marketing basics ignored
Lindsay Williams

The marketing basic that most serious execs ignore

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Storm Imogen is grabbing headlines in the UK this week, following storm Henry last week and reminding us all of the experiment being run by the UK and Irish Met Office to name storms. It began in September last year and since then we have had eight named storms including Abigail, Desmond and Gertrude. The reason given for the experiment is the belief that the naming helps efficient communication and means ‘the public will be better placed to keep themselves, their property and their businesses safe’. In doing this the two Met Offices are clearly following a system that began in 1953 in the US, and has named all hurricanes since then.

Basic communication tool

Giving memorable and easily identifiable names to something is a basic communication tool which we all use at home when we name our children and pets, give nicknames to our neighbours or name our boats and cars. So why do senior executives, particularly in software, tech and financial services companies wilfully chose not to do this?

Leonard Nimoy Spock 1967

Spock in 1967 StarTrek. Naming a product after a well loved character makes it memorable.

So let’s take a hypothetical example. Imagine we have a new bit of software, aimed at the small business market and called SME Payroll Overpayments Corrector. The name is a mouthful but call it SPOCK (S-P-O-C (k)) instead and suddenly we have something memorable and easy to talk about. It doesn’t have to be an acronym, that is just one easy way of doing it. But you could call this widget Pegasus or Humphrey or Matilda without any justification, or name it after the inventor or the Saints Day of the launch. Whatever is chosen will be more memorable than SME Payroll Overpayments Corrector. 

Too frivolous

The funny thing is, and I have seen this many times, when PR or marketing professionals suggest to serious executives that they deploy this simple trick, the idea is rejected as being ‘too frivolous’ or ‘out of line with the group branding’.

In one dismissive stroke of ‘group think’ one of the most basic marketing tricks of all is dismissed. And sadly it will be these same executives who are likely to later complain that the brilliant new product or widget has not had the recognition, traction or media coverage they would have liked.

Cats and Apple 

Naming blog useable pic

Apple are now naming their operating systems after Californian landmarks

The tech company Apple is much admired as a well-run business. Why do we think they chose to name their operating systems after cats (Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar etc.)? Because it made them memorable and easier to talk about. Of course for the geeks, all these also had numbers such as 10.3 and 10.4 etc. But the cat name was given prominence. Recently Apple ran out of cats and has moved to naming operating systems after well-known Californian locations: Mavericks, Yosemite etc. Here is a fuller explanation from Business Insider.

Brics and Ticks

The naming trick has also been deployed with great effect in economics and investment circles, many, many times. Think of bulls and bears for example.  Jim O’Neill is a British Economist once chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He is best known for coining the acronym BRICs in the early 2000’s. As all my bankers will know this stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China but the acronym is used in the context of the (once) fastest growing emerging economies. Recently the FT was arguing that BRICs have now been superseded by TICKs – Taiwan, India, China and South Korea, the new darlings of emerging market investors.

And just in case you are still thinking this is all too silly, let’s remember the genius who in 1993, rather late in a crowded market of new mobile phone companies (many of which subsequently fell by the wayside) decided to call his company Orange. Who would have thought that would work!

getting media interview basics right
Eric Dixon

Remember to get the basics right

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You’d think that being the chairman of a high-profile group campaigning for Britain to stay in Europe would at least require you to remember the name of the organisation concerned.

You’d think.

But as Lord Rose, chairman of the ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’ group discovered in an interview with Sky News, even such obvious details can slip from the mind in the heat of the moment.

“I’m Stuart Rose and I’m the chairman of Ocado,” he started telling political editor Faisal Islam before realising that whilst true, that role was not relevant to the interview that was about to follow.

“Sorry – chairman Stay in Britain… Better in Britain campaign,” he stuttered, before trying to clear the decks with “Right, start again!”

Sadly, the next two versions were no better.

“I’m Stuart Rose and I’m the chairman of the Better in Britain campaign…er… Better Stay in Britain campaign.”

Four attempts, none of them correct. Not only embarrassing, but also a mistake which went onto overshadow his key message – the claim that the EU brings in an additional £670,000 a year for the average British business importing or exporting goods within the union. Very few of the media reports which followed that interview made mention of his key statistic, and chose to highlight his opening errors instead.

A mistake like that matters. If the chairman of an organisation can’t remember what it’s called, why should anybody else? And with a plethora of different pressure groups campaigning variously to stay in or leave the European Union, yours needs to stand out.

So how can you make sure you don’t forget something so fundamental?

The key is good old-fashioned practice. As well as going through possible interview scenarios in advance, something called ‘tongue-memory’ comes into play, making it easier to remember those words and phrases which have actually been uttered out loud beforehand.

You should also seize any useful mnemonics available out there. The more unusual, the better – and as far as Lord Rose was concerned, he had already been offered a helping hand by his rivals.

Eurosceptic campaigners positively enjoy referring to the ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’ group as ‘BSE’ for short – the unfortunate acronym also standing for Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, which led to the EU banning British beef in the 1990s.

All he had to do was take their acronym on board, and use it to spell out the correct order of the letters beginning the words in his group’s name.

Simple, dramatic and effective – and even more powerful because it uses an intended insult from the very people opposing you, to help you on your way.

Don’t let a name check make you sound like a robot
Laura Shields

Don’t let a name check make you sound like a robot

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Is it ever ok for organisations to talk about themselves in the third person?

Any media trainer will almost certainly say no, adding that nothing de-humanises a spokesperson faster than those who say ‘Organisation X’ rather than ‘we’ when speaking on behalf of their company, institution or NGO.

From Churchill to Martin Luther King to Boris Johnson, effective public speakers have always known and understood the importance of ‘we’ for building empathy.  And, more recently, as Lindsay blogged in December, part of the spine-tingling power of UK Shadow Foreign Secretary Hillary Benn’s ‘Syria’ speech was in its appeal to ‘our children’ and ‘our values’.

Don't let brand placement make you sound like a robot image

Don’t let brand placement make you sound like a robot

Clearly, these are examples of rhetoric designed to quickly persuade and carry an audience with the speaker.  But if you need convincing at a more mundane level, consider these two statements. Which one builds trust and makes you think the spokesperson is comfortable and open in the way they represent their organisation at a day to day level?

‘Company X does not believe the Warsaw Agreement reflects a true evaluation of the available data on alternatives to Substance B. Company X worked for more than 20 years, with input from regulators, to introduce alternatives.‘

OR

‘We do not believe that the Warsaw Agreement reflects a true evaluation of the available data on alternatives to Substance B.  We have been working for more than 20 years, with input from regulators, to introduce alternatives’.

Clearly, (unless you are a robot), you are going to pick answer B.  It seems an incredibly basic thing for companies and public institutions to get right.  And yet, many do still overlook the all-important ‘we’, with its overtones of collective responsibility and inclusiveness.

Why? How could they?

Part of this is almost certainly down to branding. In our sardine-tin of a digital landscape, many organisations probably believe the best way to stand out is to name-check themselves as often and as loudly as possible.  There are also those who think using the third person adds gravitas, objectivity and even distance to sensitive or weighty issues.  And while all of these arguments are understandable, they shouldn’t automatically be favoured over ‘we’ or ‘us’.

And finally, in certain (ahem) policy towns, the persistent over-use of the third rather than the first person may well be a hangover from the adaptation of written materials to oral ones i.e. where lines/messages are prepared on paper by subject matter experts working in their second or third language and without forethought about how the words will sound coming out of an actual human being’s mouth.

Which is why it’s even more essential for spokespeople to rehearse (or, at the very least, read) their work aloud before doing a press conference or green-lighting a press release.  Otherwise, they run the risk of sounding like automatons who aren’t actually connected to the organisation they represent. And if they don’t sound like they care about their organisation, then how can the rest of us be expected to?

James Murdoch
Lindsay Williams

Note to self: Remember the Power of Stories

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In Time magazine at the end of 2015 James Murdoch wrote about the importance of stories. He lists examples of transformative story-telling both in the US and in Bollywood. But on a darker note he mentions how the ISIS (Daesh) story of blood-soaked vengeance against western oppressors has motivated individuals all over the world to unspeakable acts of violence.

James Murdoch Image

James Murdoch

We agree with him that stories matter. They matter much more than most people realise. We struggle every session to persuade serious, clever people to tell stories about their own organisations, products or services. Somehow the facts and numbers come more easily but telling stories seems frivolous.

Here is my guide to crafting stories with impact.  These are not stories to be written in a novel, although there are some similarities, but stories that are crafted to become part of presentations or media messages.

What is a story?

Most people understand that if you are talking about a new product or service a client example is a good idea although they are often ridiculously difficult to come-by. Occasionally, organisations go to a lot of trouble to collect ‘signed off’ case studies. These are undoubtedly highly valuable. But they are certainly not the only sort of story that can be of use in business. As a simple short-cut a hypothetical case study works pretty well. So does an anecdote from a person’s own life. Anecdotes about my own mother have been very useful for a number of clients, how she reacts to call centres, the difficulties she has with pin numbers etc.

Beginning, middle and end

Good ‘stories’ need a beginning, a middle and an end. Simply to state ‘we helped a client save a million pounds, dollar or euros’ is the most basic of example. In the aid world to say ‘we helped a Syrian refugee family’ or a ‘subsistence farmer in Ethiopia’ tells the audience or the journalist very little. But it doesn’t take much to turn these simple statements into a story that has impact.

Create people we care about

The first step is to create characters an audience can identify with. You don’t need a great deal of detail. Just a bit of humanity will immediately give your story more impact. If your Syrian refugee is a young widow or your client an ex-serviceman making his way as a civilian, suddenly the story comes to life.

Add colour and tangible detail

The next ‘trick’ is to add the odd bit of detail that creates a picture. Let us take our widow in Syria. A few words can paint a picture of the horror of her life; sheltering in what was once a school, making a camp for her three children in the corner of an old classroom.

Any detail that creates a picture will give a story more impact.

Add drama or tension

Finally, it will help your story if there is drama or tension. Some dilemma where a happy ending is not assured. If our ex-serviceman was thinking of giving up his business and signing on, if coming to your bank for a loan was his last ditch attempt to stay afloat, suddenly we have some dramatic tension.

We never suggest making-up these stories.  We don’t have to. They always exist. It is just hard persuading people that stories not facts are the thing that will change the mind of an audience or spur them into action.

 

Seven things every press officer should have to hand
Lindsay Williams

Seven things every press officer should have to hand

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The lull of New Year is a good time to take stock and get organised for the months ahead. We work with many large multi-faceted press offices which have systems and procedures galore. But we also often come across the odd poor marketing person who has had PR added to their job description without ceremony, briefing or training. And there are plenty of one-man-band press officers who have never worked in the large organisations. If you recognise yourself here, this article is for you. These are the seven things I think all press officers need to hand.

Unhappy woman

Many people have PR responsibilities dumped on them without training or support

1. Media List
Sounds basic but is often missing. As a proactive PR you will need an up-to-date list of all your relevant journalists. You might want to add other useful information such as how they like to be contacted: phone, email, twitter or (heaven help us) fax machine. You might want to add their publication or deadline dates or times as it is well worth avoiding these if you want to get their attention.

2. Spokesperson List
You will also need a list of your company spokespeople, and their out-of-hours contact numbers. Notes on anything relevant, such as what they can’t or don’t want to talk about and what their family responsibilities are, will all save time if you need someone in a hurry. You might also want to make a note of when they were last media trained!

Economist Style Guide

Economist Style Guide is the gold standard

3. Style Guide
Some organisations will have a style guide. If yours doesn’t you may want to create one to ensure all external written communications are standardised. The style guide will lay out such things as which terms need to be capitalised, whether you use British English or American English spellings and how you use names e.g. first and second name on first outing but just surname on second.  If you don’t know where to start you could do worse than browse the Economist Style Guide which is the gold standard. If you are starting from scratch don’t assume it has to be complicated: start with the obvious and add to it over time.

4. Jargon Buster
We think every organisation needs this and we have drawn them up ourselves for one or two clients. Jargon is the bane of a journalist’s life and if you can do the work to translate your internal jargon you will win better coverage. It is very hard for spokespeople to come up with alternative colloquial phrases during an interview. Much easier, if the PR person suggests some considered options as part of the interview preparation.

5. Events Calendar
We all have diaries and calendars of course but you might want to create one specifically for internal and relevant external events. Launch dates, executive board meetings, trade shows etc. are all relevant to the timing of press releases and other PR events. So are the introduction of new regulations or the launch of a rival company. It is much easier to plan if you have these all laid out on one at-a-glance calendar.

6. Prepared Reactive Lines
Most organisations have the negative questions that spokespeople dread coming up in an interview.  Often they will relate to issues that go back years. It is essential for the press office to know what the line is on all these issues and useful to capture these reactive lines in a document. Updates will be necessary at frequent intervals but it is much quicker to update than to start from scratch.

Crisis Communication Plan

Consider drawing up a Crisis Comms Plan

7. Crisis Comms Plan
Crisis Communications Plans come in all shapes and sizes. You can hire the big PR agencies to provide a ‘risk audit’ of your organisation and then, at some expense, provide detailed plans for each eventuality. This is probably way over the top for most organisations. But a couple of hours spent identifying the awful or disruptive things that could happen and then working out the PR strategy could be useful. If you put it in writing and get senior management sign-off this will save you time if something does happen; rather than waiting for decisions you will be able to swing into action.

Let me know what I have missed. Wishing you all a safe and prosperous 2016 from The Media Coach Team

 

 

Hilary Benn s Impassioned Speech Ahead Of Syria Airstrikes Vote YouTube
Lindsay Williams

A great speech dissected

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The speech of the week in the UK was without doubt the one by the shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn in parliament in favour of air strikes in Syria.

He spoke for just under 15 minutes:  here is a sample of the reaction to what he said:

Reaction

The Telegraph called it ‘spine-tingling’ and ‘inspiring’. The Guardian found it ‘riveting’. The Daily Mail said it was ‘electric’ and ‘one of the great Commons speeches’. Huffington Post said it was ‘eloquent and poetic’. And perhaps most telling of all, Philip Hammond, Britain’s Foreign Secretary – the man who sits opposite Benn on the political benches – called it ‘one of the truly great speeches in parliamentary history’.

So for us students of effective communication it is worth analysing why this speech had such impact, both in parliament and across the nation.

Not a rabble rouser

The first thing I would observe is that the speech is inclusive. This is not a rabble rouser. Instead Benn carefully builds affinity with his key audiences.

He does this first by giving the Prime Minister a very strong telling-off for insulting Jeremy Corbyn and suggesting he was a ‘terrorist sympathiser’. Benn restates his respect for his boss, saying he is not a terrorist sympathiser but  an ‘honest, principled, decent, good man’.  This establishes the fact that although Benn is going to disagree with Corbyn and side with the Conservative government, he is not changing sides and the issue is not personal.

Then, in a rather long-winded way, he makes reference to other speakers in the debate, praising contributions from both sides of the argument. More evidence of inclusiveness.

Key Message 

His key message comes at about five minutes in: ‘I believe that we have a moral and a practical duty to extend the action we are already taking in Iraq to Syria’.

Tower of Logic

This is followed by a fairly detailed and very logical look at whether the proposed military action is legal. This is tedious but a crucial foundation of his argument as many in the House of Commons today question whether Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq was legal. ‘Proving’ that airstrikes in Syria would be legal is the first brick in the tower of logic Benn seeks to build through the speech.

Emotional appeal 

After the legal question he shakes things up with an emotional appeal. As he expresses horror at the actions of ISIL (or Da’esh), we get to a very powerful part of the speech. Benn uses three ‘colourful’ examples first:

– Four gay men thrown from the fifth storey of a building.

– The beheading of the 82-year-old guardian of the antiquities of Palmyra.

– And the mass graves of Yazidi women killed because they were judged too old to be sold for sex.

Having delivered the ‘colour’ he then delivers the numbers – people killed by Da’esh:

– 30 British tourists in Tunisia

– 224 Russian holidaymakers on a plane

– 178 people in suicide bombings in Beirut, Ankara and Suruc

– 130 people in Paris

…ending this section ‘they could have been our children’. (Note the ‘our’; not ‘your’ or ‘anyone’s’, or ‘British’.) People who have worked with us know that we always look to build in both colour and numbers to our client’s arguments.

Benn then continued to take on, one by one, the other key pillars of the debate: why Britain should not stand aside; why the argument that ‘air strikes achieve nothing’ is wrong, and how Britain could both continue to work for peace in Syria and send bombing forays against Da’esh. Each step was clear and logical, building brick by brick the case for extended military action.

Fascists and contempt

The final few minutes of the speech are the most powerful. Much of the comment has focused on Benn’s evocation of the Second World War fight against Fascists.

‘Here we are faced by Fascists…’ he says. It is strong but I was more struck by his repeated use of the word ‘contempt’. Somehow it was this that, in the moment, stiffened my sinews and evoked my disgust.

‘They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy, the means by which we will make our decision tonight, in contempt.’

Benn finishes the speech with a short, staccato rallying cry, couched in simple, colloquial language.

‘And my view, Mr Speaker, is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria.’

Rhetoric can change history

Expert rhetoric does not mean the argument is right. But those of us spending our lives trying to find the right words, the right analogies and the right tone to build arguments must pause and reflect when someone hits the mark as Hilary Benn did last week. It is also a reminder of the power of rhetoric. This speech probably did not change the outcome of the debate but it may well have changed the trajectory of Hilary Benn’s career and the future of the Labour party.

media training lessons for spokespeople
Laura Shields

Lessons from the Brussels lockdown: Belgium’s foreign minister reminds us that even the most experienced spokesperson can’t always manage the news

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There’s an expression used by media trainers called ‘breaking into jail’. This is when spokespeople get themselves into trouble in interviews (and get the wrong sort of headline) without the journalist having to do much to provoke it.

A recent interview with Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders reminds us that even the most experienced spokespeople can have very bad days and lose control of their story.

On 25 November, Mr Reynders (who is fluent in English) was interviewed by ABC journalist Matt Gutman about the security situation in Belgium in general, and in Brussels in particular. He had clear messages he wanted to push (the need for countries to share more intelligence, and the importance of protecting the Belgian population from harm) and he managed to link back to them several times throughout the interview.

Unhelpful headlines from an undisciplined interview

Unhelpful headlines from an undisciplined interview

However, in spite of this, the interview yielded the following type of headlines in international and Belgian media:

Belgium’s Foreign Minister Warns of Attack With ‘Heavy Weapons’ and ‘Suicide Bombs’ (ABC)

Didier Reynders: “We are looking for 10 heavily armed people” (RTBF)

‘Belgian foreign minister: ‘We are looking for 10 heavily armed killers’ (New Europe)

This subsequently prompted a U-turn from Mr Reynders’ cabinet (who said he was quoted out of context) and a backlash from the Belgian media who pointed out that other ministers had been far more careful about quantifying the exact nature of the threat to the Belgian public.

You can watch the entire interview here. Below are some quick PR takeaways that I picked out.

Don’t speculate


Spokespeople who speculate or entertain journalists’ speculation during interviews have only themselves to blame.  Mr Reynders qualified a lot of his comments throughout the interview. For example, he said the Belgian government was looking for a group of ‘maybe 10, maybe more’ people with ‘heavy weapons’. He then fell into the trap of speculating on what ‘heavy weapons’ might be.  For example, he agreed that they might be ‘Kalashnikovs’ and ‘maybe more’.  This was hardly precise but it allowed ABC to run with the headline they went with because he had signed off on it all.

Beware the friendly but focused journalist

Lindsay, our MD, has a saying: ‘Always a journalist, sometimes a friend’.  This was a soft interview, which was even in tone and questioning (you can tell that Mr Reynders is relaxed from his body language) but it came back to sting.   George W Bush used to say that David Frost was the toughest interviewer he had ever faced because his questions were ‘nice’ but often yielded an afterburn. I would say the same is true of Mr Gutman’s approach here.

Spokespeople need to prepare reactive lines, not just messages

Most of Mr Reynders’s problematic comments were reactive rather than planned. (He also offered the information that schools and the metro in Brussels (both of which were closed at that point) were not the real targets and that shopping centres were at biggest risk).  Spokespeople need to plan reactive lines in advance so that they don’t let information casually slip. For example, at one point in the interview Mr Reynders  confesses that the Belgian security services don’t actually know how many people they are looking for.  In turn, this begs the question what on earth he was thinking by trying to put a figure on it?  A far better line than ‘maybe 10’ would have been something along the line of ‘we are looking for a small group of people. I can’t quantify the exact numbers’ and then hold his nerve if pushed.

 
Beware questions that are repeated several times

Mr Guttman did not jump on the answer about the 10 terrorists straight away. He came back to it several times (three in total throughout the interview).  But throughout, he kept his tone and body language even and didn’t betray a particular preference for this angle over any other. This gave Mr Reynders the false impression that he hadn’t said anything too sensational.  However, an experienced interviewee should have realised that the journalist’s decision to return to the question multiple times during an interview was a sign that the interview was going a certain way and should have been controlled.

These are just a few PR take-ways from the Brussels lockdown. Do you have any others you’d like to share?

 

 

the art of sensitive communications
Lindsay Williams

Choosing the words: the language of fear and grief

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Regular readers of this blog know that we comment on the communication lessons of public events, rather than the events themselves.

The terrorist attacks in Paris and Bamako, and the threats in Brussels are horrific and a challenge to modern societies on many fronts.

The communication challenge

One of those challenges falls to the political leaders – the figureheads – who need to speak to the public sometimes while violent events are still happening or very soon afterwards. Behind the figurehead may be a speechwriter. It must be one of the most stressful jobs in the world to write a speech under great time pressure, knowing that when delivered millions will be watching and analysing every nuance.

In the last week it was the turn of President Francois Hollande of France and in Mali, President Ibrahim Boubacar Këita.

Hollande TV statement

In his television address during the attacks in Paris, President Hollande stuck to mostly factual information.  He spoke about attacks of an ‘unprecedented scale’, declared a state of emergency and said the borders had been closed. He tried to be reassuring, saying ‘We know where the threats are coming from. We know who the criminals are. We know who the terrorists are’. And he appealed for calm, ending with:  ‘Long live the Republic, Long live France.’ Full transcript here.

In difficult circumstances he was calm and informative – but to be critical – his performance was cold and did not reassure.

France ‘at war’

Three days later, addressing a rare joint meeting of the upper and lower houses of parliament in the Palace of Versailles, the President announced ‘France is at war’ . Full 39 minute speech here.  (Thanks to those who pointed out that the actual quote was here – initially I couldn’t find it.) The use of the word ‘war’ was obviously considered but for me is always problematic. We all remember President Bush’s ‘War on terror’. It is a word guaranteed to give you a headline, and to communicate extreme determination. But to describe the fight against random acts of terror as a ‘war’ surely overstates it somewhat.

Mali President resigned

By contrast the President of Mali, in somewhat less extreme circumstances and on a less formal occasion, sounded simply resigned. I doubt he had a speech writer for this. To my mind he went way to far the the other way. He said:

“We don’t want to scare our people but we have already said Mali will have to get used to situations like this…No one, no where, is safe.”

Crisis speech guidelines

So how should it be done? Well, were I to find myself the speech writer in such a situation (not a job I would seek), my absolute priority would be to help restore calm and purpose. To achieve this the speech needs to do three things.

Firstly, and importantly it needs to inform – to provide whatever factual update is appropriate. Crises and fear promote speculation and rumour.  Leaders must do what they can to provide facts.

Secondly, the speech needs to demonstrate empathy and solidarity not so much with those injured or bereaved but with the wider (much larger) frightened population. Whilst there is a need to express horror, I would opt for some restraint. Hollande’s ‘It’s a horror’ hits the mark. Personally, I can’t see how Secretary of State John Kerry’s use of ‘psychopathic monsters’ helps anything. I prefer David Cameron’s  choice of words ‘shocked but resolute, in sorrow but unbowed’ although he later added ‘brutal, callous murders’.

Better place

Having established empathy, the speech should lead the audience to a better place. That needs to be a place of calm resolve, providing reassurance that they are protected by being part of something bigger, more grand and fundamentally good. This might be the greater France, the civilized world, democracy or – if culturally appropriate – under the protection of God, Allah or some other deity.

This is how President Hollande closed his statement last Friday evening:

‘I ask all of you to keep your faith in what our security forces can do to save our nation from acts of terrorism. Long live the Republic.  Long live France.’  Not as uplifting as it might have been.

Three days later his Versailles speech ended:

‘We will eradicate terrorism so France will continue to show the way. Terrorism will not destroy the Republic because it is the Republic which will destroy terrorism. Long live the Republic. Long live France.’ Better but not, in English at least, evocative or uplifting. Full transcript here.

Cameron ended his statement to parliament:

‘Your values are our values. Your pain is our pain. Your fight is our fight. And together, we will defeat these terrorists.’ For me this is how it should be done.

To cast the net a little wider; George Bush ended his broadcast immediately after the 9/11 attacks:

‘None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.

 Thank you. Good night. And God bless America.’ Similarly this shows the sure hand of an experienced speech writer.

Crisis communications – who would think it could be so hard!

Finally, let me leave you with an entertaining rant from the former Editor of the Sunday Times and now a BBC presenter. He breaks all my rules but then he is not a leader or figurehead, just a pundit. This was the opening monologue to his show This Week on BBC 1 on Thursday.

Composite Marr quotes
Lindsay Williams

A lesson in the need to prepare for obvious questions

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Nine minutes into a 12-minute interview on Remembrance Sunday this short bit of dialogue sparked an apparently unplanned controversy.

Composite Marr quotes

The interview is between Andrew Marr, on the Sunday Morning current affairs programme The Marr Show and General Sir Nicholas Houghton, Chief of the Defence Staff. (Sorry but the link will only work until mid December 2015.)

‘Manoeuvred into criticising’ 

As a result of these two phrases from Sir Nicholas, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK Opposition Labour party, is complaining to the Ministry of Defence. He says Sir Nicholas crossed the line on the military’s political neutrality. In an attempt to defuse the row, on Monday the former head of the Navy and a Labour Peer, Lord West said in another interview, he thought Sir Nicholas had been ‘manoeuvred into criticising’ the opposition leader.

Corbyn Complains compositeFor those who haven’t followed this, Corbyn is a life long member of CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) and is hoping to persuade his party and the country to vote against spending between £20 and £100 billion on renewing Trident – Britain’s nuclear deterrent.

Watching the interview (the comments come at one hour and two minutes in if you are looking at the whole programme) you can clearly see that Sir Nicholas realised the danger of the question and tried to choose his words carefully: but still ended up in hot water.

Learning Points for us PR professionals:

–  This was a long and wide-ranging interview, over 12 minutes. The longer the interview the greater the risk. The comments come about nine minutes in.

–  The more senior the person and the less often they appear in the media, the more difficult it is for them to do what we would think of as a ‘disciplined’ interview. They are used to holding court and not used to having to be careful with every word knowing it can be elevated to a headline.

–  The ‘would you support Corbyn if he was elected?’ questions, of which the offending question here was just one mild version, are obvious and predictable.Huff Puff composite

–  It is not credible to imagine that Marr plotted to lead Sir Nicholas to that point with some Machiavellian line of prepared questions. But it is entirely likely that Marr knows what Sir Nicholas thinks and wondered if he could get him to say it on air. However, from a journalistic point of view it was a totally reasonable question in the context of the interview. This was not a bit of mischief tagged on the end.

– Actually Sir Nicholas got off very lightly. It’s obvious to us, that a different interviewer would have seized the phrase and been much more challenging on what exactly it meant. Marr let it slide.

– If Sir Nicholas was being supported by an efficient PR machine he would have been rehearsed in the line to take on this question and would not have been left trying and failing to stay out of trouble whilst in front of the charming Andrew Marr and a bank of TV cameras.

Possible answer

So how should he have answered it? We don’t know all the considerations but how about : ‘As you know, the military is politically neutral so I am not going to be drawn on that but what I would say is…’

At The Media Coach we call preparation for tough or politically sensitive questions ‘reactive lines’. The difficult questions need to be identified by someone who has professional PR (or journalistic) skills, and appropriate responses need to be crafted. Then, the interviewee needs to rehearse them aloud. Reading reactive lines in a document ahead of an interview is not an adequate way to prepare; role-playing them a couple of times is.

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Laura Shields

How to banish nerves from public speaking

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At the start of my career I worked with a well-known and popular broadcast journalist with a ton of experience in presenting live TV.  He was confident, energetic and highly skilled at building empathetic connections with interviewees in a short space of time.

He was also crippled by nerves and once told me how he used to experience acute attacks of butterflies and adrenaline surges just before the lights went down and the cameras came on at the start of 3 hours of live TV. His description was so intense that it amazed me that people watching from home weren’t able to see what he was going through. It also made me think he was a fool for working in live TV if he still couldn’t handle his physical responses and stress after 15 years in the business.

Of course, what I later learned was that riding the adrenaline was his ‘thing’. But the broader point here is that people who get nervous about public speaking or media interviews often assume that those they consider to be good don’t suffer at all.  But that often isn’t true. Many good speakers get nervous – they just have strategies for helping them cope with stage fright.

Here are a few tips that our clients have often told us they find helpful for managing public speaking or media interview nerves.

1. Manage your expectations of yourself

Accept that that your personal experience of discomfort is not the same as the audience’s view of your performance. You might be dying inside but there is often no correlation between how you feel and what an audience (live or TV) sees.  And don’t forget that a bit of nervousness can sometimes endear the speaker to the audience, provided it doesn’t get in the way of what they are saying.

public speaking

Nerves are one of the most common issues people have with public speaking

Not comfortable with speaking into microphones or to cameras? You aren’t alone. Many seasoned speakers don’t like the podium, or staring down the barrel of a massive broadcast camera. However, they are good at accepting the artifice and managing their response to it.  Practising regularly on camera can also help, partly because it gets people into the habit of treating speaking as a workable skill, while reassuring many that they aren’t as bad as feared.

2. Preparation includes practice

Preparation of message houses, PowerPoints or speaking notes is not complete unless you have rehearsed your prepared material aloud several times and got your tongue familiar with what you want to say. Trust me, it will help the nerves enormously. Particularly if you are not going to be speaking in your mother tongue.

3. Get familiar with your environment

Clearly, you aren’t going to be able to walk into a live broadcast studio and conduct your own pre-interview audit but you and your PR team can do as much due diligence as possible on what to expect in terms of technology and interview flow.  Likewise, if you are speaking at a conference or an event, it’s worth getting into the room early to see what the room layout will be like and where the podium or desk is. If you can rehearse your opening points even better.

4. Centre yourself

Everyone is jumping on the mindfulness band wagon these days but many people do find it enormously helpful for centering themselves, putting things into perspective and remaining calm. As a keen but poor runner I can also add that doing several mental run-throughs of the Brussels 20km route ahead of last year’s race helped me enormously when it came to not giving up on the final nasty uphill stretch. This may sound touchy-feely but anyone who has seen me run and done the 20km will know what I am talking about.

5. Fake it

Seriously. Lots of people worry about being in the ‘zone’ when it comes to public speaking or an interview. And while I do agree that taking a few minutes ahead of time to get into ‘performance mode’ can be helpful, I also think that a good way to create confidence is to fake it.

And who knows, you might even get so caught up in your performance that you find yourself enjoying it…

What tips work for you?