Metaphors are one of those things: the more you learn about them the more they reveal themselves as a secret, powerful influence on the way we as individuals and as a society think. Violent Crime as a Public Health Issue In the last couple of weeks, the idea of treating violent crime as a ‘public […]
The art of oratory is an old-fashioned way of describing the skill of mastering an argument and delivering it to move an audience. And there was something old-fashioned and somewhat extraordinary about a Tory conference speech from someone I had previously never heard of. Somehow I had missed the story about the richest MP trying […]
When is a metaphor ‘inappropriate’? This is my question of the week. One speech this weekend seemed to cause more noise and bluster than any other, and that was from the new Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. In what looked like a calm and reasoned performance, he used a metaphor of the USSR and a prison […]
This is a quick mini-post: revision notes for those that have already worked with us. Doing a really good presentation is an art and usually requires a fair amount of work. But I am aware lots of people would be happy to just give an okay presentation, without feeling it might have damaged their reputation […]
Communicating risk via the media is really hard. A good case study for this came this weekend when The Sunday Times splashed with a leaked report from the National Police Co-ordination Centre about planning for a No-Deal Brexit. Risk of UK Crimewave Under the headline ‘Police Plan for Riots and Crimewave if there is […]
6 tips for business storytelling are detailed at the end of the article but first, let me explain where I am coming from here. I was talking to a PR person at the weekend about her job hunt and she wanted to include ‘great storytelling’ as one of her key skills. Now, I totally agree […]
Preparing for a media interview is common sense but knowing exactly what and how to prepare is less clear to most people. Almost all of us are time poor; knowing exactly what to do in the one or two-hour window allocated for interview preparation is not so obvious. Pre-flight Checklist So here is our five-step […]
Rudeness in public life is not new and gives guaranteed headlines. Boris Johnson has won another huge raft of headlines and is being ‘investigated’ by the Conservative party on the grounds he may have breached the party’s code of conduct with remarks he made about women wearing the niqab. Rude: Boris Grabs the Headlines (again) […]
Body language is in the news this week. The rich and famous spend their life in the public eye and with cameras always on them and plenty of paid pundits to give an expert opinion it is difficult not to offend someone somewhere. The brain is wired to take in and interpret visual information above […]
Message discipline is one of the key things we teach in Media Training. And it has been interesting this last weekend to see the issue of discipline in communications move right to the centre of the political debate. Message discipline and collective responsibility Following a long meeting at Chequers, Prime Minister Theresa May has re-imposed […]
