training Archives - Clapperton Media

PR agencies large and small are under constant pressure to deliver results efficiently. Yet many teams find that one task quietly drains far more time and energy than they realise: ineffective media pitching.

For many agencies and in-house teams, the cycle is all too familiar. Drafts that don’t quite land. Endless rewrites. Promising stories that somehow never make it out of the inbox. Hours lost to a process that should take minutes, and opportunities slipping away simply because the initial pitch missed the mark. Journalists just don’t care, hence the shruggy image.

At Clapperton Media Training, this is exactly the problem our Pitch Perfect session is designed to solve.

An Investment in Skills — and in Efficiency

When PR managers send junior colleagues to our masterclasses, they’re not just supporting early-career development. They are strengthening their own pipeline. Stronger pitching skills mean fewer rewrites, fewer dead ends and fewer hours spent salvaging work that was never likely to succeed.

This isn’t just training. It’s an operational upgrade.

What Better Pitching Really Delivers

Our training helps delegates understand:

How journalists actually think — and what makes them respond.
What to cut from a pitch to avoid instant deletion.
How to spot weaknesses before the email is ever sent.
How to build long-term media relationships rather than chasing one-off wins.

The result?
Managers spend less time correcting and amending pitches. Success rates increase. Junior staff gain the confidence to craft smarter, tighter, more relevant story ideas. Teams become faster, sharper and more aligned with what journalists genuinely need.

A single story placement can be a success — but long-term relationships built on intelligent, relevant pitching are far more valuable. Our sessions are designed to help PR teams move from the former to the latter.

Upcoming Pitching Masterclass — 8 December

Clapperton Media Training still has places available on our 8th December morning and afternoon courses in London.

For agencies asking themselves where their time and energy are disappearing, this is often the most effective place to start.

For details, or to reserve a place, simply get in touch.

This morning I was halfway through a full day of media training — four delegates before lunch, five in the afternoon, all online. At one point, one of the delegates paused after a question and said:

“I’m glad you asked me that.”

He meant it. The question had landed right in his sweet spot, giving him the chance to shine.

Moments like that are great, but in truth they’re often a fluke. In real interviews, you can’t count on the journalist asking what your client wants to be asked.

That’s why, if you want to get the most value out of media training, the focus shouldn’t just be on the comfortable questions. PR professionals can add real impact by briefing trainers on the questions their clients don’t want to hear.

Start with the hard stuff

A simple but powerful exercise is to ask your client: “What do you really hope you’re not asked in an interview?” Once you have the answer, make that the starting point. Ask it in the training. Push them to answer. Refine the response. Ask it again. Repeat until they’re confident.

It might feel uncomfortable. The client might even leave the session thinking they’ve been put through the wringer. But that’s the point. A tough training room is infinitely better than being blindsided on live radio or TV.

Better tough now than unprepared later

Media training isn’t about rehearsing easy wins — it’s about preparing spokespeople for the moments that really matter. A well-handled difficult question can build trust and credibility far more than a polished soundbite ever will.

So next time a client asks you about media training, or even just about how an interview is likely to go, start here: what’s the one question they really don’t want to be asked? That’s where real preparation begins.

One of lead trainer Guy’s favourite games when training junior PR people to pitch to journalists, if not his absolute favourite, is to pull out his phone. He never knows what he’ll find because he’s looking at emails that have come in, often since the session started.

He has a look to see who’s been targeting well and whether there are any completely irrelevant pitches, stuff that he would never have written about in around 35 years of journalism (this doesn’t mean they’re poor products or whatever, just that he’s not the right journalist and never was).

So he thought he’d try the same trick just before recording a video and see what happened…