Monday Morning Media Minute

President-elect Obama is playing to the middle so far.  And it’s a good lesson for the rest of us.

In almost any situation calling for you to communicate with the public, a certain number of people will support you no matter what, a certain number will oppose you no matter what and the vast majority will be somewhere in the middle.

The folks in the middle are the ones you’re trying to reach because they’re the ones you need to convince.  All too often, people waste way too much time trying to convince the inconvincible or preaching to the already converted.

People who will support you no matter what need to hear from you enough to be able to argue your case for you.  So, don’t ignore them.  But don’t make them the focus of your communication efforts — unless you’re counting on them to be major advocates for your cause.  If you’re counting on strong advocacy from them, then step up the attention you pay to them.

Ignore the inconvincible.  They won’t support you.  So, don’t waste your time trying to change their minds.  One important caveat:  Sometimes opponents look like they’re inconvincible when, in fact, they can be persuaded to move to your side.  How can you tell?  Listen to your opponents.  If they’re asking for something you can agree to, then it’s worth exploring whether accommodating what they want will bring them over to your side.  The inconvincible will always find a new objection if you answer one of their demands.  If that happens, move on.

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.

It’s usually easier to come up with the right answers if you know in advance what the questions are.

Most reporters won’t give you a list of questions before an interview.  But you can – and should – come up with your own list as you prepare.

With a little thought, you should be able to figure out most of the questions you’ll be asked most of the time.  Much of the time, you’ll be able to figure out all of the questions you’ll be asked.  And then you can figure out what your answers are before you find yourself face-to-face with the reporter.

Last week, I heard a BBC radio story about “salary transparency” – the idea that all employees should know how much their fellow employees are paid.

There’s an obvious question for every interview on that topic:  How much money do you make?

That question came at the end of the story I heard.  And both of the spokespeople promoting salary transparency refused to say.

After a little hemming and hawing, the first one to respond said he’d have to check to find out what his company’s policy is before he could say.  He clearly hadn’t given any thought to the possibility this question would come up.

His colleague, who had the benefit of hearing his stumble, said other employees within her own company knew the answer but she wasn’t free to tell people outside the company.  Why not?  And I’m not sure I believe her since she wouldn’t give a more transparent response.

With those responses, these two spokespeople negated everything they’d said during the interview about salary transparency.  And it sounded like neither of them had anticipated the question.

That kind of stumble can negate the success of any interview.  Don’t let it happen to you.

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.

I stumbled across this item last week in the Los Angeles Times: “Leaders of the campaign against Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, raised nearly $40 million and ran a careful, disciplined campaign with messages tested by focus groups and with only a few people authorized to speak to the media. They lost.”

The failure of the “professional” campaign has led more vocal opponents of the gay-marriage to take up the battle on their own with rowdier, noisier and more emotional efforts that include street demonstrations and other tactics reminiscent of the civil rights and antiwar campaigns of the 1960s and1970s.

Whether you think that’s a good idea or not will depend at least in part how you feel about Proposition 8 and other proposals like it.

Regardless of how you feel about this specific issue, it’s a good reminder for PR professionals that doing things by the book isn’t always enough to win – or enough to maintain a united front when you have supporters who feel strongly about your issue.

President-elect Obama will face a similar challenge when he takes office. Some Democrats in Congress already are talking about pushing their own proposals for things like health care without waiting to take their lead from the White House.

It’s a frequent problem for PR professionals. We work in a profession where the shortest distance between two points isn’t always a straight line.

I’m a strong proponent of having a clear message and sticking to it. But it’s important to give your supporters a chance to be involved — even if they aren’t on exactly the same page as you.

If you can’t keep everyone on the same page, control what you can. But be willing to let go of the need to control every message and every action by every supporter. There are many paths to building support for an idea or cause. The important thing is getting the result you want, not controlling the path people use to get there.

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.

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.

Senator Obama’s a brilliant orator. But he could use some media training.

I’m one of those who think the questions that dominated the first 45 minutes of last week’s debate between Obama and Hillary Clinton were silly and trivial. But, given the tenor of the coverage of the Democratic primary the last few weeks, they shouldn’t have come as any great surprise. And there wasn’t a single question on the list, silly as it was, that he shouldn’t have been able use as a bridge to talk about the things he wanted to talk about.

Obama made the mistake too many articulate professionals and executives make. They assume they can “wing” it when talking to reporters because they’re able to do that so much of the time.

Don’t make the same mistake – or allow anyone who talks to reporters on behalf of your organization to make it.

You can’t wait for reporters to ask the “right” questions to begin delivering your message. If you do, you may never get to your message.

That’s why I encourage everyone who talks to reporters to get media training – and regular refresher courses. Unless you talk to reporters often enough to keep your interviewing skills well honed, being media trained once isn’t enough.

Remember: The reporter’s in charge of the questions that get asked and the story that gets written. You’re in charge of your answers.

Obama was unhappy because he didn’t like the questions that were asked. But he wasn’t in charge of the questions. He was in charge of his answers. And he didn’t do a very good job of taking charge of his answers to deliver his message.

Don’t make the same mistake when you’re talking to reporters. Take the time to figure out what questions you’re likely to be asked, what your message is for the interview and how you’ll deliver it – even if the reporter doesn’t ask the “right” questions.

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.

Some years ago a very successful and seasoned product publicist regaled me one afternoon with stories about some of the biggest successes — and a couple notable disasters — of his long career.

His point: He had made many good products more successful by raising their visibility with the media and the buying public.

But raising the visibility for products that flopped made the failures all the more painful because everyone was watching. There’s nothing worse than falling flat on center stage with a sellout audience.

Hillary Clinton has gotten two lessons along these lines in the past few weeks.

Her 3 a.m. ad was remarkable for breaking through the clutter of the campaign rhetoric. It got noticed in a big way. Even so, I think it probably hurt her at least as much as it helped.

Barack Obama responded quickly with his own version of the ad, which appeared to be as successful as hers. And cartoonists and comedians had a field day with Hillary’s ad – a lot of them recalling the sexual escapades of her husband.

In the end, I’m not sure America’s answer to who we would want to answer that call at 3 a.m. was as heavily weighted in Hillary’s favor as she had hoped.

And her relentless effort to position herself as the candidate with “experience” — the point of the 3 a.m. ad — backfired in a big way more recently when it became clear she’s been lying in describing how she came under fire in Bosnia. Because of network videotape footage showing just how far her version was from what happened, the Bosnia story always had the potential to blow up in Hillary’s face.

But in the wake of the 3 a.m. ad and Hillary’s strong reliance on experience as a key message, the Bosnia story got more visibility than it might have otherwise. And it did more damage.

The moral of the story? We all want to promote our stories. But it’s important to know when you have a story that will help you and when you have one that may do you harm. If the latter is true, you may want to think twice before telling your story. Sometimes silence is a valuable tool for public relations professionals and our clients.

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.

Treat your audience like adults. Sounds simple, but it doesn’t happen nearly often enough.

The reason Barack Obama’s speech last week on race struck such a responsive chord with the American public is that he spoke to his audience about a difficult subject like we are adults:

• He talked about the bad along with the good.
• He was honest.
• He didn’t pander to his audience or take cheap shots at his opponents.

In the days of gotcha politics and journalism and the four-second soundbite, talking to your audience like adults can be hard.

It’s hard because the media isn’t good at telling complicated stories. It’s hard because much of your audience won’t pay attention long enough to hear the nuances of what you have to say. And it’s hard because most of us aren’t very good at talking about the bad with the good, especially when discussing difficult topics.

Yes, it’s hard. It’s also important to do. It’s especially important to do with people who hear your message a lot or who are paying close attention to what you say because they believe what you do will have a big impact on them.

How do you treat your audience like adults? Four ways to begin:

• Be honest. Tell the truth as best you can.
• Be consistent. You’re entitled to have a point of view. But don’t change what you said yesterday because it isn’t convenient today.
• Be authentic. Pandering to an audience that knows you’re insincere may work some of the time. But it won’t work with people who pay attention to what you say and do over the long term. And once you lose their trust, you’ll have a hard time winning it back. If they like and trust you, they’ll help tell your story to their friends and families. Lose their trust and they’ll tell that to their friends and families, too.
• Do what you say. Ultimately, the people who are paying attention will judge you by whether your words and actions match up with one another. They’ll give you more credit for saying things they don’t like if they know you’re being honest than for saying things they like if they don’t trust you to do what you say.

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.

It’s good to have friends who can help tell your story and support your case.

Eliot Spitzer learned that lesson the hard way: He didn’t have any when he needed them.

Would Spitzer have kept his job if he had more political friends? Hard to say. But he would have had a better chance of surviving or, at least, leaving office with more of his dignity intact – and a better chance of making a comeback someday.

The lesson for the rest of us? Make friends, even when you’re in a strong position. If you make friends when you don’t need them, they’re more likely to help you when you do. And failing to make friends because you don’t think you need them means the smallest stumble can be fatal.

One good thing about having friends is that, often, they can tell your story or advocate your case in ways you can’t. But pay attention to what they’re saying on your behalf.

Several of the presidential candidates have learned that lesson during the campaign. Nearly all of them have experienced friends or spouses saying things that hurt or embarrassed them.

Last week’s incident with Geraldine Ferraro saying Barack Obama “would not have made it this far if he was a white man” is particularly intriguing. It’s either a good example of using a third-party to deliver a message you can’t deliver on your own or a case of a friend doing damage by speaking out of turn.

Was Ferraro acting with the approval or even at the suggestion of the Clinton campaign to say out loud what many blue collar white voters in Pennsylvania feel? Was the Clinton campaign using her to play a race card Hillary couldn’t do on her own?

Or did Ferraro step out of line and inadvertently embarrass her candidate? If so, she certainly wasn’t in any hurry to stop the damage. She kept the story alive at least one day longer than it would have lasted on its own by continuing to defend her comment during repeated TV appearances even after Clinton had “repudiated” it and Ferraro had resigned from Clinton’s Finance Committee.

Either Clinton was making use of Ferraro in a very calculated and cynical way to play a race card she couldn’t do on her own or Ferraro was freelancing in a way that was simply out of bounds for a third-party advocate. Either way, what she did is a good example of the power and limits of using third-party advocates. If they stay on message, they can be very useful; if they get off message, they can do a lot of damage.

Make as many friends as you can. Use them, when appropriate, to help tell your story. But pay attention to what they say.

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.

Control your message. Easy to say, but sometimes hard to do.

Barack Obama lost control of his message before Ohio and Texas, and it cost him.

Two prime examples: The Canada-NAFTA miscue and the Hillary is a monster quote.

There’s some evidence the NAFTA issue came from leaks instigated by Obama’s opponents. His big mistake was not responding effectively.

The “monster” quote came from Samantha Power, a senior advisor to Obama who got off message, which damaged Obama’s campaign and forced her to quit her job. It goes to the heart of the point I want to make this week – some fundamentals of maintaining control of your message:

• Know what your message is. You can’t control your message if you don’t know what it is. A surprisingly large number of people talk to reporters with nothing more specific in mind than getting a “positive” story or avoiding a “negative” one. That’s not good enough.

• Make sure everyone who talks to reporters on your behalf also knows what your message is – and that all of them stick to the same message.

• Limit the number of people who talk to reporters, if possible. It will reduce the chances for contradictions that will make you look dishonest or hypocritical.

• Have a coordinator responsible for knowing who is talking to reporters on your behalf and for sitting in on as many interviews as possible. If you don’t have someone within your organization who has participated in every interview a reporter does with people in your organization for a given story, then the reporter knows more about your message than you do. And you won’t have any way to clear up misstatements or contradictions before they end up in a story and do you harm.

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.