Mr. Media Training

Editor’s Note: Brad Phillips is taking two weeks off to celebrate the arrival of his new son. This guest post is by Dave Nagle, a senior communications analyst for the public relations company Vox Optima.

Pick an issue…any issue. (Go ahead, I’ll wait.)

Odds are, you have an opinion about that issue. It’s also a good bet that someone else (and for that matter, a whole bunch of someone elses) has an opinion about it too. Those opinions probably fall on one side of the spectrum or the other, or in one of several places in between. That issue might be an emotionally-charged one, which means emotionally-charged opinions.

Oh, and if it’s a political issue? Hoo-boy….

The news cycle is chock full of coverage of issues with many talking heads expressing opinions about said issue. The more emotionally-charged the issue, the more emotionally-charged the opinions. Some of them are … shall we say … EXTREMELY passionate.

PR pro Dave Nagle

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with being extremely passionate, until it turns into a lot of screaming and shouting and foaming at the mouth. If they were looking to make a point or change a perception, in my opinion, they failed. Miserably.

There’s the old adage “never let emotion cloud your judgment.” For the sake of this discussion, let me modify that adage to “never let emotion trip up your message.”

Depending on the topic or issue, it’s hard to separate yourself from the emotion. I get that. We’re human beings; we have emotions. It’s only natural. But first and foremost, the goal in any interview is to effectively communicate your message, based on facts. Whether you’re the one communicating or preparing someone else to deliver the message, the desired effect is to make your point clearly and effectively in order to support or defend your position or strengthen or alter perceptions about your organization. An interview filled with rabid hyperbole and a lot of screaming and shouting does nothing to make your point. In fact, not only is your point lost, but you also run the risk of supporting the opposite point.

But to be clear, I’m not advocating completely checking your emotions at the door or switching them off like the android Data could in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Sometimes, during an interview, emotions have their place. But the emotion must SUPPORT your message; it cannot BE the message. Emotions don’t last long. And then what are you left with?

Oh, and don’t try to fake emotion either. People are smart. They’ll see right through you—and then tune you out. So when preparing for that interview, consider the following:

1. 1. What point am I trying to make?
2. 2. How do I make my point clearly and factually?
3. 3. Is a degree of emotion appropriate? If so, does it SUPPORT my message?
4. 4. Is my emotion genuine, or am I faking it?

Remember, never let emotion trip up your message.

Dave Nagle, a senior communications analyst for the public relations company Vox Optima, has more than 20 years of expertise in defense industry, international and national public relations consulting, crisis and strategic communication planning, media relations, media training, and writing. He can be reached at david.nagle@voxoptima.com.

Have the best of the blog delivered to your inbox twice per month! Enter your name in the box on the upper right of the blog to join our mailing list.

There’s an unfortunate reality of doing interviews. Sometimes, reporters just don’t know the story.

Take, for example, this interview. After running celebrity Mo Farah — a two-time Olympic gold medalist — won the New Orleans Rock n’ Roll Half Marathon, setting a course record, WDSU anchor LaTonya Norton interviewed him as if he was new to competitive running, asking him, “Haven’t you run before?”

What can you learn from this exchange? Clearly, Norton had no idea that Farah is a running world-record holder, even though a simple Google search would have clued her in. It would have been easy for Farah to embarrass the anchor and expose her lack of knowledge about the sport and him. However, Farah handled the disastrous interview gracefully and thus came out looking better for it.

Here’s what you should remember when dealing with reporters who just don’t get it:

1. 1. Remember that patience with reporters in non-confrontational situations will always make you look better. Even though he’s a star in the running world, Mr. Farah resisted the urge to embarrass Ms. Norton. It was the kind thing to do. The race was on a weekend, and local news outlets are notoriously light-staffed on weekends. That doesn’t make the reporter’s ignorance of Mr. Farah acceptable, but it might partially explain it. At the end of the day, Farah appeared gracious and classy.
2. 2. If you do find yourself in a challenging interview and the reporter doesn’t know the story, don’t be afraid to politely correct his or her wrong premises. Phrases like “That’s not necessarily the case” or “Actually, what we’re seeing is” will help you correct the reporter’s wrong assertions without making you look condescending or rude. 
3. 3. Unknowledgeable reporters can be your friends. Sure, it can be really frustrating to do an interview with a reporter who doesn’t know the story. However, that reporter is a blank slate and thus an opportunity. You can spend your time talking about only your most important messages without having to compete with his or her already existing points of view.

A grateful h/t to my terrific running coach, Chris Sloane, for sharing this interview.

Want more media tips? Follow me on Twitter @PMRChristina. 

This is an excerpt from my new book, The Media Training Bible: 101 Things You Absolutely, Positively Need to Know Before Your Next Interview, now available in soft cover and all major e-book formats.

Few people can compose captivating sound bites in a single sitting. Don’t give up. You can develop media-friendly sound bites.

Great sound bites are all around you. Listen closely during conversations with friends and colleagues. What are intended as throwaway comments during casual banter often contain a gem worth saving—so keep pen and paper nearby to record the unexpected gold.

Marcia Yudkin, the “Head Stork” of Named At Last, a naming and tagline development company, came up with 17 tips to help spokespersons create memorable sound bites. I highly recommend her ebook The Sound Bite Workbook. Among other ideas, she advises spokespersons to brainstorm a list of keywords related to their topic area, look in a thesaurus for unexpected word options, and identify relevant homophones.

Below, you’ll find 10 types of sound bites the media regularly quote, along with examples for each. (Thanks to Marcia for her help with this list.)

1. 1. Similes, Metaphors, and Analogies: “It’s as if Republicans and Democrats are planning a trip, but they disagree over whether you should start the trip from Buenos Aires or Greenland.” – Howard Gleckman, Tax Policy Center
2. 2. Triples: “We help ordinary people get rich without working on Wall Street, inheriting wealth, or marrying a millionaire.”
3. 3. Rhetorical Questions: “More than 600,000 Americans lost their jobs last month. How many more families need to lose their economic lifeline before Congress acts?”
4. 4. Contrasts, Conflicts, or Paradoxes: “Our food is fresh. Our customers are spoiled.” – FreshDirect, online grocer
5. 5. Definitiveness or Power: “We are in this to win.” – Gen. David Petraeus
6. 6. Superlatives: “This is the biggest technological advance in 50 years in the oil business.” – Philip Crouse, oil analyst
7. 7. Pop Culture: “There’s a greater likelihood that I’ll be asked by Madonna to go on tour as her bass player than I’ll be picked to be on the ticket.” – Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR), assessing his chances of becoming Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate in 2012
8. 8.  Emotions: “As a New Yorker, I am absolutely horrified by what happened in my city last night.” – Commenter on Daily Kos website about alleged police brutality at a local protest
9. 9. Surprise Twist: “I will not exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” – President Ronald Reagan, diffusing accusations that he was too old for a second term
10. 10. Tweaked Clichés: “Money doesn’t grow on trees, but it does grow faster in credit unions without those greedy big-bank fees.”

The Media Training Bible is available from Amazon here and for the Kindle here. For other eBook formats and to read free sample lessons, click here.

Editor’s Note: Brad Phillips is taking two weeks off to celebrate the arrival of his new son. This guest post is by Amanda Jones, a social media analyst for the public relations company Vox Optima.

It’s the day before the critical media interview or big meeting with your CEO, fellow employees or even worse, a client. You are going over last-minute details of your talking points or presentation. You think you have it all together, and you feel great.

Soon, it is the day of the big event, you are – again – going over the last-minute loose ends, and you’re ready to nail the interview or land this new opportunity. Sounds great?

Sounds great until, well, it isn’t. Someone asks a question you didn’t think of, gets you off track, and you lose your train of thought.

You panic.

PR pro Amanda Jones

Suddenly all of your preparation evaporates. This is probably because you didn’t practice presenting all your material, or you didn’t practice it all enough! As Brad Phillips mentions in section eight of his book, “The Media Training Bible,” it’s all about the research, the preparation and the practice. Like anything else in life, practice makes perfect. Whether learning a new language, riding a bike, or doing media interviews and presentations, you get better with time.

So maybe you’re wondering, “How can I possibly take time every day to practice perfect media strategies? I don’t have time for that!” You don’t necessarily have to spend hours a day on new techniques and methods, but asking a few simple questions after each conference call, meeting, or brainstorming session can make the difference at the next interview or presentation:

1. 1. Ask yourself what you could have explained better
2. 2. Ask yourself what you left out
3. 3. Ask a mentor or coworker what you could have done better
4. 4. Keep a journal of your personal ideas and questions, and take it a step further by jotting down great ideas you see from others

Actively seeking out ways to improve your delivery and presentation skills builds a better you and helps you grow into a better media professional. By constantly challenging yourself and practicing solid techniques, you’ll get those wheels turning in your mind to not only improve your strategy but also to start thinking strategically more often.

Keep practicing, and soon you’ll find yourself more confident and successful — while avoiding those awkward-panic moments.

Amanda Jones, a social media analyst for the public relations company Vox Optima, has more than seven years of expertise in communications and marketing. With experience in front of the camera, behind the camera, in print, marketing, and PR, Amanda is a true traditional and social media junkie. She can be reached at amanda.jones@voxoptima.com.

Have the best of the blog delivered to your inbox twice per month! Enter your name in the box on the upper right of the blog to join our mailing list.

This is an excerpt from my new book, The Media Training Bible: 101 Things You Absolutely, Positively Need to Know Before Your Next Interview, now available in soft cover and all major e-book formats.

According to Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard University, “Stories are the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s rhetorical arsenal.” Yet most people struggle to think of compelling stories that reinforce their messages.

That’s usually because they’re trying to think of a “big” story. In order to help people get unstuck, I tell them to think smaller. I encourage them to think of a single customer whose life was improved because of their product or a community that is enjoying the benefits of a new public school.

A story can be many things: your personal experience with a person, place, thing, or topic; somebody else’s experience; case studies in the news; or a historical or fictional example.

Take this message from a few lessons ago:

“By investing in infrastructure today, we will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, resuscitate the manufacturing sector, and build world-class highways that last for generations.”

A “story” to go with that message might say:

“The owner of one steel factory in Pennsylvania told me that his company is on the verge of bankruptcy, but that this bill would keep his factory open and his 200 workers employed. Plus, he said it would be nice to finally be able to build roads that don’t fall apart after every snowstorm!”

The message itself likely didn’t help you create a clear mental picture, but the story probably conjured up images of a factory floor, steelworkers, or potholed roads. Good stories do exactly that: they bring abstract messages to life through more tangible examples.

In Made to Stick, authors Chip and Dan Heath identified three types of “story plots” that are most commonly used to energize and inspire others. If you’re having a difficult time thinking of stories, these plots may help you brainstorm:

1. 1. The Challenge Plot: A protagonist overcomes a challenge and succeeds; examples include David vs. Goliath and rags to riches stories.
2. 2. The Connection Plot: A story about people who develop a relationship that bridges a gap; examples include racial, class, ethnic, or demographic differences.
3. 3. The Creativity Plot: A person makes a mental breakthrough, solves a long-standing puzzle, or attacks a problem in an innovative way.

Case Study: Hurricane Mitch Strikes Honduras

When Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras in 1998, thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands were left homeless.

By the time ABC News anchor Ted Koppel made it to the Honduran capital, the magnitude of the hurricane had already been widely reported. He knew a show highlighting the number of deaths wouldn’t add much to the story.

While walking around the city, he came across a man holding a shovel in a debris field. Koppel asked what he was digging. “My house used to be here, and it was destroyed,” the man said. “But I built the front door of my house with my own hands, and damn it, I want it back.”

That poignant moment became the centerpiece of a program called “The Door.” The show focused on that man – who he was, what had happened to him, and what he was planning to do next. By telling that small story well, the audience was able to extrapolate and understand the much larger disaster.

The Media Training Bible is available from Amazon here and for the Kindle here. For other eBook formats and to read free sample lessons, click here.

I recently came across an article offering “15 Tips for Media Training Success” by Arthur Solomon, a PR pro with more than three decades of experience. His list is chock full of solid advice, including:

2. Keep in mind that the great majority of reporters are cordial people who are not out to harm you. They just want to get a story that will satisfy their editors and go home to their family.

7. Just because a reporter puts away a notebook or turns off a tape recorder doesn’t mean the interview is over and you can say anything without it being used.

15. And most important, never lie to a reporter.

But I disagree with one piece of advice he dispensed, and wanted to explore that point further here.

Should you ever say something negative about your competition?

In his point number ten, Mr. Solomon wrote:

10. Never say anything negative about an individual or company.

I suspect I know what he’s saying. If you say something negative about an individual or a company, you can be almost guaranteed that the reporter will use that quote, drowning out everything else you said in your interview.

But what if you want the reporter to say something negative about a company or individual? For example, consider the story I wrote recently about a woman who wanted the company that owned a neighboring property to cut down a dangerous tree. By mentioning the company’s name, she introduced conflict into the story; since conflict is catnip for reporters, the story got coverage.

Or consider Slacker Radio, a small Internet radio company that knocks Pandora Radio, a much larger competitor, in its ads? Or the search engine Bing, which names Google in its commercials? Or Samsung’s epic ads that mock iPhone users (below)?

Or, more famously, let’s say you’re the number two soft drink brand hoping to siphon some sales from the number one soft drink brand. Pepsi has used the “Pepsi Challenge” for a brilliant series of ads since the 1970s—and it wouldn’t have worked if Pepsi didn’t show Coke’s brand in the ad. (Readers of a certain age will enjoy seeing Welcome Back, Kotter’s Gabe Kaplan in the ad below.)

I would modify Mr. Solomon’s advice slightly: Never say anything negative about an individual or company unless doing so is pre-planned, deliberate, and consistent with your communications strategy.

What do you think? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Imagine that you work for a small nonprofit organization dedicated to helping women who have been the victims of domestic abuse in your community.

As much as you’d like to help everyone affected by domestic abuse, your organization runs on a tight budget and has a specific mission to offer support services only to women and girls who live within the city limits. So when an abused 14-year-old boy who lives just blocks outside of your city’s borders approaches your group for help, you have to turn him away.

Naturally, you offer him a referral for other groups that may be able to help him. You may even offer to make calls on his behalf. But when the boy shares his grueling story to a reporter and claims you refused to help him, your organization is suddenly cast as the most unpopular group in town.

I’ve worked with many groups in a similar situation—and their instinct far too often is to offer an answer heavy on facts but light on humanity. In this situation, a typical spokesperson might say:

“Since the Sunshine Society is a women’s-only facility, we’re unfortunately unable to offer help to men. We offered to help this young man by connecting him with another group that works with men, and we are still willing to do everything we can to help him.”

But that statement is a bit cold and lacks the humanity many of us would hope for from an organization approached by an abused child. When I work with clients facing similar situations, I coach them to bring their humanity to the forefront and say something more like this:

“It breaks my heart that we’re not equipped to bring this young man into our facility. It’s moments like these that I wish we had a separate building in which we could house young men who need our services. But I have personally pledged to do everything I can to help him, and I sincerely hope he’ll take me up on that offer. To begin, I’d like the opportunity to personally accompany him to an appointment with a boy’s facility that has the capacity to give him the help he needs and deserves.”

The public tends to understand sensible policies—but they don’t forgive organizations that respond coolly to people in need. As an example of a cold response that lacked humanity, watch this interview featuring Nancy Brinker, the co-founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. (Click here if you need a refresher on the Komen crisis before watching.)

 Is your executive team long overdue for a media training session? Please contact us to learn more about our customized media training workshops.

I recently provided media training to a man who deals with a few controversial issues in his line of work.

When we sat down to do a mock interview, he answered the more straightforward questions with relative ease. But when I began asking him about some of the particularly thorny issues he contends with, I noticed that one of his hands began to shake.

As a journalist, that change in his body language signaled something important to me. It told me that he was uncomfortable with the more difficult topic—and that he might have been hiding information from me.

As it turns out, I read the situation completely wrong.

The man shared with me that he has Parkinson’s disease. Although his increased stress level could have resulted in tremors, there’s a chance that his hands would have started shaking anyway.

So he asked a question I’ve never been asked before: “Should I tell reporters that I have Parkinson’s?”

After pausing for a moment, I answered that he should. Journalists occasionally report on an interview subject’s body language—and without knowing about the man’s disease, they too could form an incorrect conclusion.

I’d offer a caveat for high-profile executives of companies where continuity is an issue (Apple’s Steve Jobs comes to mind). In his case, information about his medical prognosis would have been deemed newsworthy—and reporters would likely have included that information in their stories.

But in my client’s case, there’s no compelling reason to include his personal medical record in a news story. And I suspect that most journalists would allow him to redo a take in which his tremors were particularly noticeable.

What do you think? Would you have offered him the same advice, or would you have encouraged him to keep his disease private? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.