Monday Morning Media Minute

What do car leases and winemaking franchises have in common?

They’re featured on the front page of the business section of Sunday’s Denver Post.  And they’re good examples of trend stories — a great way to make news that often gets overlooked by people looking for ways to get attention for their story.

According to the Post, car leases are becoming harder to get and more expensive.  And it says winemaking franchises are a “fast-growing industry trend” that’s started to take hold in Colorado.

An editor once told me his newspaper loves trends and added, only half jokingly, “a trend is anything with at least three plot points.”  My experience is that most news organizations love trends.  They love them even more if you can help them tell their audience how to take advantage of it or avoid being hurt by it.

One nice thing about many trend stories is that you can use data your organization has that no one else can duplicate.

An example I often quote in workshops is State Farm, which gets huge news coverage every year with its list of the 10 most dangerous intersections in the United States.  They”re almost guaranteed coverage in every city with an intersection on the list.  And they localize the story even further by releasing lists of the 10 most dangerous intersections in individual states.  They’re also virtually guaranteed coverage in every city with an intersection on those lists — which translates into stories all over the country.  Information for the releases comes entirely from claims filed by the State Farm clients.

And someone from State Farm often gets quoted giving advice for how to avoid accidents.

What trends are there in your industry that you can turn into a story?

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

Do you find the presidential polls as interesting as I do?

At the beginning of this year, Hillary Clinton was the odds-on favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination and John McCain was broke, his campaign on life support and most people — including me — thought he was done.

And just a few months ago Barack Obama looked like a shoo-in for the White House.  He may still get there, of course, but he’s not looking like a shoo-in right now.

I’m not going to offer any political predictions.  I’ll leave that to the pundits.

But I think the ever-changing dynamics of the political polls are a reminder of two important lessons for those of us who practice public relations.

Lesson 1:  Telling your story effectively is a marathon, not a sprint.  The news release you issued yesterday was a resounding success with coverage beyond your wildest dreams?  Congratulations.  But your job isn’t done.  Your audience won’t even begin hearing your message until you’ve said it so many times you’re sick of it.  So, if you’ve got a story to tell that you really want the rest of us to hear, you need to keep telling it.  The same is true for your setbacks.  They hurt.  But one setback — or even a series of them — won’t decide the final outcome unless you let it.

Lesson 2:  If you don’t tell your story, no one else will do it for you.  I’m constantly puzzled by how many companies either don’t tell their story at all or water it down to take all the sizzle out of it because they’re afraid “something” will go wrong.  Telling your story effectively will often mean you’ll get pushback from your opposition or your critics.  But they don’t even have to bother pushing back if you’re not pushing forward.  Successful candidates — and other successful communicators — start every day with the goal of controlling the message for that day.  Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don’t.  But you can’t succeed without trying.  And you can’t get anyone to hear your story if you don’t tell it over and over.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

Last week I listed eight common interview mistakes.  Here are eight things you can do to make your interviews more successful:

1. Have a clear objective: Know what you want to happen as a result of talking to this reporter.  A “positive” story isn’t specific enough.  Why are you talking to this reporter?
2. Have a clear message: Be able to repeat it in 15 seconds or less.  Not because of soundbites (most of them are shorter than that), but because if you can’t say your message in 15 seconds or less you haven’t made it simple enough and clear enough for the rest of us to hear it, understand it and remember it.
3. Talk to your audience: Everybody’s favorite subject is me.  Know what you want to accomplish, but talk about it in terms your audience will care about.  I’m less interested in a story about you than I am in a story that’s useful to me.
4. Be responsive: Answer the reporter’s questions unless there’s a good reason why you can’t — the answer’s confidential or you don’t know the answer, for example.
5. Be honest: Real honesty involves some transparency.  Saying things that are literally true, but misleading, isn’t being honest.  You probably don’t want to share your deepest, darkest secrets with reporters.  But sometimes conceding a small, obvious flaw buys you more credibility for the points you really care about.
6. Be yourself: What you say is important.  How you say it is, too.  You don’t have to be “polished” or a great orator as long as you’re believable and likable.  For most people that means being yourself.
7. Get to the point: Deliver your punch line first, then add the supporting details.  Building to a conclusion usually isn’t a good idea when talking to reporters.  Start with your message and then tell me why.
8. Stick to the point: Be responsive to the reporter’s questions.  But come back to your message every chance you get.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

Interviews are the most important tool for telling your story to the media.  And the most dangerous.  For the past few weeks, I’ve been discussing some of the most common mistakes people make during interviews.  Here’s a list summarizing eight of the most common ones:

1. Being unprepared:  Without question, the most common mistake people make when talking to reporters.  Sometimes it’s because they’re overconfident – executives who are good speakers and think they can wing it, for example.  Sometimes it comes from not realizing the importance of being prepared.  And sometimes it happens because the person being interviewed doesn’t know what s/he wants to say.  You should know what your objective is (why you’re talking to the reporter), who your audience is and what your message is before beginning any interview.
2. Overselling the story:  Reporters interview people every day who oversell their stories by being too optimistic and refusing to acknowledge obvious problems.  Think about the people you know who do that when talking to you.  You don’t believe them.  Reporters won’t believe you, either, if you oversell your story.  Do it too often and your credibility will be ruined for good.
3. Saying too much:  If you have more than three messages (including one primary one) for any given interview, you aren’t focused enough.  Throw too many messages at a reporter and the one you care about may not be the one that ends up in the story.  And failing to stick to your message is a formula for saying things you shouldn’t.
4. Saying too little:  There are times when it’s perfectly okay to remain silent when reporters want to talk to you. But when the public health and safety are at stake, you’ll be expected to disclose information and answer reporters’ questions.  The stronger reporters and the public feel that you owe them an answer, the more likely you are to pay a price for remaining silent or limiting what you say.
5. Speaking hypothetically:  Reporters love to ask hypothetical questions to get people to say more than they should.  Any time a reporter asks you a question that includes a variation of “what if,” alarm bells should go off in your head.  Don’t speculate or respond to the hypothetical scenario described by the reporter.  Stick to facts you know.
6. No line in the sand:  If you change your position on a topic or situation to fit what’s convenient on any given day reporters will learn to distrust you.  Be consistent in speaking your truth, even if that feels inconvenient at times.
7. Being combative:  We’ve all seen news stories where the person being interviewed becomes angry and argumentative.  Have you ever seen one where the person being combative won the argument?  Me, neither.
8. Being dishonest:  As obvious as it is, it requires repeating.  You’re entitled to a point of view and to make the case for your point of view.  Most reporters won’t fault you for that.  They will fault you for being dishonest.  Being dishonest includes being misleading by saying something that may be “true” but is designed to mislead.  One lie can destroy your credibility forever.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?  Next week:  More mistakes people make during interviews.

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

Don’t let the facts get in the way of your story.

Every good storyteller follows this rule.  So should you.  No, I’m not suggesting you play fast and loose with the truth.  Far from it.

This is about boiling your story down to its essence.

You don’t memorize the morning newspaper or the evening news.  Your audience won’t memorize what you say, either.

One of the most common mistakes people make when talking to reporters is sharing too much information.  Most of the time, too many details will blur your message — the real nuggets of what you have to say.

Assume reporters will ignore 98 percent of what you say and everyone else will forget 98 percent of what you say.  Focus on the two percent that matters.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?  Next week:  More mistakes people make during interviews.

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My new eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

One of the most common mistakes people make when talking to reporters is trying to say too much. It happens in a couple ways:

Too many messages: If you have more than three messages for an interview, you’re not focused enough. You won’t get more than three messages into a story. Usually, you’ll be doing good to get one or two messages into the story. If you throw too many messages at a reporter, s/he may choose one of the ones you don’t care about. And no one, including the reporter, will remember them all. Say too much and your message will get lost.

You should have a primary message — your “headline” — and at most two secondary messages. Focus on your headline. That’s the one thing you want the reporter to hear if s/he misses or ignores everything else you say and the one thing you want people who see the story to hear, understand and remember.

Opening too many doors: I like to think of interviews as happening in a room with a lot of doors. Your job is to open the door that leads to your story. Every time you answer a question, you potentially open another door. If you open too many doors, the reporter may find a find a more interesting story behind one of them than the one you want to tell. Try not to open any doors except the one that leads to your story. Then make it interesting enough that the reporter will be willing to stay there.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours? Next week: More mistakes people make during interviews.

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook. My new eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute. To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often. The eBooks come as PDF files. You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

Preparation is the key to successful media interviews. That’s a message I’ve preached for years in media training and conversations with clients. But can you be over prepared? And, if so, what does that look like?

As I see it, the issue is being misprepared rather than over prepared. There was a time when I told media training clients that if a reporter asks you what day of the week it is, you shouldn’t just say it’s Monday; you should also work your message into your answer.

In fact, a lot of media trainers will tell you that. And sometimes you should. If you’re doing a one or two minute live broadcast interview, you need to get to your message right out of the starting gate or you probably won’t get to it at all.

Even if you’re doing a taped interview, you may only get one soundbite into the story. If that’s likely to happen, you’ll want to get your message into every answer, if you can, because only one of your answers — or part of one of your answers — will make it into the story.

But most of the time, there’s more give and take than that during an interview.

Being well prepared means you’ll be able to deliver your message clearly — and make it interesting enough to get into the story. But overselling your message can be as bad as not having a clear message. If you oversell your message, you’ll lose credibility and likeability. Instead of selling your message, you may have exactly the opposite effect. You’ll be like any other salesperson who doesn’t know when to back off.

So, be prepared to deliver your message whenever you can. But be realistic about it. And don’t oversell your story.

That’s my two cents’ worth. What’s yours? Next week: More mistakes people make during interviews.

Foot-in-mouth disease. It can hit anyone who talks to reporters.

Hillary Clinton fell victim to it last week with her now-infamous reference to RFK’s assassination.

The first news reports about Clinton’s comment made it sound like she was saying one reason for her to stay in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is that Barack Obama might be assassinated. That’s not quite what she said, of course. But the damage had been done.

What do you do if you find yourself in a similar situation? That depends.

If your verbal faux pas will disappear from the media after a single news cycle, you may just want to take your lumps and move on — especially if anything you say will keep the story alive another day.

If the issue’s likely to stay in the news for more than one news cycle — or, if it’s serious enough that you feel an explanation is necessary — then you’ll probably want to do what Clinton did: Clarify what you meant (or acknowledge you made a mistake), apologize if appropriate and then move on.

Your objective: Limit the damage by limiting the amount of time the issue remains in the news.

Last week’s incident is also a good reminder that it’s important to be careful what you say around reporters. The best way to do that is to know what your message is before you talk to reporters and stick to it. Any time you answer a reporter’s question that you haven’t prepared for you run the risk of suffering from foot-in-mouth disease. So, think before speaking.

That’s my two cents’ worth. What’s yours?

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook. My new eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute. To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often. The eBooks come as PDF files. You don’t need special eBook software to read them. Want to read and comment on back issues of MMMM? Check out the MMMM blog.

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What this is: An idea you can read in a minute or so and use to make your interactions with the news media more successful. More Monday Morning Media Minutes.

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© 2008 Jerry Brown

Here’s a bandwagon some of you can ride – Indiana Jones.

The new Indiana Jones movie promises to be a big hit. That’ll lead to a round of stories about whether Harrison Ford can still cut it as an action hero at age 65. We’ll be reading about how he’s a little creaky around the edges and/or still a hunk and dozens of variations on those themes.

And then we’ll start seeing stories about senior citizens continuing to succeed at things once reserved for younger people – and stories about people remaining active at jobs, sports and other activities far longer than they used to.

Do you have a story to tell around that trend? If so, get it ready so you can pitch it once the movie hits the theaters and the media starts looking for stories to tell.

Don’t have a story that fits the Indiana Jones hoopla we’re about the experience? Then look for other trends in the news or dates on the calendar you can use as a hook for your story. If you watch for them, you’ll be surprised at how often they come along.

That’s my two cents’ worth. What’s yours?

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook. My new eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute. To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often. The eBooks come as PDF files. You don’t need special eBook software to read them. Want to read and comment on back issues of MMMM? Check out the MMMM blog.

© 2008 Jerry Brown

What you don’t say is important. Because it adds impact to what you do say.

Get out your editing pen and trim the fat from what you’ve written – press releases, speeches, factsheets, newsletters, whatever.

Be ruthless when editing yourself. Start by knowing who your audience is and what your message is. Get rid of anything that doesn’t support your message. If you can say it in fewer words, do it. Replace big words with little ones.

Most of us try to say too many things and use too many words to do it.

Trimming the fat adds impact to your message. I almost always write too many words to begin. Then I start trimming. Sometimes I play editing games, picking an arbitrary number of words to get rid of, for example. If that proves easy, I pick a smaller word count and do it again. Or I find ways to trim a page or more from what I’ve written. If I’m ruthless with my editing, the end product is always better.

I keep editing until the only way to cut more is to get rid of things important to my message. Then it’s time to quit.

That’s my two cents’ worth. What’s yours?

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook. My new eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute. To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often. The eBooks come as PDF files. You don’t need special eBook software to read them. Want to read and comment on back issues of MMMM? Check out the MMMM blog.