Ocado: a victim of bad media training

20 May 2013
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There is a lot of bad media training out there.

I am quietly working away on a damp summer morning when I hear an interview with Ocado’s boss on Radio 4 Today programme. Suddenly I am overwhelmed with that ‘disgusted of Tunbridge Wells feeling’. I live in fear of turning into my mother, who spends several minutes most days shouting at the Today presenters or guests.

But really.

How can clever senior people, running successful companies, not realise that to go on a current affairs programme and simply parrot the message ‘we provide a phenomenal service to customers’ – means they are making fools of themselves.

Worse, as I write these words, I am sure some PR person is patting the offender (who I am not naming out of courtesy) on the back, saying ‘well done’  – you landed the ‘phenomenal’  key message four times.

Recent headlines

Ocado won a precious 3 minute slot on Radio 4’s Today programme at about 7.15am, close to peak listening time. It was there because the company has done a deal with Morrisons that appears to have ruffled the feathers of its key existing client Waitrose.

You can listen to the programme here until 27th May but will have to play with the cursor to find the slot 1 hour 14 minutes in.

I do not blame the Ocado boss for his lamentable performance, I blame his PR team and whoever trained him. He almost certainly was trained a) because most senior business people are and b) because no one would naturally conduct an interview in that way.

Good media training ensures you articulate your point of view in an accessible and credible way, whilst avoiding any bear traps. Part of being credible means you must come across with both warmth and authority. If you are a business leader there should also be some evidence of intelligence and I recommend a gracious attitude to those that don’t agree with you.

Bad media training encourages you to close down all intelligent questions and parrot some bland marketing message. This leaves a sour taste in the listener’s mouth and also probably ensures you won’t be invited back on the programme.

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“Could you survive on £53 a week?”

2 Apr 2013
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This nightmare question came right at the start of an interview on the flagship political forum, the BBC’s Today Programme. It was particularly tough for Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, who was there to defend cuts to state welfare payments to millions of poorer citizens.

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There was no escape, so he did his best. “Well if I had to, I would,” he started out, before attempting to move on to his first prepared message with that very useful phrase “but the real point is…”

It worked for a while, as Duncan Smith was able to get across the government’s case that the reforms were needed to slow the growth in welfare spending, provide incentives to the chronic unemployed, and make the system fairer for the low-paid employed.

But that first answer turned out to be a delayed-action grenade. The ever-alert British press picked it up and it hit the front pages.  In little over 24 hours an online petition calling on him to make good his boast and actually live on £53 per week had garnered 150,000 signatures.

Duncan Smith is far from the most “posh” of the current Conservative party leadership, being from a middle-class military background, with Scottish and Irish connections. But in populist political terms, he is saddled with a double-barrelled surname and a somewhat patrician manner. He is also, as the papers helpfully pointed out, married to the millionairess daughter of hereditary titled aristocrats and lives in a 16th century country house with a swimming pool and tennis court.

It matters not that the original case-study on which the £53 per week figure came from – a struggling self-employed man – turned out to be inaccurate. Or that no sensible person could possibly expect a highly successful politician to live on the same level as the least financially successful sector of society.

Duncan Smith was roasted.  So what should he have said?

  • To have ignored the question would have been a red rag to that most pugnacious of interviewers, John Humphrys.
  • To say he could not live on £53 per week would have exposed him to charges of hypocrisy – imposing on others what he could not cope with himself.
  • To have challenged the relevance of the question would have sounded like evasiveness and Humphrys would probably have persisted.
  • To challenge or question the figure might have worked, but would still have left an impression he was ducking the issue of what poverty actually felt like.

No, there is, as so often, no good answer.

My personal suggestion would be something like this. “I really don’t know, it would be very tough, and I know that it is very tough for a lot of people out there, struggling to get by, which is why it is so important to get the long-term jobless into paid employment where they can increase their income …”

It’s often the impression that counts more than the actual words and sounding sympathetic and human is sometimes the best tactic.

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The need to show you care

17 Feb 2013
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The horsemeat saga has provided a neat illustration of the changing world of media relations.

Horsemeat found in a number of beef products

In the past, the old politicians’ dictum “Never apologise, never explain” could easily be adapted to business use as “Never apologise, never explain, and keep your head down.” While politicians have always needed to be in the public eye, companies – as distinct from their products – could be as invisible as they liked. The financial media had to be fed from time to time, to keep the share price up, but the general public could safely be ignored.

So when the waste product came into contact with the air conditioning, there was no need to roll out press statements, spokespeople, CEO interviews on the Today programme, and so on. Companies just ducked down behind the parapet and waited for the fuss to die down.

Gruenenthal, the German manufacturer of the drug Thalidomide, which caused birth defects in some 10,000 babies, waited 50 years before making a public apology. (And was widely condemned as doing too little, too late for its pains).

Thalidomide apology came 50 years after the drug was pulled

Such behaviour would not pass today, as Britain’s supermarkets found out last week. With public anger rising over the steady flow of revelations about horsemeat in beef products on sale to the public, the government put the boot in.

“It is not acceptable for retailers to remain silent while their customers have been misled,” a 10 Downing Street source told the Daily Telegraph. “The supermarkets need to justify their action and reassure the public.”

In other words, even if you have nothing to say, you have to offer a public face to an angry public. Refusing to appear until you have the results of an official enquiry, or laboratory tests, or a proper survey of your stores, is not a good enough excuse.

A good media trainer will show you how to turn even a bare minimum of technical information or procedural detail into interview material. It may not satisfy the public’s thirst for explanations, as you don’t actually have all the information they want. But it will show that you care about what the public thinks, and that matters. Nobody likes to be ignored.

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Don’t talk to journalists in anger

10 Feb 2013
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In Southwark Crown Court  the whole sorry tale of the disintegration of the relationship between Chris Huhne MP and former wife Vicky Pryce has been revealed in embarrassing detail. The angle that interests me as a media trainer is the idea that the furious, distressed and perhaps vulnerable Pryce, chose to ‘confide’ in a Sunday Times journalist.

Oakeshott got the scoop on Pryce and Huhne's relationship

The way Political Editor Isabel Oakeshott told the story in court, Vicky Pryce made the allegation that her husband, the former Lib Dem cabinet minister Chris Huhne, had pressured her to take speeding points on his behalf, towards the end of a lunch. Pryce made the allegation  ‘slightly under her breath’ and had to be asked to repeat it.

Did she mean to make the allegation?  It seems likely that Pryce had planned to make the allegation to Oakeshott but was perhaps nervous about actually doing it; or may be it ‘slipped out’ after a couple of glasses of wine. Either way it is extraordinary.

Vicky Pyrce - did she plan to reveal all?

Once out, there appears to have been a great deal of collaboration between Oakeshott and Pryce about how to handle the story. But despite that, as a direct result of that conversation over lunch, Pryce is being tried for perverting the course of justice. She has said in court that she now regretted telling all to the Sunday Times and believes that she ‘did not behave rationally’.

It is perhaps unwise to speculate too much about this particular case but the lesson is surely clear. If you are feeling aggrieved, angry and out for revenge it is not a good time to be talking to a journalist.

It should come as a surprise to no one that journalists do what they need to do to get people to talk. On occasion they may come across as very sympathetic but you will have no control over what makes it into print.

While the mock interviews we do in media training have none of the drama of the revelations from Southwark Crown Court last week – it is remarkably easy to get untrained people to reveal their grievances. I have had clients, during recorded training interviews, complain about colleagues or bosses, criticise regulators, reveal far too much about their spouses or harshly criticise their predecessors. Angry or irritated people want to talk! Journalists want to listen.

If you choose to confide in journalists, beware:

  • You lose control of a story once you give it to a journalist.
  • If you really want to destroy someone prominent, using a journalist can be a very effective way of doing it, but you may bring the temple down upon your own head.

 

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Not answering the question makes you sound dumb

2 Feb 2013
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More than any other media interviewee, it is politicians that are most often accused of not answering questions. As a group, they are perceived to be the ones most likely to deliver carefully prepared statements, rather than pay attention to the interviewer’s enquiry. Who can forget the legendary 1997 Newsnight interview in which former Home Secretary Michael Howard avoided the same question from Jeremy Paxman an astonishing 12 times?

But this week it was the turn of a business executive to steal the question-dodging crown.

Stephen Bates

Stephen Bates is European Managing Director of Research In Motion (RIM), which has just launched the shiny new Blackberry 10. This should have presented the company with an excellent opportunity to say something meaningful and memorable about its new product – even if it was obvious that the media were never going to let any spokesperson get away with plug after blatant plug.

Surprisingly, however, that’s precisely what Mr Bates tried to do. Even more bizarrely, he seemed to think he could respond to every question with a series of rehearsed statements, and make no attempt even to pretend his answers were replies to the questions asked.

He tried it with Nicky Campbell on BBC Radio 5 Live.

He tried it with Steph McGovern on BBC Breakfast. On each occasion it failed. Badly.

Stephen Bates and Steph McGovern on BBC Breakfast

Nicky asked about the iphone and what RIM had learnt from it; Steph asked about Blackberry 10’s delayed launch and what had gone wrong. Mr Bates ignored them both, and trotted out mere marketing puff about the uniqueness of the user experience and the exciting nature of the industry.

Not only does such an approach alienate the audience, it infuriates the interviewer – who then tends to doggedly pursue their single line of enquiry until they get something that at least sounds like an answer. Nicky countered with the words “it sounds like you’re reading from a press release” and Steph eventually terminated the discussion by saying “we might never know what went wrong”.

Any media trainer would have told you that the iphone question was inevitable. So were the challenges on the issues about bringing the new Blackberry to market.

But for interviewees simply not to answer the question is simply not a strategy. In Blackberry’s case this week, the company’s response was hard to swallow and left a distinctly sour taste in the mouth.

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