Monday Morning Media Minute

I like a good food fight.  So, I’ve been enjoying the potshots the Republicans have been taking at one another since the election.  Actually, it started before the election.

Entertainment aside, the pre- and post-election fighting within the sometimes-competing McCain and Palin campaigns stands in stark contrast to the message discipline shown by the Obama campaign.

Part of the difference can be explained by the difference between a winning team and a losing one.  It’s a lot easier to stay disciplined when you’re winning.  But staying disciplined also helps you win.

I’ll leave it to folks smarter than me to figure out why Obama won and McCain lost.  But a few thoughts about the importance of having a clear message and sticking to it.

Know what you want to say and why you want to say it. You can’t develop effective messages until you know what you want to achieve (your objective) and who your audience is (who you’re trying to influence).  It’s important to take time before you go public to figure these out.  I’m constantly surprised at how often people start talking to reporters and the rest of us before they have a clear message — or even a clear objective.

Once you have your message, stick to it. That sounds easy enough, but it isn’t always as easy as it sounds:

• Some spokespeople have an aversion to repeating themselves.  That’s a mistake.  Most of your audience won’t get your message until they’ve heard it several times.  So repeat yourself.

• Everyone has their favorite way of telling your story.  Even when an organization takes time to develop messages there almost always are at least a few people who think they have a better version.  Maybe they do.  If so, adopt their version.  Otherwise, insist they follow the same script as everyone else.

• People have personal agendas.  Just because someone claims to be speaking on your behalf doesn’t mean they don’t have their own personal agenda.  If they’re putting their personal agenda ahead of yours, they aren’t really loyal followers.  If they’re on your payroll and you have the power to do so either fire them or put them in jobs where they are no longer acting as spokespeople.

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.

Remember Sarah Palin?  The one running for vice president.

After delivering an acceptance speech that turned her into something of a political rock star, Palin’s largely disappeared from public and media view.  And the few interviews she’s done have been – to put it kindly – less than rousing successes.

From outside, it looks like the McCain campaign has put their VP candidate under wraps because they’re afraid she’s not ready to handle questions from the media.  Understandable at first since she hasn’t been on the national political stage before.  But at some point it becomes an issue.

I’ll leave it to you to make up your own mind about Palin and whether she should be talking more often to reporters.

But the media fortress that’s been built around her reminds me of a problem I see too often within companies and agencies who see themselves as besieged by a hostile media.  They simply quit talking to reporters except when they feel they have no choice.  And they go into the few interviews they do with a chip on their shoulder, assuming the reporter’s only there to do them harm.

The problem with this kind fortress mentality is that it fosters the kind of negative coverage it’s designed to protect against.

Some reporters do practice gotcha journalism.  Most don’t.  But reporters are human.  And, like all of us, they draw conclusions about the people they come in touch with based on how those people react around them.

Most of us assume that people who are constantly on the defensive have something to hide.  Reporters do, too.  And they’ll reflect that in the stories they write.  Most of us assume that people who defend the indefensible or say things that are misleading or untrue are untrustworthy.  Reporters do, too.  And they’ll reflect that in the stories they write.  And that’s the very behavior that seems to go with a fortress mentality when it comes to dealing with the media.

You don’t have to answer every question a reporter asks – or even agree to every interview.  But if you’re too evasive at some point it becomes an issue.  And if you have a chip on your shoulder every time you do an interview because you assume the reporter’s only out to “get” you, you’re not going to like most of the stories written about you.

Talking to reporters is different than talking to your neighbor.  You need to understand how to tell your story effectively and stay on message.  That’s one reason why good media training is so important.

But if you know the rules of engagement, have a solid story to tell and tell it clearly you’ll do just fine most of the time.  Or at least that’s been my experience.

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.