Hillside Media Training

Anyone who has been in the full pelt of the British media knows that it is a formidable onslaught, as  John Furlong, CEO of the Vancouver Olympics, has discovered.  His bruising has left him dazed and blinking in camera headlights this week, confused why UK journalists want to write such ‘angry’ copy.

In the UK we seem to love the language of war. We are always ‘hitting out’ or ‘back’, having spokes people ‘attacking’ something or someone, or being in ‘conflict’. And this is not just since the  escalation of war, first in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan. As journalists we have gone over the years from being society’s watch dogs to its attack dogs. We simply can’t wait to get our canine teeth firmly into some flesh and we don’t care if its political or corporate.

Whether this level of aggression is justified does not detract from one fact:  the UK  media is still some of the best in the world. As our clients find, especially international ones, if you want tough questions asked and want to put any message testing or media training through the wringer then a UK  journalist/trainer is an awesome experience.

Our media might be hard-hitting ( there goes the attack dog writing again) but it’s razor sharp. It comes possibly thanks to a highly sophisticated print media  who’s bright tabloidy populist feel might look brash and trashy but always has its finger cleverly on the true British pulse. And has for many many generations. This enduring power should never be underestimated.

We don’t mind echoing the voice of our readers or audience and we don’t care if we put those in power under the microscope and champion questions on our audience’s behalf.  Sorry Mr Furlong – but it can be tough at the top.

Tears again on the TV sofa this week  as BBC Midlands journo, Ray Gosling, makes his amazing confession that he smothered his young, gay lover to death because he was in pain from AIDS. It has sent the euthanesia v murder debate into hyperdrive.

The rights and wrongs of this confession will grind on this week and it’s no surprise that the police are now investigating.  But what a bizarre media moment??

It is extraordinary that people choose the most public of platforms as though they want the most public of humiliation to assuage any guilt. Catharsis or what?

As Gosling this morning plunged into his public hand-wringing  BBC’s Mr Nice Guy cuddily Bill Turnbill looked increasingly uncomfortable with the mea culpa performance. Gosling for a TV journo seemed ill at ease with the surroundings too. It was strange seeing someone who was meant to be at ease with live TV make all the classic mistakes: shaking the presenter’s hands, thanking everyone profusely and leaping up off the sofa at the end without waiting demurely until ‘off-camera’ to be unclipped from the microphone.

Desperation had set in as he completed his self-enforced round of media confessionals. One almost expected to see the ‘boys in blue’ waiting for him in the wings.

How do big name businesses like Toyota and Eurostar still get communications so wrong in this highly sophisticated era of media onslaught? It is fascinating that these companies have possibly never practised a crisis day in terms of how to get the basic communications right. And if they did  – did their executives actually take on board the consultants’advice who probably talked them through the implications of what happens when it goes wrong?

Not to do a global product recall is a disaster. Remember Perrier Water? They recalled contaminated water bottles in the US but not in Europe. Sales went down the sink with the water and they lost market leadership of what was a multi billion $ market. This can be very costly as Toyota will discover.

How do you keep your hands on the steering wheel in a crisis and not end up in the buffers? Get trained by us! Check out our crisis training package.

TOP CRISIS TIPS

1. Have a clear chain of command who have all been media trained

2. Respond IMMEDIATELY – call a press conference & take control. Practise press conferences – they are an art-form!

3.  If it’s a faulty product  remove it worldwide – not in just one country – we live with GLOBAL media – other countries will learn about it online or on TV & wonder why you haven’t bothered with them – this is when the panic and distrust starts.

It starts with a low fever but over the next months will become rampant and out of control – general election campaigning is contagious and upon both us & Downing Street like a dose of political swine flu.

Soon we will all be begging for a vaccination as kills are notched up on political belts. Ex head of News of the World and Tory head of comms, Andy Coulson, is the current victim of this soon to spread viral campaign. As momentum grows and the police start fully investigating the bugging claims one wonders where this will end.

If the superstars decide that the spying on them was an obvious breach of human rights and start a class action Murdoch could rue the day he got involved with British media. Celebrities, politicians and chiefs like Elle Macpherson, John Prescott and Max Clifford have enough financial clout to ensure that the next scalp could even be the News of the World itself.

And all this comes as a possible revenge attack from Labour for the recent head of Labour’s Damian McBride demise over email slurs against senior Tories.

From now until May next year, if Gordon Brown waits to the bitter end to go to the country, this clash will become even fiercer. Ten months away and the fever is only just hotting up…

Last election there was no Twitter, no Facebook and no real internet viral campaigning – this time they will mean that election fever will be so in our face we will be begging for mercy.

Casualties?  Well, McBride and possibly Coulson might be wondering what has hit them. News of the World  is probably hoping this is a simple sore throat. The next few weeks will see if they’ve just caught a political cold or are suffering the potential fatal effects of full blown election campaigning.

Yes Andy Murray’s Wimbledon win was impressive but why wasn’t I glued to the set during the match? In fact I was driven to keep wandering out to find something else to do. There is a huge difference between what works on screen and what works in the flesh. Often some TV presenters you meet in the flesh are strangely plain but the camera loves them and they light the screen.

Poor old Murray is not blessed yet with on screen looks. He may be magnificent when you are actually there watching him in Centre Court but just why doesn’t he translate to the TV screen?

Like many people he or his PR team have not yet realised that any interview on radio and TV should be a managed, controlled performance. We producers are not looking for actors or automatons but real characters who look and sound passionate and enthusiastic. McEnroe and the other on air commentators can bleat on how great Murray is but we the audience can’t see it! When he speaks to the interviewer after the match, he breaks one of the cardinal rules of a good TV presence. Just look at his eye line. He looks away before he answers any question – the viewer interprets that as shifty or unsure. He has nervous tics which betray his unease even when he has just delivered a 3 straight set victory. For God’s sake, he should be on cloud 9.The adrenaline should still be flowing . But he scratches his head. He looks down. He even sounds defensive. Even more surprising, at the end of the interview when he thinks it’s all over his shoulders collapse and he appears awkward. He looks dare I say it –DEFEATED!

Come on Andy –  Today you were a winner. You need to look like one. What you need is some TV Training!!

BBC’s excellent recent series on the art of public speaking wheeled in the great and good to discuss top tips which, to be honest, have rarely changed since the Ancient Greeks who called the whole process Rhetoric. I have to admit I didn’t get to see all the episodes but was impressed by the odd snippets I caught and recommend you follow the link  below for some great advice http://www.bbc.co.uk/speaker/improve/.

Alastair Campbell’s fascinating contribution on Persuasion, (not the Jane Austen variety!), shown here, at least hits the strategy spot when it comes to PR campaigns. We find that most clients at the start of interview training completely forget the need for strategy and don’t even ask themselves one simple question: Why are we doing this??? You’ve got to plan what you want your audience to think or do about your message, or why bother?? You need to know exactly what you want to say and plan a strategy for making this message come alive. Watch BBC presenter Kate Silverton’s contribution on story-telling for a few ideas.

We often play in our media coaching workshops with what makes a good story. Like Kate, everyone when first asked this question comes up with ‘narrative’,  i.e beginning/middle/end but it is far more than that. Your story-telling needs characters (make sure you are the good guys in the story!), a setting (where is this happening) and some action (what’s happening!). There are several other aspects but if nothing else you’ve got to grab the audience right at the start with a great hook, or grabber as US readers call it, and back this hook with colour, as Campbell calls it, in other words, the stunning powerful imagery you should be choosing to bring your story-telling alive.

Click on the link here to our Public Speaking page for more ideas.

It’s official. The Emperor has no clothes on. The web of words, spun into some imaginary cloak covering the banking world has stitched us all up. 

And, arguably, we are here thanks to the war on common language being lost because comms teams have not been stricter with their bosses’ spin.

PR teams have to recognise the role they’ve played in creating the world’s biggest financial cock-up. As do several financial journalists.

We have lived in world of verbal dressing up with financial instruments such as leverage, arbitrage, collateralised debt obligations serving as smoke and mirrors. 

It is interesting how many bankers are coming out of the closet to admit they didn’t understand the terminology either. Of course they want to argue lack of comprehension means they can’t be blamed. But surely if you are in comms or a senior position it’s your job to make sure you understand.

I have found from years of advising and training international companies that the true experts can sum up their knowledge simply and in everyday language, often coupled with an innate love of their subject matter, passionately disseminated. 

Those who can’t explain succinctly tend not to truly understand and their ‘knowledge’ should be treated with caution. And we are not talking about dumbing down here, but about clarity. As Einstein said ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.’

And even now we are still letting them rummage in the ‘spin’ wardrobe for new dressing up words such as ‘quantative easing’.

You know a phrase has truly arrived into everyday speak when the Sun Newspaper gives it a special pull out section (Weds March 11). Shame this wasn’t done on other financial cover-up phrases.

And even before quantative easing (QE) was properly called printing money the Bank of England’s spin machine was working hard to deceive any journalist not tough enough to challenge its PR team, presumably in a bid to head off 1930’s nightmare images of Germans pushing banknotes in wheel barrows to buy a loaf of bread. And we all know where that economic disaster led to.

Best early attempt at a QE explanation was from the Daily Telegraph, the worst from a BBC girl who tried to tell the world it was something to do with tax cuts.

My favourite now is Market Consistent Embedded Values (MCEV’s) which is the latest Emperor’s New Clothes accounting hidey-hole in the Insurance world. No doubt another bit of corporate bollocks to stop prying eyes looking too deeply into the financial deficits lurking in this next sector to hit the fan.

I admire Yvette Essen, writing in the Daily Telegraph Monday March 9, playing boy pointing his finger at the naked emperor, when she rightly stated even that many figures in the insurance industry haven’t really got a clue what it means.

A incomprehensible phrase disguises what you really mean.  Combined with a bullying dose of corporate posturing not many PR professionals have the nerve to challenge the so-called experts and very few will have the guts to say they don’t understand.  Who wants to look stupid in the boardroom when you up against big guns?

If knowledge is power than many organisations know that language barriers are intimidating. It creates myth or code so that only those who understand the patois can be admitted to the inner sanctum. Many PR executives have to go along for the ride rather than risk being ostracised.

It takes guts to shout from the sideline but it’s time for the PR industry and journalists to be bold enough to challenge so-called experts to explain what they mean.

As in the fairy tale Emperor’s New Clothes, everyone plays along with the illusion until one small boy, usually a general nib journalist, with the job of explaining language to the general reader, points the finger and says: ‘the emperor’s wearing no clothes’.

Well now we see the global banking emperors are not only wearing no clothes but thanks to their greed taking the coats off all our backs.