It’s out there just waiting to happen, or so we are led to
believe.
Come next summer, say the pundits, and the media explosion will be all
around us. We’ll be spoilt for viewing choice. The airwaves will be full
of new channels to zap. Now that digital terrestial television is being
unleashed, we will have more than 20 new channels along with our
existing five terrestial channels, while the cable channels on offer
could go from the present 50 or 60 to as many as 200.
It sounds like the PR person’s dream. More outlets than ever before to
project your client’s message over the airwaves. But Steve Powers, chief
press officer of the Cable Communications Association, tempers any
over-enthusiasm with a word of warning: ’There’s an enormous amount of
potential but we have to remember that all that goes on the airwaves
will not necessarily be new, and many channels could be used for
applications such as video on demand.’
There is no lack of enthusiasm from the media training industry, which
by all accounts is burgeoning at about the same rate as the new
media.
The prospect of every new channel appears to create fresh training
opportunities to enable clients to become more media-friendly.
Sarah Dickinson, managing director of media training company Electric
Airwaves, says that media trainers are busier than ever. Dickinson
believes that the media training industry has matured considerably - and
now needs and deserves its own trade association. The changing media
climate has forced trainers to sharpen up their act, says Dickinson.
’People used to put the training of media skills into separate boxes -
the interview, the make-up or the art of sitting. As a cosmetic
introduction, that is fine.’
But she maintains that the recent media explosion has demanded a broader
approach, involving message control rather than mere soundbite
delivery.
’If the client hasn’t taken the trouble to work out what the message is
going to be, then they certainly won’t get much benefit from their
interview.’
Dickinson argues that media trainers should be involved with the PR
practitioner and the client right at the beginning of the relationship
to hammer out the overall message.
’When media training was in its infancy, it would have been audacious
for a media trainer to contribute to what the PR policies of a company
should be,’ says Dickinson. ’However I am finding more and more that the
brighter PR people are pulling us in to work alongside clients to come
up with corporate messages and answers.’
Chris Loosemore, director of Ariel Communications, agrees that strategy
is more important than performance: ’There is no point being a fantastic
actor if you haven’t got a decent play,’ he says. But he adds a note of
caution about taking a broader approach to media training: ’Generally
people are doing a good job but there are a lot of cowboys out there.
Clients and PR people need to be wary about who they take on board. You
should check that your trainers have invested in training skills
themselves, understand the psychology of training and how to assess
their efforts.’
Communication consultant Michael Bland also has strong opinions about
the calibre of trainer on the market. His advice is to ignore the famous
name and settle instead for personal recommendation. ’When choosing from
a shortlist, make sure you ask for satisfied clients with whom you can
discuss the style and effectiveness of the training.’
It’s worth making the effort, says Bland, because media training really
matters. ’It doesn’t matter how sharp you are. If you don’t know the
techniques, you can be destroyed in an interview situation with a single
question.’
The Weber Group’s senior vice-president Doreen Thompson has worked as a
media trainer both in the UK and in the US, where multi-channel TV has
long been a way of life. She offers this advice: ’The British will have
to get used to the extra broadcast offerings and clients will need to
think differently. It’s very different from print as you have to explain
complex subjects in 30 seconds.’
Specialist media trainers aren’t the only ones participating in a media
training boom. Training is also impacting on the PR industry in a big
way. Burson-Marsteller’s three full-time trainers are all booked up
until the end of the year. Not only has B-M detected an increase in
demand but head of training Steve Ellis claims there has also been a
shift in emphasis towards cross-cultural training as clients for whom
English is their second language demand training in English.
Countrywide Porter Novelli has embraced the idea of training to the
point of introducing what it claims to be the first ever branded
training package - Newsreal. Client services director Chris Woodcock
says that as the media becomes more complex and new niche markets
emerge, so media training must also adapt to develop a better
understanding of both the politics and the structure of the media.
Woodcock claims that clients who buy into Newsreal benefit from the
one-stop-shop benefits. She explains: ’Training is integrated into the
client programme, so clients are working with people who know their
business idiosyncracies and pressures.’
While Burson-Marsteller and Countrywide develop their training
activities, what about other PR consultancies? How do they feel about
the media trainers’ assault on the board room? Are they not fearful of
their own power base?
’Not so,’ declares Scope Ketchum’s deputy chief executive Richard
Aldwinckle.
’We are certainly not living in fear of the media trainers. We currently
work with a number of them and we work as a team. This is the only way
to get the best out of everyone.’
As far as Aldwinckle is concerned, it is not the training techniques
that have changed but the recognition that training is needed in the
first place. ’The explosion in the number of media outlets is making an
impact on chairmen and chief executives. And the effect of the media
campaign during this year’s General Election has heightened the growing
consciousness of the media and its importance.’
Abacus PR meanwhile has opted for a two-pronged approach to media
training.
The company offers its own print media training packages to its clients
and buys in broadcast training services from outside. Sally Costerton,
divisional director of Abacus, says: ’Media training is expensive and
most clients won’t put everybody through full broadcast media training
course. But at a more basic print media level, they will take our
in-house package which spreads out the training much further.’
But in the rush to do broadcast media training in order to maximise the
corporate message and perfect the soundbite, perhaps the new broadcast
media is not as potent as everyone thinks. Some players, such as B-M’s
Ellis, remain sceptical about the future outcome. ’Television just
doesn’t have the power and influence it once had,’ he claims. ’Today
there isn’t the reaction there used to be. The movers and shakers are
reading newspapers and listening to radio. Companies who think it’s all
about television are sadly misdirected.’
Keith Elliot of PMA Training picks up the same scent. ’The broadcast
element of our work is really not substantial - and we are not usually
swamped by requests to broaden it out either.’ His company is
concentrating its energies on the other explosion that has taken a grip
- the Internet.
’Training for the Net and the print side of our business has expanded
100 per cent,’ he says.
The moral of the media explosion story, then, is that in the new age of
multi-channel proliferation, clients and PR practitioners have got to
get their corporate message right, not just the soundbite, while keeping
a close eye on non-broadcast media. Not only is the Internet on its way
up. Shock, horror, people still like to read.
MEDIA INTERVIEWS: TURNING THE TABLES ON TV INTERVIEWERS
Creating a soundbite is like fishing, according to Hugo Brooke, founder
of media skills training company Media Interviews.
’If you are fishing you put the bait on the bottom, and the same applies
to the language you use in media interviews,’ says Brooke. ’You hook the
viewer by talking to them personally rather than to the interviewer. You
then play them in by painting a picture to illustrate the point, and
bring the story alive by appealing to any of the senses by description
and analogy.’ Drawing on the skills of a range of broadcast journalists
including Jilly Carter, Barrie Penrose, Tom Mangold and Nick Clarke,
Brooke provides broadbased media consultancy. Like many in the industry,
Brooke says he is increasingly called upon to help clients define their
bottom line statement as part of his service. And in addition to media
crisis sessions, he also now runs ’incident management courses’. In an
interesting twist, he even worked for TV-am advising Ulrika Jonsson,
Lorraine Kelly and Kathy Taylor on how to handle the attentions of the
tabloid press.
Essentially a mobile unit, Brooke sets up an impromptu studio in
clients’ board rooms complete with digital cameras, but also regularly
utilises the TV and radio studios at the Confederation of British
Industry for his courses.
It was at the CBI that I recently experienced a head-to-head with ex-BBC
Nine O’Clock News reporter Barrie Penrose on spin-doctoring, engineered
by Brooke.
The session began with an insight into the pressure that a broadcast
journalist is under to produce good footage to a deadline. This was
followed by what amounted to a broadcast assertiveness course, in which
I was encouraged to quiz producers and presenters about the type of
programme that I was being asked to appear on, the line and the format
of questioning.
’The interviewer has come with an angle and is only interested in a
segment of what you have to say. So you have to come to the interview
with your own agenda,’ says Brooke. ’You have rights, you are vital to
the programme makers, so don’t let them do things that are unhelpful to
you.’
At the same time, he advised against aping the party political line of
seemingly ignoring a question, emphasising that if a question is asked,
it must be addressed, but can be turned to one’s own advantage and used
as a springboard for your own message.
Using one of his beloved analogies, Brooke likens a broadcast to social
interaction at a dinner table rather than a question and answer session
in a police cell. ’You don’t have to answer a stupid question, you
simply move the interviewer off into a more interesting area. They will
appreciate it,’ he says. ’But if you allow an untruth to pass
unchallenged, it will be taken as fact by the viewer,’ Brooke advises,
never relax at the end of an interview. ’Will Carling is not the only
unwitting interviewee to be caught out when he thought that the cameras
were no longer running. And always ensure that you have the last word -
if only to say ’nonsense’.’
Kate Nicholas
ARIEL: ADVOCATING THE COLOURFUL APPROACH
’It is important to be message-driven and not question-led,’ insists
Chris Loosemore, director of Ariel Communications. This is what he
coaches in his practical media training workshops, to encourage a
proactive rather than a defensive reaction to hostile questioning from
the media.
An ex-radio producer and presenter himself - having worked for the BBC
for ten years before setting up his own independent media training
company two years ago - Loosemore knows his way round a broadcast studio
and the tricks that broadcast interviewers use to catch their victims
out. The first rule, he says, is never say anything off the record
whenever there is a microphone in the room. You never know when the tape
is running.
When handling questions, he encourages his trainees to prepare a message
with two points they want to get across, and to take control of the
interview by telling a story. ’Other wise interviewers will put you into
a trap,’ he warns. ’It is important to paint an image rather than give a
dry rendition of the facts. So much is grey and you need a splash of
colour to make an impact and let interviewers take away a strong image
and a quotable quote.’
Loosemore runs his sessions in fully-equipped, broadcast-standard
studios, such as BBC Broadcasting House in London, to give clients a
feel for what a real broadcast interview would be like. And he insists
on using tutors who are still active, working journalists. ’Our tutors
are up-to-date in their knowledge of media practice and the latest
broadcast technology,’ he says.
In contrast with other media trainers who are aiming to develop their
roles into areas of corporate policy, Loosemore warns that this could be
dangerous if they do not have the required PR skills.
’You can teach someone to play an instrument but not to choose their
repertoire. You can teach the fingering and breath control but you can’t
tell them what to play. Clients should first figure out what they have
to say and I’ll teach them how to say it effectively and how to present
it,’ he says.
’If trainers move onto corporate policy issues and advise clients on how
to manage themselves as a corporate entity as well as giving them media
training then they can’t do both effectively. Media training providers
will say yes to everything because they want the business.’
A WINTLE’S TALE: BOGGED DOWN IN A CRISIS
A complaining culture has developed in this country which cannot be
ignored, stresses Frank Wintle, who set up media training organisation
Pan Media four years ago after a career in newspapers, radio and TV.
’Some may call it democracy but whatever it is, those same aggrieved
people have access to an abundance of airwaves and forums,’ he says.
On the Internet, broadcast consumer programmes, or in newspapers,
businesses are more accountable than ever before. Wintle maintains that
the corporation which survives is the one which takes itself the most
seriously.
When training companies to handle complaints and crises, the key word is
preparation. In a recent training session Wintle set me an uncomfortable
scenario. I am the press officer for a building company which has sold a
house to a young couple with small children. Months later they sit there
on the building site in splendid isolation. What’s more, recent storms
have turned the ground into a quagmire and their water supply is
brown.
The BBC’s Watchdog is on its way and Frank wants to know what I am going
to do.
In the face of questioning, I blether about the human interest dilemma
of the young couple and the school run and wet feet. Wrong. No time for
such sentiment. It’s time I spoke to the chief executive. Oh, and I’m to
drop the human sympathy bit and talk bottom line.
According to Wintle, good companies will have the communications person
on the board who will instantly be able to present to the board the
financial implications of the crisis. He insists that knowing what you
are going to do to avert the crisis and having your plan of action is
more important than what you go out and say.
In an ideal world, the media messenger should be senior enough to take
the flak, but not necessarily the chief executive if he or she isn’t
user friendly or doesn’t sound credible. ’You are to be wheeled out as
the villian. The person chosen has got to come over as the authoratitive
figure who can act,’ says Wintle.
Then there is the performance to the media. ’Stand up straight, say what
has happened, express regret and then say what you are going to do.’ He
turns to me and becomes a ruthless hack hellbent on getting an answer
about the couple and their children. ’How could you lie to these
people?’ he demands. ’How could you let this happen?’ Words fail me
completely.
Perhaps I will stick to the day job a little longer and leave crisis
management to the professionals.
