doing it rather than a hostile journalist who’s going to go away and write.

It’s a very valuable exercise but only if you’re going to listen. We’re here to help – if you’re in PR and your client needs putting through their media paces, we’d love to hear from you – click here for our contact page.

You know when they told you at school that in an exam you should include the question within the body of your answer? Here’s why it works in media interviews too.

Guy Writes: I’ve been editing the next edition of my podcast, the Near Futurist, and if I say so myself it’s a good one. I take little credit, the interviewee was engaging and really knew his stuff – but I have had to eliminate fillers to make him sound better.

Let’s put it another way: he was one of those people, who, typically of speakers for the last ten years or so, started almost every response with “so”. It’s a good filler to eliminate and it’s worth explaining why.

Eliminate some fillers

First I should make my view clear. “Eliminate fillers” isn’t an absolute command. You can’t take out every “umm” and “aah” and nor should you; if you answered a journalist or podcaster in an interview and got rid of all of them you’d sound unnatural. Most listeners would assume you were reading from a script and that’s never good.

Unless they’re excessive, then. most fillers can stay. There’s an exception though, and that’s “so”. The reason is straightforward: it can actually end up damaging your answer.

I should explain.

Eliminate fillers at the beginning of an answer

Most people who use “so” other than as a conjunction to link two clauses (“I did a big workout so I am tired” is fine) will use it to start an answer to a question. As a journalist I might ask how a company takes its products to the market and the answer might be “So we find the indirect channel works best for us”.

Now ask yourself: would that be stronger or weaker without “So”, as a standalone answer? To me the answer is simple – “so” takes the edge off. In my podcast I’ll try to get rid of it as often as possible and we’ll come to the practicalities in a second. First it’s worth looking at why people use it.

It’s better than “Umm…”

The subhead gives you my best answer. People start with “so” because they feel they have to start speaking immediately and they don’t want to begin “umm…”. In either case it wouldn’t be a comment on their subject knowledge. They just want a second to think and are terrified of silence.

Here’s the big secret: I can cut silence whilst editing my podcast. Radio and TV interviewers can do the same and there’s never any need to worry in a written interview.

But if I’m going to cut it out anyway, where’s the harm? Here’s when it becomes difficult.

An inconvenient stop

“So” tends to flow into the next word. If you start your interview “So I did such and such” and I try to cut “So” out, it can end up sounding like “why did such and such”.

It makes no sense and the listener will soon sort it out in their head but consciously or otherwise they will be distracted. This is why you don’t want “so” at the beginning of an answer – it can make the next word, once “so” is cut off, sound as if it’s starting abruptly. This is why starting with “so” can actually damage your quote; it will sound less natural when it’s removed.

The alternative is better.

I don’t mind listening to you thinking

Your instinct is to start speaking immediately so nobody ends up with silence on their broadcast or podcast. That’s considerate but as we’ve established, we can deal with that. Anyway you don’t work for us, you want to ensure your point is clear and well-made. So here’s what you do.

You take a second. You gather yourself and you think “I’m going to start here and finish there” and then you answer. The result will be the same answer you were going to give – media training is not about lying or removing an honest view from a quote – but better. You’ll have a strong start and a strong finish because you’ve taken a second to plan it.

It’s not a natural technique. We tend to launch into answers immediately, talk over each other a little, stop and start again. It takes getting used to.

It’s more useful to you, though, than starting everything with “so”. If you can get rid of that habit it will pay you handsomely.

Need a hand with your presentation or media interview skills? We can help – email Lindsay and she’ll set us a time for an initial chat.

Newsjacking is something you’ll have seen. You might not be aware of the term but you’ll be familiar with the principle. You take a current event and you twist whatever announcement you want to make to fit it.

There was a lot of it about a couple of years ago. Journalists had press release after press release that would start “As we emerge from Covid…” or “In these difficult times”.

You can see why people do it. They want to seem current and relevant and newsjacking is a good way to do it. Today (Wednesday 19th July 2023 just to date this piece when you read it) we’ve read one person’s newsletter/tip sheet that includes leadership tips taken from Novak Djokovic’s tennis style. There are still a lot of people making tenuous links to Ukraine when they write about leadership or adversity.

Lighter examples might seem less risky. A few weeks back speakers were talking about wheeling out your best stories rather than relying on the new stuff and linking it to Glastonbury. We were almost tempted to suggest blur made quite a statement by kicking off their Wembley gigs (where our lead trainer Guy took the picture at the head of this blog, you might have wondered about its relevance) with a song from the new album rather than playing it safe.

There is a drawback to newsjacking though. It’s what stopped us.

Newsjacking needs to stand out

When we go into one of our regular clients to help with their new intake of PR people our focus is to help with pitching skills. One of the exercises we do is to get people to read out a pitch they’ve sent to journalists, which we then critique.

A year ago or so most of the pitches started off, as we’ve outlined above, with something about Covid.

This will have seemed an excellent idea when the writer was putting it together. It drew on shared experience. Everyone went through it. Everyone had a view. In the same way, maybe not everyone is a tennis fan but most people will have been aware of the Wimbledon tournament. So these young PR people set about relating their pitches to emerging from Covid…

…and in doing so threw all of their chances of standing out away with a few keystrokes. Sitting on the other side – and Guy still produces his podcast (relaunching in September, thanks for asking) so he does get pitches – we’d seen about five “Covid” pitches before we’d even come into the office.

Likewise if you scan Linkedin from the last couple of days you’ll find quite a bit on tennis. In a few weeks’ time as the women’s football world cup enters the more advanced stages you can expect to see a lot about teamwork. Extended cricketing metaphors are going to abound over the next few days.

And from the journalist’s point of view all of these pitches are going to look the same. None will stand out.

It’s like a game of chess (we are enjoying our tenuously-linked images today). You might think of a move that looks good to you. You might think “That’s good enough, it’ll do”. Only…everyone else will have anticipated it. Your story, no matter how good, is just going to look like one of the many. So, as you might if you wanted to improve your chess, look critically at your first move or first draft of your pitch – and if it looks too samey, see if there’s a better one.

Details of our pitching masterclass for public relations executives are on this link.