Ken Hughes: 1:57

Welcome back to Embracing Marketer Mistakes. I'm Chris Notton and today we're talking media training and perfecting that all-important interview. You know the moment when you admit on camera that you wouldn't use your own credit card because it's too expensive, and then you make headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons. If I'm honest, I wouldn't use the card myself, it's just too expensive. It's comment sparking headlines. Today we're gonna break down exactly why that happens and how we can stop it happening to you and your brand. If you've ever worried about a journalist trapping you into a viral clip, this masterclass will help you spot the dirty tricks that they do and shut down that negative questioning in the next interview. Today I'm joined by my business partner, Will Ockenden, for a special media training masterclass. We dissect the infamous Sainsbury CEO Hot Mic Blunder, where a simple song kill the merger and reveal why the skills you used to have are no longer fit for purpose in this AI digital world. In this episode, you're gonna learn how to handle the detective Colombo question. That's for the 1980s crew. Just one more thing. You said you were at the movies, just helped me understand you left around nine, right?

SPEAKER_01: 2:57

And you didn't see anyone else. Yeah, that's right.

Ken Hughes: 2:59

How to use the stop talking technique to save your skin and what it takes to turn a crisis into a reputation win. Let's get into it. Okay, so um today's training is uh, as I said, it's uh media training masterclass, how to land messages in a digital or social first world. So, um, as I said, um my name is Chris Norton. I'm the founder and um the managing director, it says here Innovation Lead. So I do lead a lot of the innovation in the agency, whether that's AI, the podcasting side of things, and various bits and bobs. Um, I've been working in PR for more than 25 years. I've been involved in a lot of PR crises. Um, I actually wrote the um the uh handbook for the CIPR on crisis management, their section on that. Um so yeah, that is my area of expertise. And so I've seen a lot of media screw ups, shall we say. Uh even when people have been prepared. So um we might cover a couple of those today. Uh, and then Will can introduce himself too. Will you my business partner?

SPEAKER_03: 4:01

Yeah, thank you for that. Um, yeah, I'm um I'm the other owner at Prohibition, so I I tend to look after creative and strategy. I've actually delivered a number of these um media training sessions in the last year or so for clients. And and what's particularly interesting is um the impact of digital on the traditional media interview, which is really what we're gonna cover today. So um perhaps the skills that we used to have when it came to media interviews are no longer uh fit for purpose. Some of them are, but some of the skills are no longer fit for purpose in a digital first world, and there's a whole new dynamic at play, and that's exactly what we're gonna talk about today.

Ken Hughes: 4:37

Yeah, so hopefully there'll be a lot of practical stuff in here that you can take away. This is not one of those things where you know this is not like uh a lot of theory. We're hoping to put a lot of practical bits and pieces that you can use um on your next interview. So, what we're gonna be covering, um, who the hell are we? Probably, we've got a couple of slides on us. Um, why is media training so important? We're gonna talk about the evolving media landscape and how things have changed from um traditional PR when I first started out, and we actually used fax machines to send press releases and post, by the way. We used to that was my first job posting press releases. So things have changed and how that's changed. Um, preparing for an interview, so how to prepare properly, um, interview tips and tricks, and yeah, we'll we'll cover interview tips and tricks, and it also covers um what sort of support we can give you. So you find today useful, um, we do do as Will's just said, media training. We do it for we've done loads of recent ones for universities as well as well, recently, me media training. And talking of universities, um, prohibition is experience. So we work with all uh various sectors really. Uh we work a lot of food and drink, retail, um, FMCG, um, a lot of universities we we work with, as you can see, the University of Oxford, London Metropolitan University. We also work with a few Yorkshire businesses like Yorkshire Water. We do a lot of their um videos and content and stuff like that. So, yeah, we quite a breadth of experience and a bit of luxury as well. So, yeah, um, all good. So, um a bit about us. So, and Prohibition, this that we've got 30 consultants based in in Leeds, we're in the north of the UK. Not that the way you're based matters anymore, I don't think. Um, I've heard that the US are looking a lot over here to work with UK agencies because they think the UK is good at it, so that's good. Um, but what we do is we do insight-led PR that converts. So that's kind of like where traditional and digital PR merge, because uh, I used to teach uh tradition uh sorry, digital and uh integrated PR at university on the PR degrees, uh university, and um we try and bring that skill to traditional PR and your training and all the other bits and pieces that we do. So we try and we try to use um insight and to build our strategy out. And obviously, all that is to help you build your reputation and reputation and trust, because trust in a digital world really matters. People trust less and less. If you if any of you um read the Edelman trust barometer, you'll have seen that trust is at an all-time low. People don't trust the PM, they don't trust uh they don't trust Donald Trump, they don't trust Elon Musk, they don't trust social media, they don't trust in fact the only people they do trust weirdly are other employees that they've never met, which is we apparently trust strangers over and and especially if they're employees, that's the latest um research, but that's because of just the way of the digital world has gone. Um so we do uh what we call performance PR, which is PR that is targeting not only reputation and trust, but also that actually delivers some sort of tangible benefit. So if you're gonna get coverage, why are we getting that coverage? Do we get leads? Is there a way we can get some kind of conversion for our client? So we call it performance PR. Um and then content creation. So we create everything and anything from in fact, right opposite me now, we're filming a live podcast for uh one of our clients um who's a negotiation skills client, and they're all in our boardroom filming with five cameras, and we can do we can do uh LinkedIn lives all done live and recorded. So, yeah, we content-wise, we do tons and tons of that. So that's enough about us. We've got I told you this was going to be practical and useful, and as I say, uh Will's gonna cover a lot of the tips. Our podcast is called Embracing Marketing Mistakes, and it is literally people talking about mistakes that have happened to them and they tell their story on the pod. Obviously, we don't just focus on that, um, but they do that for like 20% of the show. But we also they're always the best bit is when people tell us when something's gone really wrong and what they learned from it, because that's what everyone wants to hear. Uh, and that's why we started our podcast about nearly two years ago about that. But yeah. Um, okay, so the benefits of media training then, well, you can hopefully control interviews better and be a bit more convincing on camera. Now, for someone who started out in PR 25 years ago, um PR people were always behind the camera. I was advising clients on what to do to make sure the client, you know, the CEO might have done the occasional camera interview, but mainly it was for like you know interviews with the the Times, the FT, or whatever. If you got on BBC Breakfast or whatever it is back then, that was quite, you know, quite a rarity. Um so being prepared will really help you to be more convincing on camera. Um it can make you look and sound um more confident. And if you're more confident, you're credible. So what to do with your hands, as you can see, I'm quite animated with that. Um to handle hostile and probing interviews and to do some sort of damage control. Now, if you're thinking that you're going to be grilled like Jeremy Paxman or a Radio 4 interview, that can happen, but it depends on what the kind of story it is. But 90% of the time, it won't happen in that way. But this today's training is like a snapshot to help you think about what happens if maybe that worst-case scenario does occur as well, because it can do. Be prepared for curveballs and sneaky interview tricks. Um, I talk about a few of these on a couple of the podcasts that we've done on media training. And um turn a negative situation into neutral or positive. So if you've got a crisis breaking, uh, is there a way that you can make it um look that you care, um you're authentic, and you and therefore protecting the brand? Because some some class some brands have gone through proper PR crises where um something's whether it's a brain crash or whatever, and actually, if the if the CEO and the board and the people that are involved in the interviews look sincere and authentic, some of the brands have come out looking building um stronger and better reputation despite the crisis. Um it's one of the reasons you see a lot of product recalls announced with honesty and integrity in the media.

SPEAKER_03: 11:49

I I was just gonna say, Chris, the the first point be convincing on camera. Um, like you said, um I think one of the big um things to change in the last few years, which Chris will talk about, is is now that everybody's now got a camera. So, you know, a print journalist might turn up with a camera now. So there's actually way more opportunities to be on camera, like it or not. Um, you know, it's not just the big broadcasters that bring a film crew anymore.

Ken Hughes: 12:12

Yeah, true. Yeah, and also, you know, one of the key things of that is what's in your background. I actually haven't thought about my background, so I'm not I'm not practicing while I preach. There's a well, I'm in the mo I'm in the office, so it's just a window. But some people don't think about their backgrounds. And if they're going to be on BBC TV, when it's on a small screen, you can't really see it. But then it's like when we re-record the when we record our podcast, and on this, when you look at it on a small screen, you can't see the background, and then suddenly when it's on a big screen or YouTube, you can see it on a big TV. Like, oh my god, I didn't realise that was in the background. We interviewed someone recently, uh one of the Star Wars characters, uh head, C3PO's head in the background, and I didn't spot it on the call because we were talking to a small screen, whereas when it was blown up, it was big. So just to be aware of, in case you've got anything in the background, you don't want to see it.

SPEAKER_03: 12:55

It's like when people have, you know, when politicians sit in front of their bookcase and they strategically place um the book spines to make themselves look really intelligent, don't they?

Ken Hughes: 13:04

Yeah, quite a few people do that. I've noticed more and more of that. Okay, so 78%, then almost 80% of business leaders say they had experienced a crisis in the past 18 months. That's bad. Like eight in ten people have experienced a crisis of some kind in the past 18 months. And it it takes between one and five years um the amount of time that a board member said it took to fully recover from a crisis. Three, yeah, it's around about three years. One year's quite quite not very sh um not very long period, I'd say about three to five years um to recover from a crisis. And being brilliant at interviews can't prevent a crisis, but it can minimize it, it can help you speed up your recovery. So if you're if you've got a crisis, crisis happened, you can't control everything. It's just you just can't you can't control everything in an interview. All you can do is prepare for it and be as best prepared and understand what you've got to talk about. And if you do an a good interview that's authentic and um clear, then you you you've got a better chance of of minimizing the crisis, but you can't stop it. Um and digital is now um influencing the media landscape. So, what we mean by that is in in the old days, you know, it was just an interview, whereas now, as we'll just highlighted there, you might get a print journalist turning up to um, especially if it's a national or something like that, and even the business titles now might turn up for an interview, and they used to just bring their, you know, they'll bring their phone, stick it on the table, and record you, which is a problem if you say something uh wrong. Um and sometimes they bring along a camera and just say, Do you mind if I just set this up? This is going on the internet, and then they they'll just film it. So you just need to be aware that that could happen. Yeah, and broadcast media is um is still there. You know, TV, I've I've got something on LinkedIn recently where um I think it was MNS said they were spending as much on internet um video, the sorts of video we do, uh same budget behind that as they were on TV. And people say, Are you saying TV's dead? No, TV's still there, TV has still got good cut through. Uh the top right, uh the top right here, you can see this is uh um um it was on BBC Look North. Uh this is one of our clients, Stockheld Park. We got them on uh Look North um in December for their Christmas adventure, and then uh two days later we also got them on BBC Breakfast. Um so and and that had real, you know, they sold out tickets for for Christmas, which is amazing. But TV audiences, and we put here TV and news audiences are in decline. TV audiences are in decline, you know, people, Netflix, uh all the all the different five um streaming channels, live TV audiences are decreasing. I only saw last week with um EastEnders 40th anniversary, um that the numbers now, you know, EastEnders used to get 25-30 million people watching it. As a um David Frost's, I heard David Frost's kids being interviewed. His interviews used to get 14-15 million people um watching them, and now like EastEnders gets two, two million for a decent episode. So, but broadcast is still the most used platform for consuming news. Um and but there's a slight, we believe there's a dumbing down of broadcasts. So there's much more of a sound soundbiteable culture where people are driving for content that they can snip it and then stick on social media. So they might ask the curveball questions if it's a broadcast interview, especially if they've got a camera, just to throw you off and to get that viral moment that they can then clip that bit and stick it online. So you need to be aware of it. This is our um on the right hand side. That's a our client um from Chow Prior, which is a Thai restaurant. Um, the bit of coverage we got for it just in November. Um, but print print readership is declining year on year globally too. Online news sources with video are going strong though. So the media is the the landscape is changing, it's constantly changing, and the online people are trying to figure out ways to capture that you know your your dollars and and sponsorship and advertising for the content because they used to sell you know newspapers, print magazines. They are some of them still play a role, um, but they are declining, I mean heavily declined. But there's still an opportunity for longer, more nuanced content. So, what do we mean by that? Well, broadcast and radio, broadcast still doing going strong. It's amazing to me that um the big broadcast brands like Global and Virgin, etc., uh are getting rid of the localized news. Because I think micro hyperlocal news is where it's at. People still want hyperlocal news from their and but a lot of the nationals are buying out all the regional um local radio stations. Um, commercial radio is um leading over state national stations, but under time pressure, um be succinct that though pods present longer form content. So podcasts present the opportunity to interview people for a longer time and to turn what would be you know a five-minute chat into a much longer conversation. So, actually, as part of the strategy, uh a podcast to place our clients, for instance, on podcasts that are relevant to their target audience are actually a great way to show them as a thought leader. Um and good soundbites are key. So bulletins are repeated throughout the day. So if they get a good soundbite and they you you you've said something clever, or your client or your or your um CEO has said a clever comment, they'll they'll keep coming back to that and playing it over and over again. Hopefully the sound's gonna work on this. Um all media outlets now have active social media communities. They they they realize they've got to put their clips on social, they're looking for those clips. I've got an example here that we've we've got from TikTok, which is a rugby player called Max. How do you say his name, Will? Max Lahiv.

SPEAKER_03: 18:46

Lahiv.

Ken Hughes: 18:47

Lahiv, there you go. Uh, and um, yeah, it's snackable video content, is how it's distributed to social media. Um, so there's there's a real drive to get these little sound bites, mistakes like our podcast, blunders, great quotes can all go viral. Uh, and publishers are hoping these will happen. So here's an interview with a rugby player, and and they keep trying to get these interviews with Max because he uh interviews slightly different to your everyday rugby player if you've never seen him before.

SPEAKER_02: 19:15

I'm hoping most of you at home understand what he's just said because I haven't got a clue. You've never faced them before. Bristol versus Leinster never been done. The first to do it.

SPEAKER_01: 19:22

But yeah, I'm I'm buzzing for it, obviously. Edification beckons, Ryan, like it's gonna be class. But this bit, this lol just before the kickoff as the Leinster boys march in, it's always a bit weird. It's like a paradox, you've got the enthusiasm, but the anxiety's there, and it kind of coalesces into sort of a psychosis that allows you to throw yourself willingly into a melee of well-nourished shoulders, and this day it'll be to us. I'm so excited. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 19:50

I mean I mean, that is brilliant. Um and and I suppose the point on that is um when news clips go viral, you know, quite niche broadcasters can become incredibly famous, and these clips get shared around, and ever all the traffic goes back to their you know their their kind of um landing pages. So, you know, it's in their interest for unusual, quirky interviews, and and and journalists are actively seeking that kind of content.

Ken Hughes: 20:18

Yeah, I mean, yeah. Uh and then uh yeah, remember if you're a great interviewee, you'll get interviewed invited back time and time again. So this is one of our clients um called Tony, he's the CEO of Hoothway International, and um we managed to place him on Sky News, you can see here, and he did an interview because um Hoothway International do negotiation skills, how to negotiate difficult, challenging scenarios. They teach businesses how to negotiate hard contracts, and actually um they were um he he we used him as an interview uh uh as an interviewee about negotiating during the Brexit negotiations and got him on Sky News, and then he kept because he gave such a great interview and knows what he's talking about about when to play your card, etc. etc. and what how to how to deal with a negotiating situation, and they kept inviting him back and over and over again, so we kept getting more and more um placements for him. So yeah, if you get the interview right the first time, you can you can get you know five or six interviews out of one.

SPEAKER_03: 21:13

By the same token, um you know, typically you get invited onto broadcast media once, and if you mess it up, you'll never be back you'll never be invited again. So it's really important to really prepare and do a good job. And like Chris said, if you if you get it right, then you're gonna go you're gonna go into the little black book and you'll get invited back time and time again.

Ken Hughes: 21:31

Do you remember that guy that was on BBC Breakfast and he came on and um he was he'd gone for a job interview and they thought he was the guest, and they sat him straight on the sofa and started interviewing him, and and he he answered all the questions brilliantly.

SPEAKER_03: 21:43

It was about the wasn't it about some a really techie story about Apple's privacy revelations, and he he he looked so fearful, didn't he? It was hilarious.

Ken Hughes: 21:52

But he answered all the questions quite well and it went, thank you very much. And it turned out that he was they'd put the wrong person on the sofa and he was actually there for a job interview.

SPEAKER_03: 21:59

It was like in the IT team or something, wasn't it? Something completely unrelated.

Ken Hughes: 22:03

It was classic. Anyway, so now let's get on to the training then. Uh understanding journalists, then we need to understand what journalists are like. They're not always trying to catch you out. You know, most of them can be nice and they're just looking for a story. However, they can often be cynical. You would say that, wouldn't you? Um, I used to say that when I'm teaching my um PR execs to sell in on the phones. Um, when I when I first started my uh job in PR trying to pitch stories, I was told because I used to work in IT PR, and um, I was always told to just think that the journalists are just thinking at the other end, so what, so what, so what, as you're pitching your story to make it interesting to them. Um, broadcast broadcast journalists are now often entertainers as well. They they want to be entertaining, they don't just want the story, they want they want the more human side, they want it to be entertaining, they don't just want to report the facts. But they are rarely the expert. They'll like to think they are, um, but you're actually the expert, that's why you're on the show. You're there to give your opinion, and they're there to get that from you. Um, they might perform the devil's advocate while it's interviewing. So uh, you know, you you'll say something and give your sort side of the story, uh, and especially if it's the BBC or something like that, because the BBC has to be neutral. So if you're putting one side of the story, they'll immediately play the devil's advocate to play the other side of the story to stop you know from it being just a PR exercise. But it's not that they're against you, it's that they're trying to be pre present the content balance. But often they'll back you if it's if it's fair. Um, they are not there to give you a free plug, you're there to get yourself a plug. And it's amazing when you see someone interviewed and they manage to get a plug cleverly in without overly crowbarring it in. Um, so the rise of the content creator journalist. So this this is this is interesting. So you've got content creator journalists, um, but I would say this has happened from the day of the blogger, and blogging came out in 1998, they were called citizens journalists, and they're just it's like that they were they were the influencers before influencers became influencers, and now we've got content creator journalists essentially influencers, they are often not professionally trained. Now that's fine, it means they can't do shorthand, but it also means they're not um they're not members of any association and they don't follow ethical standards. So they they might, if you said um, you know, with some journalists you can say off the record and they um they might take it, you can have it, you can have an embargo which might stop them using a story before a certain uh date or time. Well, somebody that's not media tra uh not a journalist trained won't do that, they'll just take the story straight. Um so yeah, you you've got to be mindful of that that these people aren't properly trained. So, what do they want? What do they want from you? Well, they don't want jargon or corporate speak. Often, if you see someone like a physicist physicist or something like that being interviewed by the BBC, they try to dumb it down to make it real, you know, instead of talking about astrophysics, explain it in in say you're talking to Grand type thing, so someone could understand. It's one of the reasons why Professor Brian Cox is so well known now because he's so brilliant in explaining complicated subject matter in something very, very easy to understand. Um, often it's they want someone who's honest and authentic, not somebody who feels like robotic or protective or you know, if you're honest and authentic, it's you know, all the things that a politician often aren't. Um they want dialogue, yeah, preferably personality. So they want you to answer with, you know, an interesting story or to at least be personable, rather than just like, I've got my key messages and that's all I'm gonna say, and you know, so they can't get a bit of dialogue out of you. But they also want a strong news hook or a clear response. They want to know what the news is nice and clearly. That's their story, that's what they're trying to get to the bottom of.

SPEAKER_03: 25:53

Just just just um just go back a sec, Chris. I was gonna say that points two and three, um, you know, the idea of authenticity is really important now. And you you take someone like Greg Jackson, who's the CEO of Octopus Energy, or actually somebody like Michael O'Leary from Rhine there, um, love him or hate him, you know, they are very honest in how they come across, and they're they're very authentic as well, and they have got bags of personality, and that's the reason why they're constantly on the TV. And I think there is a shift towards that, away from kind of corporate robots that just give you your key messages, there's no personality there. You know, people don't want that anymore.

Ken Hughes: 26:30

Yeah. And Michael O'Leary, I saw it in the story last week. He did was it last week or the the week before? There was a story anyway about Michael O'Leary at Ryanair, and um he's he's set up a taxi company, um uh and it's got it owns one ta one black cab, and that's just so he can get through London in the taxi.

SPEAKER_03: 26:49

Oh, I saw that. Didn't you say that? We could use taxi lanes, yeah.

Ken Hughes: 26:52

So you can use taxi lanes legally, he's just got what he's got one cab in this cunt couldn't company that he uses. Then sort of that's like talk about disruptive. Anyway, controlling the narrative. Um, so you there's this three stages here. So there's intelligence gathering on the journalist and on the situation. Then once you've decided, you know, what what roughly what's being said, um, what this journalist is about, so you know how they tick, then you can establish what you're gonna say, how you you know what you're gonna say. You can guess most of it. Sometimes they'll tell you some of the questions they're gonna ask you as well. And then you can practice what you're gonna say and look over what you what you're gonna say just to make sure that you know, because practice does make perfect. And the more that you practice your responses, um, then that can really help you with getting the answer right. And in terms of uh intelligence gathering, there's a few things that you can use. So and I'm not we're not for for life suggesting that you need to research every single uh journalist that you're ever going to speak to. But if it's a you know, if it's gonna be in quite a decent publication, um there's something called journalisted that you can use that shows journalists that are independent journalists have covered stories, you can see what sort of stories they've covered before, their writing style, what they like to talk about, gives you a good feel for what the sort of things they cover. Also, you can use um, you know, if there's an issue that they're talking about, um, if you know, maybe you're being interviewed about Brexit, for instance, and if you've been interviewed about Brexit, you can then do social listening around Brexit, or maybe it's in a certain part of Brexit, and then you can do social listening around that. And there's an example at the bottom there with British Airways, um, where you could research the brand and see what are the key things being talked about, what's positive, what's negative. It just gives you a barometer for what could this journalist want to talk about, and what sort of angle are they going to come from? And that gives you a few ideas. Uh, a couple of examples here um that we've got is um my keep uh my keymote hell. So a few years ago we worked with a uh house builder called Keemo, New House Builder, and um somebody had um some snagging issues with their house, and they kept fixing them, but they weren't happy with it. So they created a website called My Keep Keepmoat Hell, um which unfortunately was quite clever. It was copying uh a crisis in America, which uh for Dell. They had My Dell Hell, so they just copied the strategy, created a site, and it became I think it was ranked third on the uh on Google, so we had to do a lot of work to get rid of that and to minimize the damage by by that. But the the obviously the board of uh were quite concerned by that, and then they would pop up and create groups like you can see at the bottom here, like uh Facebook groups all about new house bills and the problems with them, etc. etc. The point is if you're looking after a if you're looking after your brand, is is to check out, you know, do some intelligence gathering, see other are there um you know people's derogatory comments and things like that about you. Where are they? What are they? Do a proper analysis. And if you don't know how to do that, hire somebody like us who can do that, who can analyze the the media landscape and tell you these these guys could be a problem, maybe identify the people behind it. We've done that on loads and loads of different crises. It really stops, it can knit things in the bud before they become, you know, like a website like that. So, establishing what you're gonna say then. What are the facts of the issue? What you're gonna be discussing, what are the facts that you can discuss? Are there any specific angles that the journalist will want to ask you? What are the risk factors to your business about the issue that you're gonna be covering? You know, what are the risks? Are there any wider issues that you need to be aware of? Political, you know, in the industry, anything that you need to be aware of? What key messages do you need to convey? I like to keep it to three. The power of three, you know, you see it build back better, make America great again, which is for they've done that's the second time, but uh you know, um see it sort, see it, what is it? See it something sorted. Yeah, sort it. That's it. They're all three. The government used them all the time, they used it during the pandemic as well. So, yeah, uh, three key messages, and have the um the wow statistics at your fingertips. So if you're doing a radio interview or something like that, one of the things when we do like a radio day with a client, uh, you know, a marketing director or whatever, we'll have the key stats for say they're doing an interview with I don't know, uh Wolverhampton BBC Wolverhampton. Um, we'd have all the stats on Wolverhampton. So they've got the stats at the fingertips of the good guy. Oh, well, actually, in your area, this 83% of people from Wolverhampton found and they love that. The media absolutely love it. Yeah. So what I've done here is just we just um obviously uh it wouldn't be a marketing webinar if we didn't talk about AI, uh, but we're not gonna talk about it loads. But in terms of media training, how can you use AI? So this is a really simple uh uh prompt that I've used here act like a world-class journalist and media trainer. Please put together some tough questions related on this press release. And it's basically a press release about um a new chat function on WhatsApp. So I've I've we've we've um shared the link to the news site for Facebook's uh WhatsApp announcement, um and we're just asking it to put together some tough questions. So this is a great way to just get some um, as you can see, I'll just do it live. Um we you can put any uh press release in that you want and ask it to ask you some WhatsApp has promoted end-to-end encryption. How do these new funnel virtualities interact with encryption? Even if messages are encrypted, WhatsApp collects metadata. Are these new features increase it? So it'll ask you all sorts of different questions that maybe you've not considered, some of which you will, some of you uh you won't. As you can see, there's 11 questions there, all key around the problem uh around that news release. So it's just giving you a few ideas of what you can talk about.

SPEAKER_03: 32:37

Yeah, and I think on that, you know, PR as as PRs or comms professionals, you know, the the QA is an important part of any press release, and we'll have a discussion around what likely questions will come up. But you can use Chat GBT or AI to supplement that. And that typically there's one or two questions or angles we would never would have thought about. It's just a really good way to kind of um save time, I suppose, in in that respect. Okay, so um interview tips and tricks. Um, I'm gonna I'm gonna cover a few dirty tricks used by journalists, but I do want to say um, you know, professionally trained journalists are guided by ethical standard. It's not about dirty tricks, it's it's rather about clever techniques that they often use which will elicit a certain response. Um, so it's really important that you know what these tips and these these techniques are so you can respond appropriately to them. And you the last thing you want is to be on a live interview scenario and be blindsided by a difficult question. And like Chris said, you're not gonna be interviewed by Jeremy Paxman or or Kay Burley. Um, you know, that might be one in ten interviews that you do. Most interviews, the journalist is going to be supportive and is going to want to get good content, and they're not going to want to catch you out. So I don't want to overly alarm you. Um, something worth defining though is um, and and I think there's a lot, you know, we always say, can we talk off the record? And it's almost become kind of common parlance. But I think it's worth defining what is on and off the record um in a media interview. So off the record means it's not directly attributable to you. So often you see in political interviews, for example, the BBC will say something like, The BBC understands that uh Christy, my muting. Yeah, sure. Um, off the record, for example, you know, the BBC would say something like BBC understands that Keir Starmer's team wants to do this. So that's off the record. Somebody in in government has briefed the journalist, um, but it's not attributable. On the record is attributable, so you're going to be directly quoted. Um, one should assume that any media interview is on the record unless you specify. So basically, anything you say the moment you start speaking to a journalist, and by the way, from the moment you walk into the room, not the moment the tape recorder starts recording, so assume everything you say is on the record. Um, if you want something to be off the record, you need to say, um, can this be off the record? And and then it becomes not attributable. If if you're not confident with this stuff, I wouldn't even go down this route. Um, you know, and I think good journalists um will will will will honor that. I'd say 95% of journalists will honor that because it's about part of their kind of code of ethics. But in effect, everything is on the record because it's you know, whether it's attributable or not, it's going to make it into the piece. It's just whether they quote you or not. So um be aware of that. And like I say, from the moment you walk into the room to the moment you walk out of the room, assume everything's on the record. Um, this um we've actually I've actually blurred out this piece of media coverage because I didn't want to uh I didn't want to drop the individual in it, but we um we worked with a um let's say a B2B company um in the um removal business many years ago. And the um the founder of the company did a regional business interview, but he basically spent half the interview cracking jokes with the journalist and and and giving kind of um salubrious stories about the company and about the history, and he he assumed this stuff wouldn't make it into the final piece because he he didn't kind of give adequate consideration to what's on and off the record.

Ken Hughes: 36:23

Can I just say before you continue, we did clearly prep him as well before he went into this interview, saying don't make jokes, don't do that. It's these are the we we did the insight and everything, so we properly prepared him, and we even had um a sheet that he should go through, and he just because he thought he'd built an extra report, excellent rapport with the journalist, he was was using what he called banter with the journalist, but actually the journalist was just recording it, debating.

SPEAKER_03: 36:51

And it led to some I mean, I must admit, it led to some amazing quotes. So um the the business owner fled to the other side of the world to escape the family business. We have been accused of being the reason why somebody had a miscarriage, and even my husband got cancer because of you. And this was all stuff he told the journalist, you know, as a as a passing comment, as a bit of a joke, and it all made it into the piece, and it was a bloody disaster, actually. That the article, you know, it could have been a really good profile, but um he failed to um give consideration to what's on and off the record. So beware, um, it's not just uh Jeremy Paxman, it's not just Pierce Morgan, it's um a regional newspaper as well that that might take advantage of this. Um now, this is one of my favorite videos on the internet, um, but the point is um a lot of interviews now are done via video conferencing. Um, post-COVID, this became a massive thing. And you know, you now don't have to drive to Manchester to the Salford Studios of the BBC at five in the morning or go down to London to go to the Good Morning Britain studios. You can often dial in via um, you know, via Zoom or via Teams. But what I would say is be acutely aware of what's happening in your background. Um, framing is really important. Um, you need to be in the middle of a, you know, you need to be smartly dressed or appropriately dressed rather, well lit. You need a decent background, as Chris has said. Ideally, you need to have briefed everybody in your house that an interview is about to happen. You need to have a good connection. You don't want your family to be downloading a movie or playing video games the moment you're doing an interview and it's a jittery connection. Um, think about your backdrop. Is it plain? Um, is it a world map in this case, which um kind of conveyed the right image? Is it a bookcase? A ring light is a good idea, or at least decent lighting so that you're um you're you're kind of well lit. And think about clothing, don't go with really crazy um patterns or anything like that. Go with block colours. Just I mean, it's common sense really um a lot of the time. And um you don't want a situation like this to happen, um, which I'm gonna show you. Scandals happen all the time.

SPEAKER_04: 38:54

The question is how do democracies respond to those scandals? Uh and what will it mean for uh for the wider region? I think one of your children has just walked in. I mean, shift is shifting shifting sands in the region to the relations with the north may change. Um I would be surprised that they do.

Ken Hughes: 39:18

His face is a classic, innit?

SPEAKER_03: 39:23

Yeah, you get the idea. Um so uh brief everybody in your office, in your house, wherever it is, um, that you are going to be doing an interview. And again, um this this couldn't have been worse, and it went absolutely viral. Um this feels like a really obvious one, but when you're being interviewed, um, you know, again Chris spoke about sound bites and the fact that we are moving towards this kind of soundbite culture and get land a good sound bite or a good quote on a radio interview, you know, there's going to be 10 to 15 bulletins a day. And if you get a good sound bite, you could be featured 15 times throughout the day. So think about um, you know, these sound bites, and part of that is speaking in complete sentences. So don't just answer the question, listen to the question, and then rephrase it back into your answer. So to bring that to life, do you believe you provide customers a quality product? Yes, we do. Now that's a terrible response. Um, you know, that's how you'd respond in a conversation, but that's not how uh media interviews want your response. You know, a better response would be I believe we do provide customers a quality product. In fact, um I've got data to back this up, XYZ. You know, so so answer rephrase the question um as part of your answer and then answer question. And a lot of people actually forget to do this. Um, I've talked about sound bites. Um, you know, the rule of three is really important. It's got to be natural, though. So things like alliteration, similes, or metaphors all can work quite well. Don't overdo it because it's it's really kind of cringy when you see somebody trying to crowbar in sound bites or crowbar in um you know um key messages too much into an interview. It's got to be authentic and it's got to be natural, and and practice it, you know, practice it in some mock interview scenarios um with your PR team or with with your comms team. So build back better, take back control, see it, say it, sort it, and and we're really seeing a movement towards, and then and it's actually borrowed from US politics this idea of kind of you know, and you see um UK politicians, for example, using soundbites loads now because they know that the news agenda has changed. Um, the way um we have much punchier news bulletins repeated throughout the day, and they try and land these sound bites. Often it sounds incredibly contrived. So think about what your soundbites might be. Five-star customer service, um, it might be, I don't know, whatever it is, whatever's appropriate for your business and and try or brand and try and think about how you can land these this messaging in in in uh in interviews.

Ken Hughes: 41:58

Do you remember Theresa Mays?

SPEAKER_03: 42:01

Oh, was that uh what was that?

Ken Hughes: 42:02

Reminder Well, and they they used the they were all clearly all brief to use it. Strong and stable, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_03: 42:09

That's right. Remember and everybody used it over the course of about two weeks. I must have heard it about five. Yeah, I got sick of it. Um this is a this is a tricky one, but um don't repeat negative phrases. So journalists will often use um kind of emotive negative language in their question. Now, it's really important that you listen to that question, but don't repeat the negative phrase. What you can actually do is reframe the question and um you know using a kind of a signed-off or benign phrase. So I'll I'll bring that to life. Tell us about the crisis you face today, Chris. So if I was to respond to that and say, Well, we have today had a fairly serious crisis. All I'm doing there is repeating the fact that we've had a crisis and I'm I'm sort of perpetuating that negative language. Now, what um a skilled interviewee would do is take the negative phrase and actually reframe it as something benign or positive. So uh tell us about the crisis you've faced today. Well, we've had a number of issues today which we're busy resolving. So what I've done there, it seems quite subtle, but I've removed the word crisis and I've reframed it as an issue, or I might say challenges. So um it's really important you do that because then that quote I say might be used as a soundbite. And then what happens is if I've said crisis, the fact that my company now gets associated with the fact that we're having a crisis and my soundbite gets repeated 20 times a day using the word crisis, whereas if I've said challenges or issues, it's a much more benign phrase. So be and journalists will do this all the time. Um, you know, use negative language in a question in the hope that the individual will repeat it. Um knowing when to stop is really important as well. And I think as humans, we naturally want to feel the silence. You know, if you think about a conversation, um, if if there's an awkward silence in a conversation, it's natural for somebody to start to continue talking, really, to fill that silence. So um journalists know this, and often they will um they will just stop speaking and you know, hope you gabble away basically. And the more you speak, the more likely you are to say something you didn't intend to say, or the more likely you are to say something as off message. So um, if you've ever listened to a Louis Thoreau interview, he's very good at using silence and he will just stay, he will just stay silent for 30 seconds sometimes, and the other person starts talking and starts saying stuff that they didn't want to say, they didn't want to reveal. So what I would say is answer the question, answer it fully and answer it, um, answer it well, but stop talking. Once you've answered the question, stop talking. Now, um, if it's a broadcast journalist, they're not gonna leave much of a silence because um that's the worst thing a broadcast journalist can get is is an awkward silence in an interview. So pretty quickly they're gonna jump in and ask another question and fill the silence. So it does require a little bit of experience and a little bit of confidence, um, but um definitely be aware of this. So, you know, you might say that's categorically not true. In fact, we know that this year alone we've had an exemplary safety record with only XXX reported site incidents. So you've you've answered the question, you've also shut the question down by using statistics, so there's nowhere really the journalist can go if you say, you know, we've you know, our our records say we've only had 10 reported site incidents in the last 12 months. You've used your own data. Um, as far as the journalist knows, that's true. It doesn't really give them anywhere to go. If there's then some silence, you might say, um, in fact, if I think about it, we uh we and then you start talking, you start you start um weakening what you've already said, and then you might start revealing some um some evidence that is contrary to what you've just said. So be confident and be, you know, like I say, answer the question fully, but then stop talking. Um and I sort of alluded to this, but you know, it's really important to kind of shut um shut negative lines of questioning down. And when you shut the negative line of questioning down, the journalist will probably take a different that they'll be satisfied with that section. Um they're unlikely to keep on pushing you if um if if you've adequately shut something down with a fact or something like that, and then they'll move on to a different segment of the interview. But if you don't shut it down, they'll keep on pursuing that line of questioning um and they'll keep on asking you questions about it, and you'll start to get um flustered and you might start to flap. So um, you know, I would always say kind of hedge your bets in this respect. So, you know, you're unlikely you might get challenged, but you're unlikely to get challenged about your own statistics and your own figures. So I gave the kind of the safety record statistics earlier. You you probably won't get challenged on that, and the journalist will will probably um move on. And ultimately, you know, you're the expert in your own business, your own sector, you know your own company data and statistics, or at least you should much better. Better than the journalist. So you need to be firm with this stuff. So, you know, your product is sort of substandard, isn't it? Again, don't get defensive here. Journalists, you know, if you're defensive, it's it turns into a bit of an argument. Um, but you could say, you know, that's categorically not true. So you're you're you're stating your your your point there. And then you bring in your own data. In fact, for the last five years, we've had a five-star rating, which is the gold standard of customer satisfaction. So you've really kind of shut that question down there. You've you've you've been very firm, you've brought in your own data, and there's nowhere the journalists can really go with that. So um this is why having these facts and figures at your fingertips in an interview is is is so important. Um, empathy is really important um in a in an interview as well, particularly if it's an issue or a crisis. So you see politicians doing this all the time, and and you know, I think a lot of the time, you know, we should look to politicians, you know, um often they get it wrong, but they are the masters of media interviews a lot of the time. And they'll often say something like, you know, before they even answer the question, look, I want to say, first of all, clearly our thoughts go out to all affected by today's tragic events. So that immediately establishes empathy um with the audience, and that's really, really important. So um get to the heart of what the story is about. You know, it if you've had a big customer service issue, um, if if if you're a house builder for the sake of argument, we gave a house builder example and somebody's been injured on the site. You know, the story isn't about you as a business, the story is about individuals, it's about people that have been hurt. So try to get to the heart of what the story's about. And often it's about people. And if it's about people, show some empathy rather than just going in with a kind of a cold business response. So clearly, our thoughts go out to all affected by today's tragic events is a is a good start. Um, alternatively, you could answer the question just as well. We've had a technical issue with a subcontractor that we're looking into. So you've failed to establish any kind of empathy there. You've gone straight into excuses, you've gone straight into a business, um, a kind of a business focus rather than a person focus. And that's going to get audiences turning against you from the outset. So do think about showing empathy before talking about the reasons why something has happened. Um, this is a bit of a favourite, actually. Um, a lot of the time it is we call it the hot mic. So a lot of the time when you're doing particularly broadcast interviews, um, guests will get mic'd up um in advance of um of the interview, often 20 minutes in advance. And the mic's often left on as well, by the way. So um, and the same goes for when the interview's ended. I think Prince Charles, uh in fact, it's Gordon Brown, wasn't it? Gordon Brown got caught out by this when he said the bigoted woman. Oh, look, it's that horrible bigoted woman. Um when he's back in his in his um parliamentary car, wasn't he? And um his mic was still on, and and this happens all the time. So, you know, this is the whole idea that you know, when you're mic'd up, when you're in um the BBC's offices or Sky's um Sky's uh broadcasting studio, you know, you're an enemy territory, effectively. Be careful what you say. There's journalists everywhere, particularly if you're a CEO of uh of a blue chip. Um, and beware the mic might be on. Now, there's a great example here, and I don't know what he was thinking, but um this was when, and if the funny thing is that the deal fell through, actually, but the CEO from Sainsbury's um Sainsbury's was due to merge with Asma and it was going to make the CEO 50 million quid, basically. Um, and the deal was nearly done, and he got interviewed on ITV News. He forgot the mic was still on. Um, and before the interview, he started singing a little song.

SPEAKER_00: 50:54

Let's send it, lend it, brand it rolling along. We're in the money, the sky is sunny.

SPEAKER_03: 51:04

He was obviously nervous and obviously a little bit bored because he'd been made to sit around for a while, but why on earth he was singing song? And even that song, and it made national headlines everywhere, didn't it?

Ken Hughes: 51:15

It was absolutely absolutely brilliant.

SPEAKER_03: 51:18

And then the deal fell through as well. Surprisingly. Yeah. We've just pulled out a few of our favorites there. Um, I mean, we do we I'll come on to it later. When when we train our clients in in in you know to for sort of more advanced media training, we we talk through loads and loads of theory. There's about 10 or 15 other kind of common tricks and techniques journalists will use. And then what we do is we actually put our clients under a bit of pressure and we sit them down in a room, we get we get our camera crew on them, we get the lights turned up brightly, and we actually draft in um a former, you know, a former national media uh journalist to actually give them a grilling for 10 minutes. And then what we do is watch the videos back, and then we we we kind of pause them and we critique them, and then we try it again and we try it again. And what happens is people actually come out of that training session, it can be half a day, and they're they're sharp and they're they're they're calm under pressure and they know how to handle an interview. And that's such an effective way to actually prepare your senior team for um for these kind of uh media interviews. It's all about practice. You can't possibly get better without practicing and without practicing, and really that's something you should be doing every six months if you've got a chief exec or a leadership team who um want to do more of or do a lot of media interviews. Um nearly finished. Um we'll uh we'll wrap up in a second. So, you know, what not to do in a media interview? I think a lot of this is fairly obvious. You know, don't say no comment. I mean, I think that's that's almost become a kind of a Hollywood uh, you know, common parlance, you know, you see it in movies and stuff, don't you? But you know, you should never say no comment um in an interview. You you can say, look, you know, my role is XYZ, I'm just not qualified to answer that question, or you know, great question, you'd be better speaking to XYZ. But to say no comment is is is incredibly cliched and is not particularly helpful. I mentioned this, but don't use don't repeat negative phrases, but also don't use negative language as a whole in in your uh responses. Always avoid jargon and technical language. You know, we get it, you know your sector really well. You'll know um you'll know the the tech techie nuances of what it is you do, but the general public will not know that. So you've got to break down what you do and present it in a really engaging, clear, simple way. Um and journalists would it'll just frustrate journalists if you're overly jargony. I can't tell you that or I won't tell you that. Um you know that that's that's not an appropriate thing to say. That's going to become very confrontational very quickly. Very lengthy, rambling answers. I mean, don't say one-word answers, like I said, answer the question fully, but you you you do need to stop speaking. You know, a sentence, a paragraph is fine. Don't answer for 10 minutes and ramble on and on and on. Don't kind of get into this let you know, lecturing the audience or lecturing the interviewer. Again, that's going to get the audience against you very, very quickly. It's going to put the interviewers back up. Um and don't don't kind of speculate if if if you're posed a hypothetical question, um, you know, how how would uh you know, how do you think you would react to this if it happened to you? You know, that's hypothetical, yeah. And you should never kind of speculate, you should focus on the facts. Um, but ultimately in a in a media interview, you know, the best people, you know, the best people at media interviews roll with the punches and they they're they're confident. They um, you know, sometimes they they the interviews take an unusual twist and turn. You know, don't don't kind of um always bring it back to your agenda, roll with the punches, go with it, have a light touch if it's appropriate. Um, but you know, gently bring it back to your agenda, gently put in your key messages. Um, but really it's about practice, practice, practice. Um, right. Um a few quick dirty tricks before we um we wrap up. How are we doing for time? Um we've got you've got like four minutes. Okay. We might overrun slightly. Yeah, okay. Um, so some quick dirty tricks um and how to uh how to respond. The rabbit punch. This is when um the journalist asks a destabilizing first question that you're not even ready for, and it might be personal or unexpected. So Paxman used to be the king of this. Uh so we interviewed Anne Whiticum. Were you a little in love with Michael Howard or um to the Italian ambassador? Sir, your country is lying to us, isn't it? So the rabbit punch might catch us out. We might not have been prepared for this. So the way to do it is basically respond briefly and with a light touch. So um, you know, the Anne Wittacomb Wittacomb example, she could have said something like, Um, Jeremy, you know very well I was in love with my I'm in love with my husband, or something like that. You know, this is about rolling with the punches and showing a bit of humour. Don't get rattled, is what we're saying, because that's that's what they want. But this isn't generally going to happen to you. The personal question, um, always make sure you remember what the company line is and don't get drawn into offering personal opinion. So this is uh a great example of this. The the head of Barclays, which is the biggest uh the UK's biggest credit card company, in the interview, they asked him, would he use a credit card himself? Or and would he would his family use a credit card? And he said, No, of course not, they're too expensive, which is an absolutely crazy thing to do because then the headlines around the world were a little fatherly advice from the head of Barclays, don't use credit cards because they're too expensive. And how this guy, Matt Barrett, who's on£1.7 million a year, didn't see that one coming, um, you know, is uh is uh is surprising. So to be aware of when the question's personal and the impact it could have and make sure you you kind of tow the company line. Small talk, um, again, don't be really buttoned up and uptight when you go into an interview, but do be aware that small talk can inadvertently reveal something you don't want it to. So the journalist might say, How are you today? And you might say, I'm great, thank you. But you're there to you're there to talk about um five of your factories being closed. So the journalist will say, You're great, are you? And you're closing five factories. Um equally, you're looking well. Have you been on holiday? Um and you might say, Yes, I've just been in Barbados for two weeks. Um, and this is at the same time as you're making a series of redundancies. So straight away the small talk then becomes the story. So chief exec suns himself in Barbados while company uh makes half the team redundant. So do be aware of small talk at the beginning, beginning of an interview. Um open questions can be quite a challenge as well, because an open question um doesn't really steer you in terms of what direction you want to go in. And and and when the when the question's open, you might inadvertently reveal something or talk about something which is off-brief. And often they'll start with an open question um as opposed to a to a focus question. So um so what's happened today then versus what's caused the IT outage you face today then? So um what's caused the IT outage you face today is is a fairly straightforward question. You could say we've faced a number of issues and then you go down that route. But what's happened today then? You might say, Well, we've uh had an IT outage, we've lost a number of customers, uh, some of the staff have walked out. Um we can't get into the office because the deck, you know, suddenly you revealed a way bigger story than you intended to. So be aware of uh the open question. The Colombo question is is is a bit of an and finally. I'll I'll end with this one actually, um, because I think this is quite a good one. So um this is really, really common with journalists when they ask you something as a final question um that's completely off-brief. So Columbo used to do this if you remember the TV detective from the 80s, probably. He'd always kind of ask a final question, and it would always be a real killer question that would catch the murderer out. And journalists sometimes do this. So um, you know, that's great. Thanks, Will. While I've got you, as a man in a powerful position, I'd love to know your thoughts on the Gino DeCampo scandal. So you thought that you were there to talk about your um your businesses opening in your office in London, and actually you've suddenly been steered down a route where you quit uh you're you're talking about Gino DeCampo being cancelled from ITV. So be aware you might get asked these kind of questions. Often it's politically led. You know, what do you think about the Labour government's policies do X? You know, um, but you don't always have to answer these. You know, you could easily say, look, that's not my area of specialism. As you know, I'm here to talk about X, Y, Z, and then smile, and that's a good way to end it, and it won't get included. But don't necessarily be if you can't, if you've got nothing to add in this area, don't be too tempted to uh, you know, you're under no obligation to answer it. So slightly overrunning, but um I'm hoping you you're finding this of value. Um, five ways to improve your media interviews tomorrow. Um, and ultimately it's about getting better at what you're doing. So always view the media interview through a digital or social lens. You know, we we're not, as Chris kind of said, we're we're no longer purely analog, you know, it's no longer the print copy of the times. You know, the chances are they're gonna want to bring a video camera, they're gonna want to, they're gonna be pushing for kind of social media sound bites, and you could become a meme, um, like it or not. Uh always prep an insight, you know, do do your research before an interview and you know, use those insight tools at your disposal to do that. Consider using AI to put you through your paces. So put your press release or your announcement through AI and look at some really tough questions you might get asked. Always test, practice, test, practice. So scenario test and practice on camera, and that's something we can help you with. Um, and think about a media interview in terms of sound bites and finesse your messages. So try and land those messages, try and land the uh the sound bites and um in in a natural and engaging way. So I'm hoping that was useful and interesting. We do have a package um that's based around media training that you may be interested in. Um essentially, I I sort of talked about this earlier, but we we work with our clients, we we we train them in in the latest kind of media training theory that's bespoked to your sector, and we then do a half day session of journalist-led mock interviews when we put the pressure on, we have lighting and camera crews, and we put you through your paces, and then you get a kind of an internal playbook out at the end of that, your key messages, how to handle difficult questions, etc. etc. And that starts at 4995 um as a package. So by all means, um give us a shout if uh you want to talk about that um in more detail. So thank you very much. A little bit of a different one today, but um, yeah, definitely an interesting emerging discipline.